La Palma 2012

[mvanrheenen]

On La Palma, I shot some vista's and landscapes as well.

Here are the first few. Will update the thread as I develop the images. C&C always welcome.

Mark

#1 - Walking high up



#2 - San Antonio crater I



#3 - San Antonio crater II

[mvanrheenen]

#4 - Bananafields



#5 - Dead pine tree



#6 - Sunset

[mvanrheenen]

And my personal favorite of the whole holiday...

#7 - The Milky Way

The island is known for its unpolluted air and clear skies. Telescopes are built on the highest peaks, at about an altitude of 2400 meters. There is a law on the island, that no excessive lights may be on at night and if they do, they have to be faint and pointed downwards. It was pitch black on the island at night, but that did gave me the opportunity to shoot this at lower altitudes. I'm very pleased with the result.



More to come later. All shot with my a580, CZ16-80 or 70-300G.

[Juanito200]

Mark I love the shots of the San Antonio Crater. The sparse vegetation certainly shows the tenacity of life. What are the white objects in the distance in the banana fields shot, some kind of covers for the plants? The Milky Way shot is beautiful! Thanks for sharing, and I look forward to others!

[sury]

I am impressed with the stark contrast of arid hills and lush fields. The night sky is the best for me.
An interesting side bar on lights. The city of San Jose, California, USA has street lights, all orange in color.
The reason being, the near by Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton can be operated with losing minimal
information by filtering the sodium vapor street lights. Now they started using white led lights that point
downwards.

Sury

[Greg Beetham]

I like the dead tree shot, and the milky way of course, but I looked at it for a long time trying to figure out what direction or what part of the milky way it was but I couldn't see any familiar star patterns from memory so I'm not sure, I thought the area towards the bottom right looked like the Carina area but I'm not sure now, I'd have to get a star atlas and try and match up the star patterns, but an enjoyable shot for sure.
Greg

[mvanrheenen]

Mark I love the shots of the San Antonio Crater. The sparse vegetation certainly shows the tenacity of life. What are the white objects in the distance in the banana fields shot, some kind of covers for the plants? The Milky Way shot is beautiful! Thanks for sharing, and I look forward to others!

Thank you for your nice comments. The white objects in the distance are indeed covering for the banana plants. They build these cloth based "greenhouses" to protect the plants from the wind. Wind is the banana plants worst nightmare, as even a mild breeze can rip their big leaves after which, they could very well die. As it takes 1,5 years before the bananas can be harvested, you can imagine the farmers are very willing to build these protections. I still wonder why not all the banana plants are covered. As you can see, they seem to be built in a random order. Never had the chance to figure that one out.

@sury: what the local authorities effectively did was minimize light polution by regulating using lights outdoors. Don't know if they had any special light being used for the necessary lighting, could very well be.

@Greg: I would love to know which part of the milky way it is. I'm not much of an astronomer myself. I just enjoyed the clear sky and minimal stray light tremendously. Never in my life could I see that much stars and even see the faint glow of all the star systems. It was an amazing experience.

Mark

[Greg Beetham]

Mark this is the best I could do with it in my sky atlas, it looks like you were looking north-ish at the time, and I was unsure what local time it was, the view changes quite a lot as the time changes and the view is different from a given location as well. I don’t know why I didn’t spot Scorpius at first, probably too many stars…you get that when the viewing is clear and dark, constellations, even conspicuous ones hide in amongst all the stars.
Greg

Mark's-Canary-Is-Sky-Map.jpg (55.08 KiB) Viewed 4363 times

Mark's-Canary-Is-Constellat.jpg (67.35 KiB) Viewed 4363 times

[mvanrheenen]

Hi Greg,

I was looking south-south-west at the time. The image was shot on 08-Aug-2012 22:28 (CEST - UTC/GMT +1 hour). Hope it helps.

Mark

[Dr. Harout]

Wonderful shots, Mark.

[Greg Beetham]

Mark I went back to the sky atlas and set it for the time etc. and the maps I did are pretty much a correct match to your photo give or take a bit around the edges, it’s hard to match the zoom/angle of view to a photo exactly. I guessed the direction wrong somehow; maybe I should have stood on my head or something...duh. (I removed the horizon from my sky atlas so it wouldn’t keep getting in the way while I was dragging the sky around to match your photo, and when you remove the horizon the compass points disappear with it).
Greg

[mvanrheenen]

Haha, no problem Greg. In the mean time I did a side by side comparison on your charts and my image. I recognized most of the constellations. Great stuff Thanks for sharing your knowledge!

@Doc: thanks!

Mark

[johnstra]

The first shot gives a feeling of being on the edge of the world. If it wasn't for the trees the second and third shots could pass for the surface of Mars.
I am interested to know what lens, aperture and time were used for the milky way. We are so light polluted where I am that the kids now don't know what stars look like. It is very sad as seeing them as you saw them gives a sense of the awesome universe in which we live and just how unimportant we are.

Regards, Bob

[mvanrheenen]

The first shot gives a feeling of being on the edge of the world. If it wasn't for the trees the second and third shots could pass for the surface of Mars.
I am interested to know what lens, aperture and time were used for the milky way. We are so light polluted where I am that the kids now don't know what stars look like. It is very sad as seeing them as you saw them gives a sense of the awesome universe in which we live and just how unimportant we are.

Regards, Bob

Hi Bob, thank you for the compliment. For the Milky Way shot, I used the CZ 16-80 @ 22mm, ISO3200, f/4.0 on 15 sec. MF a little before infinity. Used a light tripod and remote.

Here are some more images I processed today.

#8 - Fuencaliente



#9 - Rock paintings at Barracas



#10 - On old cottage

[mvanrheenen]

#11 - Los Llanos de Aridane



#12 - Tazacorte



#13 - The streets of Santa Cruz de La Palma