These are the rest of the photo's from the Land of the Giants misstep. I meant to post them on Sunday or Monday, but forgot, and I've just come back from another walk on the beach with yet more photos, so I thought I'd quickly pop these up then post this morning's either later or at the weekend. At some point, I'm going to get back to those night sky photos and draw up some more elaborate constellations that actually look like what they're supposed to depict. At some point... Anyway, for now, here are those beach photos from 31st January:
Unlike at the Very Mistress's,
clicking here debigulates...
Walking through the exposed chalk rafts on Overstrand Beach, we must have inadvertently trod on - and activated - the lock for the Lilliputian Cusp interface. Finding ourselves at a less than ideal stature (if one can call being reduced to only three centimetres tall "stature"), we had little choice but to try and make it to the End-of-the-Line where we should revert to our far more usual height...
Last night's Super Blue Blood Moon
(I was too late to get the bloody red hue)
I wouldn't normally publish two posts in one day-
You might say such an occurrence only happens once in a blue moon!
Sighhh...
Anyway, since Indescribable called me after she'd dropped The Little Witch off this morning to say I should go out and photograph the setting moon, I've now got these extra photos. I couldn't leave them until the weekend, as I've already got some beach photos that will span two posts (I know. I'm spoiling you!) that will take up Saturday and Sunday. And the longer I leave them, the less relevant they'll be. Plus I'll undoubtedly have even more photos to do something with over the coming days/weeks/months, so I'll never find time to squeeze them in. So, here is the second post of the day: the last hurrah of the Super Blue Blood Moon as it rolled down the cliff before crushing the denizens of Cromer. Oh, and the sunrise that was taking place opposite which lit up surges of salty spume:
What better way to begin the month than with a sunrise? Albeit one from January, but still... The Little Witch pointed out this beautiful sunrise through the smallest room's window as I was supervising her teeth-brushing (i.e. making sure she wasn't going to smear toothpaste over the walls and my towels). It was so lovely that I just had to pop down the road to get some photos unencumbered by telegraph poles and the like.
Despite there being no Moon, the Sun had
almost caught up with me in this shot from
early on Thursday morning
This selection of constellations were captured over a couple of days during the past week. The first set from the evening of Monday 22nd January, and the second from the pre-dawn of Thursday 25th. As I mentioned in the last post, these were taken with the support of my (free!) tripod, so any blurry, shaky stars are their own fault, not mine! I also endeavoured to have some order in which I took the pictures to make it easier to remember which area of the sky I'd already photographed, and to work out which constellations were where when it came to labelling the damn things once I'd got home. Starting with Camera pointing North East (ish) at the horizon, I turned sunwise (even though the sun was not present) through the compass points taking photos every so often until I was back at the starting point. Then I pointed Camera up from the horizon by 60° and did the same thing, finally ending with one or two shots pointing directly upwards. Here are the results - And remember to click to embigulate:
19:00-19:20 Monday, 22nd January
This photo (and the next one) have been cut off at the bottom rather than the top, as lower halves were mostly black sea and ground - I didn't angle Camera up high enough.
I do especially like this one, though, because the head of Hydra is poking up from the sea just like a real sea monster.
I labelled the somewhat insignificant 40 Eridani as this is the home system of Star Trek's Vulcans.
Well, North Norfolk has enjoyed a few instances of cloudless skies over the past week or so, so I took advantage of the breaks in the weather and took some more photos of the night sky as I threatened to do inthe last star-themed post. They didn't come out very well, though. And almost all of them featured that strumpet, Cassiopeia! I put this down to the aforementioned strumpet being a prominent constellation in the sky at this time of year (in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway). That they didn't come out well is because of the cold and wind. The cold made me impatient - I was just randomly positioning Camera and taking a photo, and the wind made me a bit wobbly (as did the cold). Anyway, below are some of my trials and experiments - Remember to click to embigulate:
Above is a star-labelled photo from 3rd January. As you can see, it includes stars from the constellations Perseus, Andromeda, Triangulum, and the Pleiades Cluster from Taurus. I don't really like it as the constellations aren't immediately obvious.
The temperature has taken a dive since the gale force winds of last week had blown all the insulating clouds away, so it's been a bit nippy here. In fact, as I sit and type this, a few pathetic snowflakes are falling outside. Silly sods - It's not quite cold enough here on the coast for all that malarkey. Although, I gather the rest of the country could tell a different story... Anyway, the cold is partly why I spent almost all day yesterday, and most of today indoors mooching around. I did nip out for a beach walk a little earlier to get some fresh air, but I was only gone for about an hour - And, yes, I did take Camera, so I shall be sharing those photos in an upcoming post. But first, this one:
As orderedInspired byThe Very Mistress, may I present Beaky and Friends. Well, perhaps not "friends" because he doesn't have any. He spent most of his time chasing off sparrows and robins that had the audacity to land on the paysho in his vicinity - probably because he thought they'd eat all the morsels dropped from the bird feeders above... Take a deep breath as there're loads of photos - I was too indecisive to whittle them down to a manageable amount. I would say sorry, but that'd be a lie! First up are the aerobatic house sparrows. Here goes:
"LẌ? What was that noise?" LẌ ignored his myrmidon and hoped that the noise wasn't caused by the Peeps escaping from their cardboard prison. "Und haven't we already passed that globular cluster?" "Have we?" [worried] "I'm positive." Mago peered out of the porthole at the spherical group of old red stars. "Where are we?" "I don't know? Aren't you looking at the map?" "What?! Nein. I thought you were flying this thing?" "Damn it, Mago! I'm the Official Infomaniac Pillow Fluffer and Personal IT Consultant to Mistress MJ, not an interstellar navigator!"
No stars today, and probably none for several days (or weeks) to come, due to the lingering murk. Still, it didn't stop me popping out for some fresh air. As usual, I found myself on the beach wandering east towards the End-of-the-Line. And for one poor coastal denizen, it really was the end of the line...
"slippery, wet, white foam spraying all over the place" - thank you, Eros.
Someone left a bit of groyne in this gaping orifice...
I said I was "going to map out the constellations and try to get Camera to take longer exposure photographs", and I did! Well, I managed to do half of it. Kind of... While I couldn't find any way to take a longer-than-30-seconds exposure photo, I did start mapping out the constellations. And bugger me it's difficult! I had to brighten the photos even more (and mess around with the contrast, which left the stars surrounded by rectangular pixellated halos), and pore through books, star charts, and the interwebs to make sure I'd got the right stars in the right place. And even now I'm not sure that I have. Oh, and I also found out that the two non-Orion photos in the previous post are upside down (depending on where you stand and which way you're facing...). Anyway, the following are photos I took on 6th January - the last clear night here (it's been overcast, misty, and down right murky ever since).
The photo on the left is the original, unadulterated 30 sec exposure shot; the one on the right is after I'd buggered around with the brightness and contrast sliders on Computron.
Here's Orion over the scary house on the cliff again. The glow isn't from the scary house though, no, it's from a bloody Nightship stop! Somehow, I was unaware that Overstrand was serviced by the Nightship. I didn't think the village entertained enough of the usual sort who'd use such a method of transportation? Although, it would explain some of the raucousness that goes on outside my bedroom window some nights...
Guess what?! I found the "starry night" setting on Camera!
Prepare yourselves to be inundated with night sky photos in 2018!
Don't panic though, there'll still be beach walk photos.
The following three photos are the best of my first, rather wobbly, attempts. They're not exactly as taken, though. Once I'd trapped then in Computron, I moved the brightness slider thingy up to max to make the constellations really pop! Those are the actual stars' colours, though - I didn't mess around with them.
This is the constellation Cassiopeia, just right of centre (the W on its side). Left of centre is part of Andromeda, and I believe that's the Pleiades cluster on the far centre left.
It was taken with a 15 second exposure.
A drunken Orion leaning in the east. The glow is coming from the scary old house on the cliff, and that appears to be the silhouette of a slumbering Triffid in front of it...
Cassiopeia and Andromeda again, this time taken with a 30 second exposure
(as was Orion, above)
* Post title from "Star", Erasure's 1990 single from their 1989 album Wild!
