Chris Hadfield – The Amazing Sky

January 1, 2014

Music Video – Sky Events of 2013

My 2-minute music video looks back at some of the celestial highlights of 2013, in images and videos I captured.

Some of the events and scenes I show were accessible to everyone who looked up. But some required a special effort to see.

• In 2013 we had a couple of nice comets though not the spectacle hoped for from Comet ISON.

• Chris Hadfield became a media star beaming videos and tweets from the Space Station. We on Earth could look up and see his home sailing through the stars.

• The sky hosted a few nice conjunctions of planets, notably Mars, Venus and Jupiter in late May.

• The Sun reached its peak in solar activity (we think!) unleashing solar storms and some wonderful displays of northern lights.

• Locally, record rain storms in Alberta unleashed floods of devastating consequences in June, with a much publicized super moon in the sky.

• For me, the summer proved a productive one for shooting the “star” of the summer sky, the Milky Way.

• But the year-end finale was most certainly the total eclipse of the Sun on November 3. Few people saw it. I did, from a ship in the Atlantic Ocean. The video ends with that sight and experience, the finest the sky has to offer.

I hope you enjoy this music video mix of time-lapse, real-time video and still images, shot from Alberta, New Mexico and from the Atlantic.

You can watch a better quality version of this video at my Vimeo channel.

Clear skies for 2014!

April 17, 2013

Commander Chris Flies Over My House

Commander Chris Hadfield and his crew fly over my house and below the Moon on a spring night in Canada.

It’s been a couple of months since we in Canada have had a chance to sight the Space Station in our evening sky with our Canadian astronaut on board. When I last had a chance in February, Chris was a crew member. Now he’s the commander of the Station, the first Canadian to hold the position.

My shot, taken tonight on the second of two passes this evening, has the Space Station coming up out of the west and rising to meet the Moon. It passed under the Moon and then faded out as it entered Earth’s shadow and nighttime, one of 16 nights they experienced this and every day in orbit around the Earth.

Chris is in orbit with the Expedition 35 crew until mid-May. So this may be our best and last chance to see our astronaut flying through Canadian skies.

This was also the first decently clear night we’ve had in two weeks, since my last post from April 2. We all hope spring is finally arriving

February 15, 2013

Flying Through a Moonlit Winter Night

Tonight the Space Station flew out of the west and overhead as it faded into the shadow of the Earth.

Because tonight the ISS was coming up high into the north, almost directly overhead, I used a fish-eye lens to shoot the entire sky, and took three exposures, each 90 seconds with the camera tracking the stars.

The bright Moon is at right, but despite its light the Milky Way still shows up. The Space Station faded into sunset just as it crossed the Milky Way.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield is on board, about to take command at the next crew change. He’s been tweeting lots of comments and photos from space. Check him out at @Cmdr_Hadfield.

February 11, 2013

Commander Hadfield Sailing Through the Stars

Here’s looking back at you Commander Hadfield! Here is our Canadian astronaut sailing into the Milky Way.

Since he launched to the International Space Station in December Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield has been tweeting many photos of places in Canada that he sees passing by his window 400 kilometres below. With the Space Station now entering our evening sky in western Canada, I can return the favour and photograph his home in space traveling among the stars. This night he flew through Orion and into the winter Milky Way.

This was the scene Sunday night, February 10, in a pass of the Space Station low across the south starting at 7:14 p.m. MST. The exposure was four minutes, long enough to just capture the entire pass from west to east, right to left in this image. At left, the trail of the Space Station fades out as the ISS entered Earth’s shadow and into night.

The image also captures the Milky Way at left and the Zodiacal Light rising from the last vestiges of blue twilight at right. Jupiter is the brightest object above centre. For the next two weeks we’ll be enjoying nightly passes of the ISS with our Canadian astronaut on board.