The image above features brilliant Venus and the zodiacal light as viewed from the Kalkalpen National Park nearReichraming, Austria. On this cold and very clear autumn morning, nearby city lights are concealed under a layer offog (lower center). As a result, the sky was almost as dark as would be expected in remote Namibia. This area of Austria is one of the last locales in central Europe with relatively little light pollution.
It may appear, at first, like the Galaxy is producing the lightning, but really it’s the Earth. In the foreground of the above picturesque nighttime landscape is the Greek Island of Corfu, with town lights surrounding Lake Korrision. Visible farther in the distance are lights from the town of Preveza on the Greek mainland. In the more distant sky a thunderstorm is threatening, with two lightning strokes caught together during this 45 second wide-angle exposure taken in mid-May.
Each panel shows one day. With 360 movie panels, the sky over (almost) an entire year is shown in time lapse format as recorded by a video camera on the roof of the Exploratorium museum in San Francisco, California. The camera recorded an image every 10 seconds from before sunrise to after sunset and from mid-2009 to mid-2010. A time stamp showing the local time of day is provided on the lower right. The videos are arranged chronologically, with July 28 shown on the upper left, and January 1 located about about half way down. Although every day lasts 24 hours, daylight lasts longest in the northern hemisphere in June and the surrounding summer months, a fact which can be seen here as the bottom (and soon top) videos are the first to light up with dawn. The initial darkness in the middle depicts the delayed dawn and fewer daylight hours of winter. In the videos, darkness indicates night, blue depicts clear day, while gray portrays pervasive daytime cloud cover. Many videos show complex patterns of clouds moving across the camera’s wide field as that day progresses. As the videos collectively end, sunset and then darkness descend first on the winter days just above the middle, and last on the mid-summer near the bottom.
The photo above shows an eye-popping complex of waterspouts observed over the Adriatic Sea on a boat trip toBrindisi, Italy. As we departed, the weather was very summer like — some humidity, hot and sunny. Cumuliform clouds developed during our excursion, but the weather didn’t appear threatening. In fact, the atmospheric pressurewas stable at 1024 millibars. Suddenly, we saw a line of funnel clouds straight in front of our boat! The photo shows the most recently formed waterspout in the foreground; the oldest spout, in the background, would disappear in a few seconds.
Take a picture of Saturn in the sky tonight. You could capture a view like this one. Recorded just last month looking toward the south, planet Earth and ruins of the ancient temple of Athena at Assos, Turkey are in the foreground. The Moon rises at the far left of the frame and Saturn is the bright “star” at the upper right, near Virgo’s alpha star Spica (picture with labels). If you do take a picture of Saturn or wave at Saturn and take a picture, you can share it online and submit it to the Saturn Mosaic Project. Why take a picture tonight? Because the Cassini spacecraft will be orbiting Saturn and taking a picture of you.
Photographers beautifully imprint huge number of places, events and objects. Some do it by accident on the momentary desire. Others do it in order to fix the time for the future. This photos tell stories, wake feelings and manage to share with the audience the emotions a photographer. They are are simple but speak thousands of words.