24 August 2015

[pdx] Portland Amber Evening with Moon Shot

3222.
By last evening the extraordinarily thick haze from the wildfires in the east had cleared from the Valley somewhat, and visibility was much improved. But, as atmospheric events like this are wont to do, the visual aftereffects linger. This was downtown Portland, taken from the intersection of SE 12th Avenue and Morrison Street, looking west at about 7:00 PM:


I understand that glowing thing in the sky is a thing called "the Sun". Whether or not this is a cause for alarm remains to be seen.

The Coffee Room at Powell's City 'o' Books turned out to be a site for astronomical photography experimentation, naturally unexpected. The Wife™ saw what looked to be a half-moon setting over the Buffalo Exchange building across the street, and wanted a picture of that. Nothing really worked, and then I started playing with the camera a bit. Went into Manual mode and played the hell out of exposure and focal length, jacked up the zoom into the virtual range, and this is what I got:


As awesome a camera as it is, the Canon PowerShot S100 isn't the ideal camera for astronomical photos, and this won't get published in Astronomy magazine, but it's not too terribly bad, and much better than I expected. If I had a tripod with me and weren't taking pictures out of a fully-lit room, who knows? I could have gotten clear craters maybe.

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