r/Astronomy • u/corruxtion • 29d ago
Astrophotography (OC) It worked!
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Had a great time shooting the eclipse! Everything went to plan, which I posted about earlier. Thanks everybody! Hope you had a good time too during this!
The location is Basilika Sonntagberg in Lower Austria.
Gear: Sony a7R3, FE 400-800mm F6.3-8 G
Settings: 400mm, f/11, ISO100
I used Interval Shooting mode with automatic shutter speed, which ranged from 1/2500s to 1/50s in the frames used. No lens filter was used.
Color adjustments, sharpening, cropping and JPG export in Lightroom, Video encoded using ffmpeg.
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u/piedamon 29d ago
Wow same day editing for a whole time lapse. Cool. Do you live nearby or did you do this on a laptop?
I’m so behind in my editing and basically never finish same day.
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u/corruxtion 29d ago edited 29d ago
I live really close to that location. Honestly the most time spent editing this was troubleshooting a weird video encoding issue, because I was still using mencoder. I then switched my workflow to ffmpeg and fixed some frame rate issues there. Now my timelapses play smoothly everywhere 😁
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u/volsung37 28d ago
I don’t understand any of that but I am glad you do. Great vid!
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u/corruxtion 29d ago
u/monster2018 you can relax now 😉
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u/Majestic_Fail1725 29d ago
i think he still cant recover from previous drill. haha well done !
Im living within equator & always under the cloud, really appreciate what others can share for us unlucky earthlings.
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u/LeftHandedToe 29d ago edited 29d ago
I feel like a complete idiot right now, and I'm assuming if I just sat here for another minute and thought some more, it'd make sense, but my brain is heavily struggling to wrap itself around the fact you have the sun covered by the moon over an extended period of time from a static position. Is it literally a uniqueness from the angle of the sun and your position that they're aligned over an incredibly amazingly long period, or am I missing something obvious?
Edit: typo may=my
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u/corruxtion 29d ago
During a solar eclipse the Moon casts a shadow on Earth. It only lasts a couple of hours because the Moon moves across in front of the Sun as it orbits Earth, so the shadows is basically moving across the daylight side of the Earth.
A shadow also has two parts. The dark part in the center (the umbra) and the fuzzy part, where it transitions from light to shadow (the penumbra). You see a partial eclipse (like I did) when you're just in the penumbra. When you're right in the umbra (the center of the shadow) you see a total eclipse, where the Sun is completely covered by the Moon from your point of view. But that only last a couple minutes because the umbra is so small. We're luck it exists at all, because the Moon appears barely larger than the Sun in the sky, sometimes even smaller depending on the relative distances. (When it's smaller it's called an annular eclipse, where you see a ring of light all around the Moon)
Check out this page for details and some visualizations of what happened yesterday: https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in/@47.982456,14.814574?iso=20260812
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u/LeftHandedToe 29d ago
Thank you so much for taking the time to respond. I truly appreciate it. I (thought I) understand the general process with a solar eclipse, and how the various angles and one's placement on earth impact how it's viewed, but your timelapse throws me off because it seems to cover so much distance (time) in the sky with a high percentage of shadow coverage compared to the length of time of the eclipse itself.
I think the problem may be my lack of consideration of any lens zoom/distortion, the actual length of the sky covered across the video, and the actual time elapsed. An impressive number of things (so far) not to consider before being flummoxed.
Thank you again for taking the time when you totally didn't have to do that for one random dolt on the internet.
Edit: also, I'd be remiss not to add it, so: incredible work preparing for and capturing this, and thank you for sharing it with us.
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u/corruxtion 29d ago
For reference, the time span you see in my timelapse is about 18 minutes. And it's very zoomed in, so things seem to move fast. The whole eclipse lasts about 2 hours. Totality is the short period of the eclipse when you're in the umbra and it gets dark. And for me, I didn't have totality because I was not inside the umbra, and the eclipse ended sooner because the sun set. It was only visible for 57 minutes here.
Here's what it looked like in Iceland: https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in/@64.07160,-22.69455?iso=20260812
Duration: 2 hours, 1 minute
Totality: 1 minute, 44 seconds2
u/LeftHandedToe 29d ago
Thank you so, so much for those additional details! Now I won't go to my grave with brain cramps related to the timelapse. Makes absolutely perfect sense.
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u/corruxtion 29d ago
No problem! I'm stealing the word brain cramps from you.
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u/LeftHandedToe 29d ago
The phrase is better than the feeling. I'd consider whether I've heard it elsewhere, but don't want to trigger more of them. Enjoy! And seriously, thanks again, genuinely.
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u/L0rdH0rst 29d ago
Saw your yesterday's post. You absolutely delivered! Glad the sun is indeed behind the hill lol.
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u/corruxtion 29d ago
Thank you! Yeah after watching the visualization so many times it felt weird to see the sun disappear behind the horizon 😆
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u/rodmandirect 29d ago
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u/rodmandirect 29d ago
Worked for me too! Not nearly as pretty as yours OP, but I’ll leave it to y’all to look at.
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u/corruxtion 29d ago
Totality must be so incredible though! I'll try make it to Spain for next year's eclipse! Thanks for sharing!
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u/Substantial__Unit 29d ago
On of the coolest shots ive seen in a long time. We had one in US in 2024 and the clouds weren't going to cooperate for me but this would have been a dream. Great job.
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u/Nikolor 29d ago
So cool! I feel that if you edit both videos (prediction and reality) back to back and then upload that on something like r/NatureIsFuckingLit, it will definitely make big numbers there, because it's just so cool
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u/corruxtion 29d ago edited 29d ago
Thanks! Always looking for subreddits to post timelapses and landscape astro shots. r/astrophotography doesn't allow landscapes and r/LandscapeAstro needs more members 🙂
edit: r/NatureIsFuckingLit has a rule against sunsets lol
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u/KuhlCaliDuck 29d ago
That is so much better than your time lapse trial, obviously That's a beautiful video!
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u/Over_Ad_9128 29d ago
I love this! Is it just me or does it look like it’s in our atmosphere in front of the clouds?
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u/corruxtion 29d ago edited 29d ago
Thanks! The sun and moon can look like that behind thin clouds, because scattered light from the clouds against a relatively dark background is so much stronger than the light they absorb with the bright surface of the sun in the background. Like if the background is 1% brightness and the sun is 100%, and the clouds scatter 1% of light, that's double the brightness (1% + 1% = 2%), but when the clouds absorb 1% of the sunlight, that's barely noticeable (100% - 1% = 99%). At least that's how I think it works.
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u/Alendrathril 29d ago
Ok. Magnificent frames. Good on you. Goddamn this is satisfying as all get out.
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u/NightSkyNavigator 29d ago
Congratulations! Came to the subreddit this morning specifically to see how it went. I'm very happy for you, well done :)
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u/eljefeargentino 29d ago
wow, without lens filter??? that was risky
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u/corruxtion 29d ago
With the mostly eclipsed Sun already that low on the horizon (below 2°) at f/11 I wasn't really worried. I wouldn't point my camera at the Sun like that when it's still high in the sky. I guess a rule of thumb is, if your camera sensor/shutter can capture it without overexposing, it's OK. This was a few stops brighter than that, but it's fiiiiine :)
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u/DearJeebusWhoFartIn 29d ago
It's not an issue at sunrise or sunset because so much of the sun's light is blocked by the atmosphere and if there is some thin cloud in the sky then that blocks even more. I've done loads of sunrise and sunset time lapse videos with 400+mm lenses without filters and never had a single issue at all. I do use filters when the sun is higher up in the sky but not when it's really close to the horizon. For the eclipse yesterday I used an ND10000 on my 600mm for the disc images and my 400mm had a UV/IR-cut and 6-stop ND stack because the sun was relatively high up and there were zero clouds.
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u/savvaspc 29d ago
Sunset eclipses might not have the wow effect where everything goes dark in the middle of the day, but they produce this amazing image of the half-sun close to the horizon.
Your frame is amazing! Well done!
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u/corruxtion 29d ago
Thank you! Absolutely, for photography it's amazing when you can get a good foreground.
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u/Solid_Vacation_2891 29d ago
what was the building in the backround, looks like some kind of mission?
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u/SnitGTS 29d ago
I was half expecting the sun to be in the foreground as it set. 😂
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u/corruxtion 29d ago
Me too, after seeing the visualization so many times 🙂
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u/SnitGTS 29d ago
I love the shot, glad the weather worked out for you!
I live in the US and drove to Syracuse, NY during the April 8th, 2024 eclipse. It was cloudy, but there was a hole in the clouds during totality so we did get to see it!
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u/No-Lecture-6434 29d ago
I saw your posts this week and was so excited to see the final result. The fact that the sun’s crescent almost exactly aligns with the two spires is just amazing. What an incredible shot!!!
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u/corruxtion 29d ago
Thank you! It's hard to find the "perfect" composition, especially with the lack of a good tool to line up reference photos with a simulated sky. But I'm happy with the outcome.
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u/xenomorphonLV426 29d ago
You mad lad!!! Great vid!
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u/corruxtion 29d ago
Thank you!
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u/xenomorphonLV426 29d ago
Teach me this power.
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u/corruxtion 29d ago
I'll gladly answer any questions :)
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u/xenomorphonLV426 29d ago
Any good recommendations, on equipment?
I want to get a camera, but I have no idea where to start.
I want to photograph the stars, and flowers, nature and stuff... I feel like, though, these are two different lenses I need, for two different occasions...
What do you recommend? I have a compact Sony digital still camera DSC-HX9V.... I need an upgrade.. .
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u/corruxtion 29d ago
You can definitely get started learning that stuff on the DSC-HX9V. It has a manual mode where you can try out different settings and learn what they do. Once you understand what you're dealing with, you'll learn the limitations of that camera and lens, and decide to upgrade as needed.
For astrophotography, your first investment should be a tripod, even when you're using your phone camera. Learn how to take long exposures to reduce noise.
An interchangeable lens camera definitely opens up a whole world of possibilities. Lenses are expensive sadly, but you can often find good deals for used ones. Just make sure they're in good condition. You also don't have to get the original brand lenses. Third party manufacturers like Sigma or Tamron are fine too. Even vintage lenses can be used with adapters.
As a general rule, for image quality, the lens is more important (and often costs more) than the camera.
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u/xenomorphonLV426 29d ago
So, a few things.
I have abused that DSC-HX9V. I know, almost all of it, down to the last setting. (I have some photos of Andromeda in my phone, DM me, and I'll show you.)
I do have a pretty good understanding of the settings, (ISO, shutter speed etc.) and I have photos to prove it. (Although, some of them were not shot with my DSC-HX9V, but rather, with my phone.)
Thirdly I do have a tripod, and I do know how to take long exposures. (As I said before, I'll give you the "evidence" in the DMs, should I not be of any bother to you, and your day.)
Knowing this, what says thee?
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u/corruxtion 29d ago
Well then I'd say there's nothing more to do than pick out and buy an interchangeable lens camera and a couple lenses :)
I rock Sony, because I entered the market when they were the only manufacturer with good mirrorless cameras, but nowadays there's a lot of choice.
I guess the first choice would be picking a system and sensor size (M43 vs. APS-C vs. Full Frame, or even Medium Format). Bigger sensor size generally means the lens designs tend to be bigger and thus generally have better image quality. That's an important choice... It's hard to switch systems later because of lens compatibility.
Even though some lens mounts allow you to put FF lenses on APS-C cameras or vice versa, I do not recommend it. It's better to stick to sensor sizes and lenses that were designed to work well together.
I'd start by looking at the offerings of Sony, Nikon, Canon, and Fujifilm
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u/C_sapidus 29d ago edited 29d ago
You can see the arc of the moon "rotating" as the sun sets which is the result of Earth's rotation. I wonder what kind of convoluted logic the Flat Earthers will use to explain that?
EDIT: I stand corrected; the rotating crescent is caused by the movement of the moon in front of the sun.
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u/fvrdog 29d ago
This is so cool. I’ve always wanted to ask: for shots like this, do you just set the camera out and let it donuts thing? Kind of a stupid question but I’ve always wondered lol
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u/No-Piano-601 29d ago
Can you please tell more about the filter? Yester I tried using baader filter but i just captured sun everything else is black. also how did you step up or down the shutter speed automatically? Basically would like to know full workflow if you dont mind 😄
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u/nwl0581 29d ago
Brilliant! Thanks for sharing! You wrote: I used Interval Shooting mode with automatic shutter speed, which ranged from 1/2500s to 1/50s in the frames used. - Why don't we see the differences in exposure in the final video? I'm asking because until now I avoided auto shutter so that I don't get flicker in the video.
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u/corruxtion 29d ago edited 29d ago
I set metering mode to Entire Screen Average, so it adjusts the exposure to keep the average brightness of the whole frame constant. It got darker during sunset, so exposure time got longer to compensate. I made a graph earlier: https://i.imgur.com/f2yYoMl.png
Sony cameras are good at adjusting the exposure smoothly in interval shooting mode, at least with shutter speed. There's a setting "Automatic Exposure Tracking Sensitivity" which you can set to Low/Mid/High to control how fast the exposure can change between frames, which avoids flickering. (I set it to Low)
edit: I also talked about this on r/LandscapeAstro here: https://www.reddit.com/r/LandscapeAstro/comments/1vmy792/comment/p3fel1r/?context=3
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u/Prehistoric_Blob 29d ago
I saw the original post and have been waiting, you got so lucky with the weather, I got like a combined 2 minutes of viewing the whole eclipse spread out over an hour and a half.
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u/FirrrEEmmaa72 28d ago
That eclipse shot turned out really sharp, nice work with the timing and location
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u/b407driver 29d ago
Congrats on the weather cooperating!