Astronomy, Photography and Weather

Conor I did our first storm chase of the year last night to the N coast in Co. Antrim. We positioned ourselves on Downhill Beach and spent hours watching convective cells passing across the sea. We saw some really low and nasty cloud structures, two flashes of lightning, and encountered terrible squalls with horizontal sleet, hail and snow in +40 mph wind gusts. All images are time exposures, the lights from the town come up that colour on the clouds and beach. First few images so a cell witn anvil side-one with dark precip core underneath. The last shows a pitch black sky as the nastiest squall of the night moved towards us. Pity we didn't catch the lightning on camera but the task was difficult due to lightning infrequency and blowing winds and hail. However it was a fun chase and we saw our first flashes of the year. Thanks to Paul Martin for radar guidance via text. Image report with bigger images below...

http://www.nightskyhunter.com/North%20Coast%20Storms%20-%20Jan%208th%202011.html

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Just viewed your full account Martin thats a good start to the new year very impressive and well pradicted by you and conor, great images.

Thanks

Anthony

Cheers Anthony, we did our own forecasting for this one and it felt great to get it validated by nature. ESTOFEX had a forecast out too. Pity there wasn't more lightning though, but still great to see flashes in Jan. I hope this is the big year for storms.

Very descriptive and exciting report of the nights events. Great images, looks very cold just looking at them.

Thanks very much Richard, it felt great to be back in action again for a new year of weather photography, can't say I've ever seen lightning in Jan before so that's a new experience for me. I love being near the ocean during Autum and Winter, the storms there are amazing, I plan on visiting there more often and catch auroras or NLCs over the sea which would be cool. I'm convinced the coast has massive potential for an incredible photo opp. I'm sure you would agree from living near the sea yourself  :)

Great shots,Martin..as ever. I wonder if a some kind of filter would help with the orange colouring . I had the same problem with street lighting with my snow photos last year and I'm sure it was Brian who said that it's very difficult to avoid it because of the nature of sodium lighting. That part of the west coast of Scotland gets a lot of weather involving TS's I notice. You seem to quite  often see Cg's coming down over there. I'll look at the map and see where that is out of interest. Read the story link too,excellent account. The coast certainly is a great place for photos,the sea enhances shots in most circumstances.

You could try a "Redhancer" (B+W 491) which is didymium glass & does a pretty good job of notching out sodium emission.

Excellent as always Martin!  ;)

Thanks John and Brian for the advice which is very much appreciated.

Yes the orange is very intense/harsh, the exposures are between 25-28 sec's at ISO1600 with the 18mm lens, the orange comes from the lights behind us and from the glow at Portrush, of course the camera exaggerates the sodium colour a great deal in reality. The scary thing is I have already reduced the red colour in the levels before posting them lol. If I was smart I would have taken them in RAW and made adjustments with more room to play, Conor suggested I did that and it was my intention to do so however I forgot at the time.

One needs a wide angle very fast lens to try and expose these clouds with as little motion blur as possible, the Met Office had +50mph gusts forecast off the coast so they were really moving in, on a more quiet night with a little moonlight life and the photogenic potential would be so much easier. It was shocking how black that sky was out to sea, very difficult to capture clouds at all until they come close into the sodium range.

Take the 3rd image, all we could see visually were those cumulus to the right which were very faint wth the dark adapted eye, it was overcast with a wispy anvil overhead but that it was it, the rest of the couds were pitch black so the camera brought up 60-70% of the cloud structure that was invisible to us, that was quite cool.

I could get addicted to watching for coastal t-storms up there, just need a really decent storm set up and I would be away. I think I will be visiting this are alot  this year both day and night.  :) I'm after night time storm structure lit by moonlight and c-g bolts....it's going to happen sometime.

Thanks Mark  :)

Brian, BAA NLC coordinator Ken Kennedy told me he uses a filter to subdue the sodium streetlight glow for his NLC images with great success.

Another method would be to select a cold white balance at the blue end which might just work. Next time I'm up there I'm going to experiment.

Cheers,Brian. I goggled that. In the US the 77mm one is $94. £60.

This one here at WarehouseExpress is for a 52mm lens. Just googled again. The 77mm is £99. ..talk about rip-off Britain.

http://www.warehouseexpress.com/buy-B-W-52mm-491-Redhancer-Filter/p1013392?cm_mmc=Awin-_-Lens-Filters-_-Circular-Threaded-Filters-_-B-W-52mm-Redhancer-491-Filter_1013392&utm_source=aw&awc=2298_1294776091_fa954dac0df6cb48b15ed3518d6ef8e0

Thanks for the links John  :)

Rip-off WHE, in this case.

Excellent chase account and photographs Martin, i was only too glad to help out with the radar updates-although would much rather have been there.   Good to get the first chase of the year in the bag, this year is gonna be big-i can feel it in my bones.

This is what i usually do taking night images at home, i take the shots in RAW in auto WB and adjust WB manually in editing to tone down the harshness of the sodium lights.

Shoot RAW and there is no quality loss in adjusting colour balance in software ... But white balances are dependent on the light source being an object shining by black body radiation, there's no way of cutting the red to reduce the orange cast given by sodium lighting without removing red from natural sources which you probably want to keep unless you use a "notch filter" of some sort.

Didymium glass works fairly well. Hutech IDAS light pollution suppression filters work even better but are much more expensive; SCS Astro quote £326 for 77mm (even the 1.25" eyepiece threaded version is £173).

The B+W #491 "Redhancer" is now a "special order" item which accounts for its high cost when ordered ... if it's any help, SpeedGraphic (http://www.speedgraphic.co.uk/round_glass_filters/bw_redhancer_491_/14487_p.html) have 49mm & 55mm in stock at £26.50

Thanks very much Paul for checking the report out and for the RAW advice, I really need to start shooting in that format. I tried it a few times but the files were so large that my software and computer just froze, not always, but on occasion, I need to do a major clean out first and get an external hard drive to speed the process up then I can get the RAW hard. I might use the RAW and JPEG function just so I can make comparisons.

I'm glad you have that feeling for 2011, I have it too and sense that this is going to be a big one. Would like to be on the W and SW coast this Fri-Sat, excellent CAPE out to sea as well, some passengers on ships will be getting a stunning lightning show. Great to see inland CAPE so early, certainly the earliest which I have ever seen it before.

Thanks very much for the filter information Brian which is much appreciated, I'm learning something new from all of this. Very good point you made about the light source, there really is a limit to what one can do to reduce the red/orange from sodium lights, another option would be to drive further around the coast and set up at a dark location away from lights. A dark spot with a little moonlight would be perfect for picking out storm clouds at night.

Cheers