2019-04-19

[public] 4.34K views, 229 likes, dislikes audio only

AlphaPhoenix

As good weather aligned with a pre-planned hiking trip, I had the awesome opportunity to film a timelapse from Santa Cruz Islands, in Channel Islands National Park off the coast of southern California. Other than the ranger station on the island, I don't think there was a permanent human structure within 20 miles of my camera, and Ventura was behind me to the north, so the southern sky was DARK, and the night sky was awesome! The camera ran for a total of 25 hours and 52 minutes, and I spliced the footage back on itself to create this looping day-long timelapse.

I didn't realize at the time, however, that the closest land in front of my camera was Los Angeles, 70 miles over the horizon to the southeast (on the left of the frame), and the light pollution from LA is nothing to sneeze at - it's actually pretty depressing. The next morning looking at the camera's recordings I realized that I captured that bubble of light pretty clearly and it was a fascinating view. First, I liked capturing the bustle of ships going in and out of the port of LA at night, but second, to see such a bright light from an unpolluted vantage point was something I hadn't dealt with before - the milky way was perfectly clear everywhere except the southeastern horizon... When you're in a big city trying to see the night sky, imagine that bubble of light above you, washing out all the beautiful detail of the stars - I don't think you could pay me enough to live in LA, and all but give up the ability to look up at night…

Since I expect people will ask, no, the milky way doesn't look *quite* that defined to the naked eye. I haven't blown out the saturation too much here, but in person the milky way looks a bit grayer because only the rods in your eye can pick up light that faint. This camera was also taking 30 second exposures, so it's a lot better at resolving faint contrast in the dark than your eye. What it's not good at however, is adjusting to both bright and dark elements in the same image. The moon rises early in the morning and looks WAY too bright until sunrise, when the camera drops its exposure to account for the brightness of the sun.

COMPLETE tutorial for filming and editing this timelapse:

/youtube/video/1YorUDE0f9g

GIF version ("perfectloop"):

[coming soon to a reddit near you]

Still images on Flickr:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/144439286@N08/46711295665/in/datetaken-public/

Prints on RedBubble

https://www.redbubble.com/people/brianhaidet/works/38400783-milky-way-over-monta-on-ridge

Music Credits:

I Dunno by grapes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)

http://ccmixter.org/files/grapes/16626

Not Without the Rest by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Artist: http://www.twinmusicom.org/