Living Astronomy
The Slideshows
On this page you wll find Astronomical slideshows that have been created by NYAA members. The slideshows are full multimedia presentations, so make sure you have speakers! You may require a browser-plugin if this is the first time you have viewed a Photodex slide show. You may be prompted to download and install the plugin. If you have trouble, click here to get the plugin. Note: some shows may appear slow to initialize, depending on their size, and the speed of the connection.
August 3-4 2010, Aurora as seen from Oak Heights (0:17) by Andreas Gada
Click here for the showThe Southern Milky Way March 30-31, 2009 (1:57) by Malcolm Park
Click here for the show From the Atacama Desert, Chile, watch the Milky Way rise from sunset to sunrise. 651 frames compressed into just under 2 minutes...meteors, Jupiter, Mars and Zodiacal Light visible just before sunrise.Comet Lulin Feb 24 2009, by Andreas Gada
Click here for the show
Quadrantid Meteor Shower January 3, 2009 (3:40) by Andreas Gada
Click here for the showOn the morning of January 3, 2009, the Quadrantid meteor shower peaked over North America. To document this event a digital camera with a wide angle lens was used to take an image every 35 seconds between 12:30 a.m. and morning twilight. This movie was created using 603 images that show the movement of the stars, clouds, meteors, and man made objects across the night sky.
Mongolia Eclipse by Andreas Gada
Click here for the showMongolian Eclipse (3:57) by Andreas Gada On August 1, 2008 a Total Solar Eclipse was visible from Khoton Lake in the Altai Mountains of western Mongolia. This time-lapse movie was made using 2380 images. All images other than being resized are as they came out of the camera. The resulting movie shows the grandeur of the eclipse but much work needs to be done to align the photos for a smooth presentation. This will be done over the next couple of months and the final versions of the Mongolian Eclipse time-lapse movie will be posted on this website.
Nirvana by Malcolm Park
May 12, 2007. An adventure to the promised land. What is it like to spend a night in the wilderness, in the middle of nowhere, with wolves howling in the distance, a dark moonless night, and the perfect location on an old abandoned air strip? Watch the slideshow :)
Orion Transit (2:30) by Andreas Gada
One of the gems of the winter sky is the bright constellation, Orion. This time-lapse movie made by Andreas Gada on January 20/21, 2007, shows the Mighty Hunter chasing his prey across the sky for over nine hours.
Circumpolar (2:02) by Andreas Gada
Circumpolar reveals the motion of the stars around the north celestial pole on August 5, 2006. As the night progresses you will notice that the sky becomes darker as the 10-day-old moon sets. This is followed by clouds, the nemesis of astronomers, moving in from the west to blot out the stars.
Flight Path (1:28) by Andreas Gada
The invisible highway across the sky is revealed in this time-lapse movie showing planes traversing the sky eastward as the stars rise to meet them. Andreas Gada took 394 images on October 29, 2005 from Oak Heights (approximately 150 km east of Toronto) to document the evening rush hour for flights out of Torontos Pearson International Airport in the night sky.
Mercury Transit by Malcolm Park
A time lapse series of images showing the recent Transit of Mercury and sunset. November 8th, 2006, Kitt Peak Observatory, Arizona, USA. Taken over the entire event, right through sunset, the sequence of 6 hours worth of images is compressed into a show of about 5 minutes in length. Watch for the green flash at the end of the sequence!
Starfest 25th Anniversary Retrospective
Original music by John Merchant and friends, this show was created by Malcolm Park with images from NYAA members, and shown Friday night at Starfest 2006Egypt Eclipse by Malcolm Park
Click here for the showA slide show about the week of March 29th, 2006 telling the story of a trip to chase the Total Solar Eclipse in El Saloum, Egypt by Malcolm Park and friends from the RASC Niagara.
Libya Eclipse (6:12) by Andreas Gada
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On March 29, 2006 a total solar eclipse was visible from the Libyan Desert. To document this dynamic event Andreas Gada took over 1980 images over a 3-hour period from just before first contact, when the first nibble is taken out of the sun, through totality, to just after forth contact.
To create this time-lapse movie each image was manually registered, using MaxDSLR, (to correct for image drift, periodic gear error, wind vibration, etc.) before being imported into ProShow Gold for animation.
The resulting movie shows the steady progression of the moon across the face of the sun at 125x its normal speed during the partial phase. During this phase if you look closely you will notice scintillation on the edge of the sun.
During totality the pace is reduced to 1.8x normal speed to allow every aspect of totality from Baileys beads, the diamond ring, the chromosphere, prominences, the wispy streamers of the corona and the face of the new moon, to be revealed in its fully glory.
The show ends, a day later, with a thin crescent moon setting over the Mediterranean.
Pleiades Occultation (3:04) by Andreas Gada
Click here for the show On October 20, 2006 the Pleiades were occultated by the 24-day-old waning crescent Moon. To document the passage of the moon through the Pleiades Andreas Gada took 1063 images at 10-second intervals using a Canon 20Da camera attached to a Starfire 130 ED APO refractor from his property at Oak Heights, Ontario. By using .5 second exposures at f/6 and ISO 800 he was able to capture earthshine on the moon and stars down to 9th magnitude. These images were imported into ProShow Gold to create a spectacular 100x time-lapse movie of this event. You may want to view the show several times to see all the subtle details: