Timelapse Videos:
Taken with a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ and the Raspberry Pi HQ camera (unless otherwise noted)
All photos taken by me.
(Just thought I 'd throw that in) : )
I've been doing timelapse videos since February, 2021. Initially I used a Raspberry Pi NoIR
camera, but now I'm using the HQ camera. I'm mostly capturing stars, but also some clouds
during the daytime. So far, I've managed to catch several artificial satellites, the
International Space Station, and a few shooting stars. I also have caught lots of airplanes
and helicopters, and a few objects that I'm unable to identify using Stellarium.
I'm capturing these images from the yard at my parent's house. There are tall trees to the East
and South, so I can't aim those directions. Hopefully, I can get some from other properties in
the future.
See my list of "professional" equipment at bottom of page.
20210310 - Clouds.
20210310 - Stars, with Polaris in center.
This was when I was first getting used to the camera, so not a lot of stars are visible.
20210315 - Clouds, aiming to the N.
20210325 - Clouds, aiming to the N.
20210413 - Stars. Short clip, Polaris near center; aimed to the N.
20210416 - Stars, aimed to the W.
20210417 - Stars, aimed to the N. Ursa Major at beginning.
20210419 - Stars, aimed to NE.
20210510 - Stars, aiming to N. Polaris at upper left; tail of Cygnus at upper right at beginning.
This was when I first trying out ISO and shutter speed settings, so a lot more stars are visible.
20210512 - Clouds, aimed to NE.
20210513 - Stars, aimed NNE. Polaris at left.
20210602 - Stars, aimed N. Polaris at left. A lot more stars.
20210621 - Stars, aimed N. Polaris at left. ISO 135, shutter speed 60 seconds,
caused image to appear washed out.
20210626 - Stars, aimed ESE. Moon, Saturn and Jupiter at bottom.
20210704 - Fireworks, stars and then clouds. Aimed to N.
All of the fireworks you see in this roughly 20 square mile area are banned and illegal.
20210710 - Stars, aimed WSW, almost straight up.
20210711 - Stars, aimed NNW. Polaris at right.
20210717 - Stars. ISO 120, Shutter speed 30 seconds. Aiming fairly high, toward NE.
This one has occasional clouds. Begins with Polaris at left, tail of Cygnus at upper right,
Cassiopea bottom left/middle.
The International Space Station tracks over 2 frames; with the following frame having a
shooting star at upper left. NOSS 2-2 (C) is seen later in the video (very faint).
20210718 - Stars. ISO 120, Shutter speed 30 seconds. Aiming fairly high, toward NE.
Cygnus at right, Cepheus at left
Got good blacks tonight; atmosphere must have been nice and dry...and clean.
The International Space Station seen twice, along with a few shooting stars (and airplanes).
20210723 - Stars. ISO 120, Shutter speed 30 seconds. Aiming fairly high, toward NE.
Lyra at upper right, Cygnus at right, Cepheus at left
Very thin, high clouds and moisture in the atmosphere caused milkiness.
The International Space Station seen twice, a couple of airplanes. Artificial
satellite ERS-1 (top of Perseus) towards end of video.
20210724 - Stars. ISO 120, Shutter speed 30 seconds. Aiming fairly high, toward NE.
Ursa Minor at left, tail of Cygnus at right, Cepheus at lower left, Lacerta at lower right
Images of International Space Station, NOSS 3-1 (A) (left to right about 13 seconds into
video), and Lacrosse 5. A couple of airplanes, as usual. Also saw a few unidentified
including a shooting star toward end of video.
20210725 - Stars. ISO 110, Shutter speed 30 seconds. Aiming fairly low, toward SE.
Delphinus at left, Sagitta and Velpecula at upper left, Aquila at center, top of
Capricornus at bottom middle.
Got lots of aircraft this time, especially at the beginning of the evening.
Saturn, Jupiter and the Moon at the bottom. Uranus is visible toward end of video,
at middle left, but is difficult to find (use Stellarium to pinpoint
just above the head of constellation Cetus, just left of star 37 Ari).
Caught a nice shooting star that flared a couple of times, at about
9 seconds in. Also, the glare from the moon briefly gives Jupiter
an "aura" at 12-13 seconds.
20210725 - Stars. ISO 115, Shutter speed 30 seconds. Aiming fairly high, toward NE.
Ursa Minor at left, tail of Cygnus at right, Cepheus at lower left, Lacerta at lower right
Not a lot going on here, but I did manage to capture one of my favorite
artificial satellites: Lacrosse 5. :-)
20210810 - Stars. ISO 120, Shutter speed 30 seconds. Aiming fairly high, toward NE.
Ursa Minor at left, tail of Cygnus at right, Cepheus at lower left, Lacerta at lower right
A mostly clear night, with no haze. A few high clouds that obscured the view for a few
minutes.
I saw quite a few unknown objects. Probably spy satellites, but I did capture
a few of what I think are shooting stars.
I went outside at about 4:15 trying to catch a glimpse of a satellite, but
didn't see it. However, at 4:17am, I saw a shooting star (which was also caught by
the camera - about 30 seconds into video, lower right, within constellation Auriga).
I saw ALOS (Daichi) artificial satellite around 5:10am, but the sun
was too bright for the camera to capture it.
Overnight, I captured Lacrosse 5 twice! :-)
20210811 - Stars. ISO 120, Shutter speed 30 seconds. Aiming fairly high, toward NE.
Ursa Minor at left, tail of Cygnus at right, Cepheus at lower left, Lacerta at lower right
A mostly clear night, with some wildfire smoke haze. A few wafting high clouds.
I saw quite a few unknown objects. Probably spy satellites, but I did capture
a few of what I think are shooting stars. Considering this was supposed to be
the peak of the Perseids, I captured more the previous night than tonight.
I saw a very bright object toward the end of the video, between Cassiopeia
and Camelopardalis, which was either a shooting star, or possibly
ERS-1 (catalog #21574, 1991-050A), which was farther away but on a
similar trajectory. I'm calling it a shooting star.
Overnight, I captured Lacrosse 5 twice again! :-)
20210902 - Stars. ISO 120, Shutter speed 30 seconds. Aiming toward W.
Bootes at bottom left, Hercules at upper left, dipper of Little Dipper at right, tail
of Ursa Major at lower right
Some off/on obscuring, wafting high clouds; moisture in atmosphere. Light pollution from
streetlights below lower left AND lower right.
Just a different direction tonight. Nothing extraordinary.
20210906 - Stars. ISO 120, Shutter speed 30 seconds. Aiming toward SW.
top of Ophiochus at left, corona borealis at upper right, serpens at right
Clear night, minimal haze.
Just a different direction tonight. Jupiter and Saturn appear briefly, behind the tree at
lower left.
20210908 - Stars. ISO 120, Shutter speed 30 seconds. Aiming low, toward ENE.
andromeda at center/center left, body of pegasus at right
Clear at start, then some off/on obscuring thin clouds.
For this timelapse, I aimed just above the horizon toward the ENE. The side of our house, the
roof of the neighbor's house, and some trees are at the edges. The porch awning sticks out
at the top. Some highclouds are occasionally seen, heading off toward the NE.
I caught the lights from quite a few airplanes, heading toward SEA, especially at the
beginning of the video.
20210923 - Stars. ISO 120, 25 second shutter speed. Aiming fairly high, toward NE.
Ursa Minor at left, tail of Cygnus at upper right, Cepheus at center, Lacerta at right
A mostly clear night, with some brief high clouds.
I cut down the exposure time to 25 seconds to try to clean up some of the muddiness
in the images. I don't think I caught any shooting stars.
The highlight this time was several STARLINK satellites, including a set of EIGHT
that were grouped fairly close to each other: running parallel to each other,
a few seconds and a few thousand feet from each other. The stepping of light
streaks looked like aircraft contrails at first, but if you zoom in on the images,
you see individual streaks. Pretty neato! These are toward the end of the
timelapse video, occurring at 5:20am.
Also, earlier in the video, glare from the moon (outside of the image frame) caused
moisture in the atmosphere to briefly glow.
My highly-sophisticated*, professional* astrophotography equipment:
* Not at all.
- Computer: Raspberry Pi 3 model B+ with a clear case, running RaspiOS
- Memory: 128gb Lexar USB thumb drive
- Camera: Raspberry Pi HQ Camera v1.0 2018
- Lens: 6mm lens normally sold for use with CCTV security cameras
- Tripod: 30 year-old Ambico tripod with a broken leg extension lock
- Mounting equipment: 2 rubber bands, courtesy of our Seattle Times newspaper carrier.
- Power sources (2): 4Patriots 8000mAh USB battery pack (1A per port output)
Imuto 30000mAh battery pack (3.4A per port output)
- Software used:
on the Raspberry Pi:
Operating System: RaspiOS
raspistill
bash scripts to start, control, and maintain imaging
on the laptop:
Operating System: Ubuntu
gThumb to view the images
Stellarium to identify stellar objects
ffmpeg to create the timelapse videos
The HQ Camera and lens are on the tripod mount. The Raspberry Pi itself is held in place on
the side of the tripod head with 2 rubber bands. For power, I have a 9-foot micro-USB to USB
cable leading to one of 2 USB battery packs, both of which provide sufficient power when I
run RaspiOS in CLI mode.
The images are captured using camera control software called raspistill, which comes with
RaspiOs. raspistill is called from a series of bash scripts I wrote to handle all of this
image capturing (including a script written to make sure the other scripts keep running!)
Once the images are captured, I view each of them using gThumb image viewer, to look for
and log unexpected celestial objects. When I find an unexpected object, I use Stellarium to
see if the object is known or unknown. Then, I use ffmpeg to create the timelapse videos.
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