May 14
by Alex Conu in Astrophotography 0 comments tags: beijing, one people, one sky, photo exhibition, planetarium, silk road, twan, twanight

Silk Road at Night photo exhibition

If you happen to be in Beijing, pass by the Planetarium to see the “Silk Road at Night” photo exhibition. It’s a great effort put up by fellow TWANer Dai Jianfeng from China. 37 photographers, 38 countries, 56 photos from all over the world, but only “One People, One Sky.” I have one photo in the exhibition. It’s a shot of the Venus transit in 2012. I took the photo from the shore of the Black Sea through a 1m focal length telescope. A transit of Venus across the Sun takes place when the planet Venus passes directly between the Sun and a superior planet, becoming visible against (and hence obscuring a small portion of) the solar disk. During a transit, Venus can be seen from Earth as a small black disk moving across the face of the Sun. Transits of Venus are among the rarest of predictable astronomical phenomena. The last transit of Venus was on 5 and 6 June 2012, and was the last Venus transit of the 21st century; the prior transit took place on 8 June 2004. I managed to see and photograph that one too. The next transits of Venus will be on 10–11 December 2117, and […]
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May 07
by Alex Conu in Astrophotography, Review 0 comments tags: astrophotography, light pollution, natural night, nisi filters, review

NiSi Natural Night Filter – Photograph the Night Sky in its True Colours

The sky looked a lot better when I was a kid. It was enough to go behind my house and there were countless stars visible in a beautiful dark aquamarine sky. Well, things changed quite a bit and nowadays, light pollution is more annoying than ever. We don’t have any natural night anymore. We got used to our yellowish urban skies. It’s a huge problem for visual observations of the night sky, but it’s also a problem for astrophotographers. In order to take nice, natural looking, images of the night sky, you need to go in the middle of nowhere far away from city lights and populated places. Just a few weeks ago, NiSi launched a new filter, dubbed “Natural Night”, to help night photographers. The Natural Night filter is a light pollution killer. I received the filter from NiSi before it was launched and I started playing with it. Unfortunately, the famous Lofoten weather was against me and I was barely able to take a few shots around the islands. Then, for the whole month of April, I was in Romania and I had high hopes for better weather there. Guess what! The weather was as bad as in […]
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May 03
by Alex Conu in Astrophotography, Northern Lights 0 comments

Descoperă Aurora Boreală în România, pe televizoarele LG OLED

Eu n-am televizor acasă. Și nu am televizor dintr-un motiv simplu: nu-mi place cum arată lumea în dreptunghiul ăla de pe perete. Culorile mi se par greșite, trebuie să stau fix în fața lui sau totul se duce pe câmpii, negrul e un fel de gri închis ș.a.m.d. Știți cum mi s-a schimbat părerea asta la 180 de grade? Mi-am văzut fotografiile cu Aurora Boreală și cu cerul înstelat pe un televizor LG OLED 4K. Și-am tăcut câteva zeci de secunde. Și-apoi am zis: “Eu vreau un televizor de-ăsta.” Nu mi-a venit să cred că am zis eu asta, dar am zis. Nu știu dacă sunteți familiari cu modul în care un televizor obișnuit produce imaginea. Orice televizor care funcționează pe baza tehnologiilor deja clasice (LCD, LED) folosește un panou luminos a cărui lumină trece prin diverse, să le spunem simplu, filtre pentru a forma imaginea vizibilă. Panoul luminos nu poate fi controlat la nivel de pixel, iar asta face ca negrul din imaginea finală să nu arate excepțional. Însă, tehnologia OLED schimbă multe atunci când vine vorba de negru. Televizoarele OLED nu au un panou luminos în fundal și, de aceea, pot controla fiecare pixel, iar dacă e nevoie […]
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