Purdy Pictures

Well the lens I had been using has been broken, it was in the capable hands of Robert to epoxy it back together. Apparently he brought his own super epoxy from home with him this summer. He's an engineer what do you expect.

So I may or may not be getting any more amazing shots. As it turns out the optics on the lens are messed up along with who knows what else. I took it out last night to try and get a photo with it and the pictures all failed miserably... Though I wasn't sure if it was the lens or the camera that was having the issues. To figure this out I borrow Tripp's lens and took some shots with it and they turned out fine, they will be at the bottom of the blog. Oh well, at least the camera is fine...

So unfortunately I was left without a lens this last Friday I think it was, maybe Saturday when I saw the most amazing auroras I have ever seen. The aurora's weren't super bright nor were they super colorful, but they were moving so incredibly fast it seemed surreal. It looked like a green river in the sky, the way the color was just moving throughout the length of the aurora. Needless to say it was indescribable, something you have to see for yourself. The sky was crystal clear as well which just added to it. Oh how I wish I had a camera then...

So here are some more pics from back when I was able to get some shots, continuing on from the previous pictures.

This photo is a shot of the Balloon Inflation Facility (BIF). This is where Krissie launches balloons from every morning. This happened to be on 7-24 her birthday.

Another shot of the BIF on Krissie's B-day, I converted about half of the images I took into my "moon" shots because again they were blown out from the lights. I didn't think about taking the shots after we shut the door, I was just shooting as she came out. There is a little video I made of this too that turned out pretty cool, if I can shrink it enough I will post it, along with the other picture videos I have made.

Would ya just look at that adorable little thing? Definitely an alien launching some sort of probe...

There was a pretty cool aurora hovering over the VMF when we were walking back from the BIF, personally I think it's the star child from 2000 space Odyssey planning his next move over the station... Do you see the face of an infant? If not well yer just blind, it's there I saware. The bright lights on the right are the VFM, not to be confused with the VMF... That's where folks go to fuel up vehicles, that should be enough to hopefully explain what VFM means :}

This is a few minutes later when a LMC tracked vehicle was entering the VMF

And this was a shot of Doc Brown in the DeLorean taking off out of the VMF at 88 mph! If you don't get this reference then I am very sad, very sad indeed...

This was that afternoon, pretty nice and quite bright auroras then.

Still the same afternoon. This is the Scott tent and the ceremonial pole.

Yup same afternoon, this is one of a few photos I took during a time lapse sequence.

And another shot from the time lapse.

It started getting very large and bright and purple, and then the battery froze...

This was from the 7-28, this is the geographic south pole marker. The moon was only a small crescent but still incredibly bright as you can see...

Same day, just a bit further back. The moon looks like the sun...

Pretty nifty shot if I do say so myself.

Then it stayed bright with no auroras, and the stars muted to the point of not being visible for the next little while until the moon finally decided to go away. Though I went out to get some shots while the moon was up, I really like how blue the skys are when we have the moon up.


Looks like daytime doesn't it? This is one of my hero shots with the hood up, though I rarely if ever wear the hood up.

This is what I normally look like if I'm going out somewhere, snow stakes, etc. I really love that my foot prints are really the only ones visible in the scene.

Nice little shot of the station.

Me playing around with the exposure long exposure.

Again playing around with the effects of the long exposures.

I originally planned on going all the way out to SPT to take some moon photos but got way too cold. It's entirely possible that my clothes fell off while I was taking photos... Though I can not confirm that.

Though if such a tragic event were to happen, then this would have been the temperature at the time
I would imagine this to be quite cold if one's clothes were to fall off; though I, of course, would have no idea personally.

Last night I decided to go test the newly repaired lens, and the pics just didn't come out how I would have expected them. I was a bit worried that the camera may be the problem, but was very hopeful it was just the lens. So I went and found Tripp and asked if I could borrow his lens for a couple of shots to confirm this hypothesis. These are the photos that I grabbed with his lens.

The black on the left side is the station, you can see a couple of little meteors. As you hopefully know yesterday was the Perseids meteor Shower which was supposed to be an amazing show in the northern hemisphere.

And without the station in the shot.

That's all folks, unless I can borrow a lens from someone there won't be anymore night shots, but we will be getting flooded by the evil sun in a few short weeks anyway...Stupid sun, who wants ya?