I take a lot of photos. I have no idea how or where to host them. Here’re some recent’ns.

ISS Solar Transit
Tyler Cipriani Posted
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International Space Station (for some reason) makes it sound enormous, but even tremendous things are hard to spot from 542 km (337 mi) away. At that distance, the station appears 1/60th the size of the width of your pinky finger held at arm’s length—51 arcseconds wide.

The picture above is a composite of six photographs, each taken within a single second.

Equipment:

Software

ISS solar transit gif
(super sweet) gif of ISS solar transit
EXIF
ExposureTime 1/3200
FNumber 6.3
FocalLength 600.0 mm
CreateDate 2021-07-30 15:44:12
Lens 150-600mm f/5-6.3
ISO 3200
Model NIKON D610
Make NIKON CORPORATION
Van Fire
Tyler Cipriani Posted
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A van on fire in Longmont, CO on Pratt St, West of 6th ave today.

EXIF
ExposureTime 1/60
FNumber 7.1
FocalLength 185.0 mm
CreateDate 2021-06-15 13:11:47
Lens 150-600mm f/5-6.3
ISO 125
Model NIKON D610
Make NIKON CORPORATION
First try NOAA 18
Tyler Cipriani Posted
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I had the day off work today and I noticed there was a good pass of NOAA 18 today so I went to the Izaak Walton park with my BaoFeng UV-5R and tape-measure yagi and came back with this image from a satellite. Radio is neat!

Satellite: NOAA.
Direction: southbound.
Creation Time: 30 Mar 2021 00:56:23
GMT.Satellite Type: NOAA.
Channel A: 1 (visible).
Channel B: 2 (near infrared).
Enhancement: class.
Audio File: NOAA18-11025_2021-03-29T11:09:28.wav.
Software: WXtoImg version 2.10.11.
C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) from Longmont Sandstone Ranch
Tyler Cipriani Posted
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Single, untracked shot of the comet NEOWISE from Sandstone Ranch in Longmont, Colorado.

I hadn’t planned on going to see the comet–it’s been cloudy the last few days and I was slowly starting to lose hope for a clear night.

An hour before this picture was taken, as I was taking the dog out just before going to bed, I noticed the stars for the first time in days. I threw my camera in the car, grabbed the binoculars, and drove to the highest, closest public spot.

Blazey’s niece is staying with us for a few weeks of this strange summer. We attempted to see NEOWISE on Saturday from the same vantage, but all we found were cloudy skies and roving hordes of teenagers. Tonight was very different–small groups of nerds gathered around telescopes, all there to see the same thing.

EXIF
ExposureTime 2
FNumber 2.8
FocalLength 200.0 mm
CreateDate 2020-07-20 21:40:13
Lens 70-200mm f/2.8
ISO 3200
Model NIKON D610
Make NIKON CORPORATION
Gelée di Pomodoro BLT
Tyler Cipriani Posted
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Tamar Adler’s book Something Old, Something New is filled with anachronistic dishes reimagined and revised. Gelée di pomodoro is found in a short section on aspic. It’s a gelatin made from tomatoes, basil, jalapeño, olive oil, and salt.

Balancing this piquant aspic atop sourdough, butter lettuce, and center cut bacon was my contribution. It tasted like summer in sandwich form.

EXIF
ExposureTime 1/60
FNumber 1.8
FocalLength 4.4 mm
CreateDate 2020-06-14 15:29:29
ISO 439
Model Pixel 2
Make Google
Summertime Michelada
Tyler Cipriani Posted
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Summertime is michelada time.

EXIF
ExposureTime 1/40
FNumber 1.8
FocalLength 4.4 mm
CreateDate 2020-05-29 18:08:07
ISO 547
Model Pixel 2
Make Google
Kettlepizza First Attempt
Tyler Cipriani Posted
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First attempt at using my webber kettlepizza to make a pizza on the grill. I think it worked out pretty ok. Shishitos, red onion, and pepperoni.

My pizza dough recipe is straight from Peter Reinhart’s Artisan Breads Every Day.

Kettlepizza
Kettlepizza and session lager
EXIF
ExposureTime 1/192
FNumber 1.8
FocalLength 4.4 mm
CreateDate 2020-05-03 18:56:17
ISO 46
Model Pixel 2
Make Google
Mead Tasting
Tyler Cipriani Posted
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3 different meads I’ve had for a while. From left-to-right:

  • Hairy vetch session mead
  • Orange blossom sweet sack mead
  • Sweet sack blackcurrent melomel

Computational photography fail: this was taken using the Pixel 2’s “portrait mode” that attempts to computationally blur the background of images. Of course, glassware wreaks havoc on this technique :)

EXIF
ExposureTime 1/198
FNumber 1.8
FocalLength 4.4 mm
CreateDate 2020-05-02 13:58:43
ISO 48
Model Pixel 2
Make Google
Quarantine Brisket
Tyler Cipriani Posted
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  • 8 lb brisket
  • Morton’s Kosher Salt + Black pepper about 50/50
  • Hickory wood
  • Start spraying brisket with beer after 3 hours
  • 9am–3pm on smoker, tried to maintain 250°F–275°F
  • Kept fire vent open all the time, aiming for complete combustion, opened firebox door when it got too hot
  • When I couldn’t raise the temp, I had to empty the ashbox and start new coals
  • Stalled at 170°F for last 2 hours (between 170 and 173)
  • Pulled during stall, wrapped then moved to the oven
  • Moved to oven at 265°F
  • Bark didn’t look very dark when I pulled it, but got plenty dark in the oven
  • Too salty, other than that: perfect
EXIF
ExposureTime 1/17
FNumber 1.8
FocalLength 4.4 mm
CreateDate 2020-03-29 18:56:49
ISO 210
Model Pixel 2
Make Google
Lunar Eclipse Composite
Tyler Cipriani Posted
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This is a composite image combining some of the 689 pictures I took of the full lunar eclipse on the night of Sunday, 20 Jan 2019 from the middle of my backyard in Longmont, Colorado. The time span covered in this image spans from roughly 21:00–23:45.

Gear

  • Nikon D610
  • Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II
  • Nikon Auto Focus-S FX TC-20E III 2x Teleconverter
  • iOptron SkyGuider Pro
  • Cheap Pangshi intervalometer

Acquisition

I took 50 shots (or so) every 15 minutes for the duration of the eclipse.

Software

I do all image processing with FOSS software (with the unfortunate exception of camera and tracker firmware).

  • Debian Buster
  • Darktable
    • Chromatic aberration
    • Lens correction
    • Cropping
    • Export to 16-bit TIF
  • Siril
    • Create new FITs sequence from exported TIF
    • Planetary Full-Disk registration
    • Average stacking with rejection – Windsorized Sigma Clipping
    • Wavelets sharpening
    • Save final stacked as 16-bit TIF
  • GIMP 2.10.8
    • Combining images into one composite
    • Export as 8-bit JPEG
  • Bash
    • So much bash.
EXIF
ExposureTime 1
FNumber 5.6
FocalLength 400.0 mm
CreateDate 2019-01-20 22:21:59
Lens 70-200mm f/2.8
ISO 1600
Model NIKON D610
Make NIKON CORPORATION
Sagrada Família Vertorama
Tyler Cipriani Posted
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Interior HDR Vertorama composed of 15 bracketed photos taken hand-held inside Sagrada Família in Barcelona, Spain.

Technical

15 photos, 3 exposures -1, 0, +1 EV, lens correction applied in Darktable, blended using align_image_stack and G’MIC to create 5 HDR images. Imported to Hugin to create a vertorama.

EXIF
ExposureTime 1/160
FNumber 2.8
FocalLength 14.0 mm
CreateDate 2018-05-17 07:33:55
Lens 14mm f/2.8-1.4
ISO 1600
Model NIKON D610
Make NIKON CORPORATION
Statue of Liberty
Tyler Cipriani Posted
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A pretty overcast day, flat altostratus clouds made for a totally boring background that I completely blew out. On the plus side, the Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 that I rented was more than up to the task of taking a nice sharp picture of the statue.

EXIF
ExposureTime 1/320
FNumber 8.0
FocalLength 300.0 mm
CreateDate 2018-03-28 10:32:43
Lens 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6
ISO 100
Model NIKON D610
Make NIKON CORPORATION
Orion Cloud Complex
Tyler Cipriani Posted
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Orion cloud complex from my back yard.

Equipment

  • Nikon D610
  • iOptron Skyguider Pro
  • 11 Frames captured at ISO 800, 45 seconds, f/2.8
  • Processed using all libre software.

Software

  • Debian GNU/Linux buster
  • Siril (GPLv3 license)
    • Global Star Alignment (deep sky)
    • Sum Stacking
    • Winsorized Sigma Clipping – all images in sequence
    • Background Extraction
    • Color Calibration
    • Auto stretching
  • Raw Therapee (GPLv3 license)
    • LAB noise reduction
    • Cropping
  • GIMP 2.8 (GPLv3 license)
    • Saturation
    • Sharpening
EXIF
ExposureTime 42.2
FNumber 2.8
FocalLength 200.0 mm
CreateDate 2018-03-10 21:35:40
Lens 70-200mm f/2.8
ISO 800
Model NIKON D610
Make NIKON CORPORATION
Waning Gibbous
Tyler Cipriani Posted
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Taken from my backyard, bortle 6/7 zone

Equipment

  • Nikon D610 using T-Ring at prime focus
  • Celestron NexStar 5se
  • 41 Frames captured at ISO 800, 1/500 sec
  • Processing
  • Processed using all libre software.

Software

  • Debian GNU/Linux buster
  • Siril (GPLv3 license)
    • Image Pattern Alignment (Planetary Full Disk)
    • Sum Stacking
    • Best Images (planetary) — 50% of frames (21 images)
    • Wavelets Transform — BSpline, 1st plan 25.00 and that’s it
  • Raw Therapee (GPLv3 license)
    • LAB noise reduction
    • Cropping
    • White balance
EXIF
ExposureTime 1/80
FNumber 0
FocalLength 0.0 mm
CreateDate 2018-03-04 00:13:35
Lens 0mm f/0
ISO 125
Model NIKON D610
Make NIKON CORPORATION
Snowflake Macro
Tyler Cipriani Posted
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Had the day off today for President’s Day. Decided to spend it hunched over taking macro photos of snowflakes. This was taken using 3 extension tubes totaling 68mm. I found that I needed auto-focus very much so I decided to forego doing reverse-lens work, although I think the additional magnification would have been nice to have. This is an averages stack of 3 aligned images.

EXIF
ExposureTime 1/5
FNumber 11.0
Description Had the day off today for President’s Day. Decided to spend it hunched over taking macro photos of snowflakes. This was taken using 3 extension tubes totaling 68mm. I found that I needed auto-focus very much so I decided to forego doing reverse-lens work, although I think the additional magnification would have been nice to have. This is an averages stack of 3 aligned images.
Title Snowflake Macro
FocalLength 50.0 mm
CreateDate 2018-02-19 15:52:18
Lens 50mm f/1.8
ISO 100
Model NIKON D610
Make NIKON CORPORATION
Orion Nebula, M42
Tyler Cipriani Posted
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This is the Great Orion Nebula, M42. I realized this is fairly easy to see with a sufficient optical boost from my backyard which is roughly Bortle 6/7. This is my second night trying to image this object (or any DSO, actually).

This is a stack of 10x88-second exposures (roughly 15 minutes total exposure time). Polar-alignment on my SkyGuider Pro proved to be a bit difficult (once I added the camera and counter balance I had to re-align), so this 15 minutes is the result of me fiddling for an hour and a half or so. I did all the processing for this photo using libre software. Camera/lens correction in RawTherapee, aligned using align_image_stack in Hugin, average stacking using G’MIC, final stacked image tone curve/RGB curve/saturation adjustments in RawTherapee.

EXIF
ExposureTime 88
FNumber 2.8
Description This is the Great Orion Nebula, M42. I realized this is fairly easy to see with a sufficient optical boost from my backyard which is roughly Bortle 6/7. This is my second night trying to image this object (or any DSO, actually). This is a stack of 10x88-second exposures (roughly 15 minutes total exposure time). Polar-alignment on my SkyGuider Pro proved to be a bit difficult (once I added the camera and counter balance I had to re-align), so this 15 minutes is the result of me fiddling for an hour and a half or so. I did all the processing for this photo using libre software. Camera/lens correction in RawTherapee, aligned using align_image_stack in hugin, average stacking using G’MIC, final stacked image tone curve/RGB curve/saturation adjustments in RawTherapee
Title Orion Nebula, M42
FocalLength 200.0 mm
CreateDate 2018-02-17 20:34:58
Lens 70-200mm f/2.8
ISO 400
Model NIKON D610
Make NIKON CORPORATION