while i was in spain, i decided to make a time-lapse video of the (apparent) movement of a star-constellation in the night sky.

unfortunately i couldn’t include the northern star this time, showing that all the stars seem to rotate around it. i think i’ll do this in another video sometime.
given the preconditions (location and timeframe), the big dipper (ursa major, grosser wagen) [wikipedia: de en] was the perfect motive.

the movement of the big dipper in the night sky

i recently discovered youtube.com - a free internet service that allows easy sharing of videos.
what they do is convert uploaded videos into flash movies, which (almost?) everybody can watch.

have a look at this, for instance:

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i never got to post this *here*, but there it is now:

in the last few months, every now and then i found some time to play with my JG-RC2 and i’m really content.

the final firmware isn’t available yet, but i’m fine with the preliminary one, so far. (that’s how i got it in the first place - the final product version is not available, so i ordered the beta-version. but only the firmware will be different in the final version - and it’s upgradeable.)

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remember the previous time-lapse project that i published?

all the pupae hatched about 3 weeks ago. actually, when the first one hatched on july 20th, i decided to slow down their final steps of development and caused a not so unusual (just think of today’s climate) ...cold-weather period. ok, i put them in the fridge. they were not harmed, but didn’t hatch until i had the time to watch over them, two days later.

when i got home on friday, i quickly set up the equipment and placed the pupae in front of the camera. because there were 5 pupae and i didn’t know which one would hatch first, i had to take (bigger) overall-view photos and crop the interesting part later.

i had relocated the pupae onto a nearly planar twig when they were done pupating, so i could focus on all of them at once.

the whole process of one peacock butterfly (inachis io; tagpfauenauge) hatching only took about 14 minutes (including the unfolding of its wings), so it was at least three times more exciting to watch them hatch live.

i was shooting at a higher resolution (so i could get all of the pupae in the picture and still have detail) and the "temporal resolution" (interval: 4 seconds) was pretty high too, so although i had 5 pupae, only one video turned out the way i wanted...

 
here’s the video:

butterfly hatching (download video)

i also put up a few of the single photos as an overview:
[view photos: time-lapse, part 7: butterfly hatching]

 

 

on saturday, i went by a huge field of stinging nettles, and i noticed that the peacock caterpillars (inachis io, tagpfauenauge) had already left their community and spread up, so each one would have their own plant.
this is usually a sign that it won’t take long until pupation, which i thought makes a great time lapse subject.

i collected a total of 14 caterpillars, plenty of their feeding plant (=stinging nettle, urtica dioica), and went home to set up a terrarium that would fit their needs.

it took me some time to get what i needed: there should be all but one spot where they *wanted* to pupate, because time-lapse recordings require very fixed settings. eventually, i came up with a way: i let there be only one horizontal element where they could hang themselves up, and shaded that part of the terrarium.
soon, the first one settled down, and i could set up the gear.

by the way: don’t assume that slippery glass would stop them from going anywhere - they just spread a thin carpet of silk-strands and go where *they* want.

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i’ve done a new time-lapse project on frog spawn, because i spotted some in my pond.
the first post about this can be found here.

[skip all of that and download the video]
 

the phase i wanted to capture, was from the egg until slacking.
it would be too hard to record a pollywog’s growth in time-lapse - too much effort and clearly not ethical.
you’d have to give them tiny living space so they wouldn’t jet around all the time, or even slow them down somehow. there would have to be a special (=unnatural) way of feeding. water cleanness and oxygen problems would arise, and of course plants etc. would give them unwanted hiding places...
and i don’t presume to do that. (the environmentalist is shining through again ;-))

anyway, i did some internet research and found out the duration of my project would be about 2 weeks. in springlike-pond-climates, of course. it turns out, at room-temperature those little creatures leave their gelatinous eggs in less than 2 days!

 
the eggs would float around a lot, so i needed to fixate them somehow.
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i’ve just started a new project.
my pond has been ice-free for about a week, and i’ve already found frog spawn on the ground.

my f717 is still in spain with my older brother, the f505 he gave me in return doesn’t have a socket for the jg-rc2, so i decided to use my old webcam (dlink dsc-350) and a program i just discovered two days ago: ConquerCam.

i’m telling you because there’s a neat-o function in ConquerCam: automatic upload of the latest image.
you can see the current progress, up-to-date and live 24/7, here. [link removed, since project is completed]
(i don’t have time to look for a script that clears the image from the cache every 5 minutes, so i’m linking directly. otherwise there would be some refreshing-problems...)

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