Starship Asterisk*

mtbdudex wrote:Kudos Alex on what you've accomplished here, having the right skill with the right gear at the right time and place....

ALEXx360 wrote:Thanks everyone, it's my first APOD and I'm really happy for this.
The story is not very long .
I took the flight at 11:30 PM (was scheduled for 9:30 but it was in delay), luckily I had a seat in the right side, near the window, so I could see the Milky Way.
The shot was obviously premeditated, but I was not sure it was possible, I used the fastest lens I had (Canon 28 f1.8), ISO 1600 (pushed to 6400 iso in post processing) and 10 seconds of exposure.
To fixing the Canon I used the Gorillapod inserted between the armrest and the fuselage.
For the reflections I used the blanket of British Airways, building a kind of antireflection blockhouse .
I took over 90 pictures of which only one is good.
No problem with the crew, or with the other passengers, the plane was almost empty and almost everyone was asleep .

Thaks

Alex

geckzilla wrote:
Fourth zero tacked on the end.

geckzilla wrote:

lawebber wrote:
I noticed the description gave the altitude as "11,0000 meters". Did everyone get their astronauts' wings?

Thanks, yeah, it was fixed here at the forum last night but not yet at the APOD description. The editors have been notified.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Tracks wrote:
<<North Atlantic Tracks (NAT) are trans-Atlantic routes that stretch from the northeast of North America to western Europe across the Atlantic Ocean. They ensure aircraft are separated over the ocean, where there is little radar coverage. These heavily-traveled routes are used by aircraft traveling between North America and Europe, flying between the altitudes of 29,000 feet (8,840 meters) and 41,000 feet (12,500 meters) inclusive. Entrance and movement along these tracks is controlled by special Oceanic Center air traffic controllers to maintain separation between airplanes. The primary purpose of these routes is to provide a Minimum Time Route (MTR). They are aligned in such a way as to minimize any head winds and maximize tail winds impact on the aircraft. This results in much more efficiency by reducing fuel burn and flight time. To make such efficiencies possible, the routes are created twice daily to take account of the shifting of the winds aloft and the principal traffic flow, eastward in North America evening and westward twelve hours later.>>

geckzilla wrote:A navigation light?

lawebber wrote:I noticed the description gave the altitude as "11,0000 meters". Did everyone get their astronauts' wings?

Chris Peterson wrote:

ALEXx360 wrote:I used the fastest lens I had (Canon 28 f1.8), ISO 1600 (pushed to 6400 iso in post processing) and 10 seconds of exposure.

That terminology is confusing. With a digital camera, you can't adjust the ISO after you've made the image. The ISO value of a camera refers to a hardware gain setting applied between the sensor output and the digitizer. It has an impact on the signal-to-noise ratio. While you can boost the signal in post processing to make a brighter image, you boost the noise exactly the same amount- quite different from what happens when you actually shoot at a higher ISO setting.

"Pushing" the ISO only makes sense in terms of film, not electronic image sensors.

ALEXx360 wrote:I used the fastest lens I had (Canon 28 f1.8), ISO 1600 (pushed to 6400 iso in post processing) and 10 seconds of exposure.

astrobuster wrote:that pic looks faked to me.

Nitpicker wrote:One can imagine that these days, the sight of a passenger doing strange things with an electronic gadget, underneath a blanket, by the window of a 747 in mid flight, might start a panic. I'm glad the photographer didn't worry about that though. A very impressive result for a 10 second exposure.

geckzilla wrote:Cute lil' teapot, too.

teapot.jpg