Apr 062014
 

Topic: This project is about making photos of a sunset with a Nikon D200. Starting with full daylight photos will be taken until astronomical sunset (sun is at -18 degrees below horizon).

This requires constant adaptation of the cameras settings (ISO / aperture and time) due to the diminishing light.

I will record the luminosity with the Arduino, so I can set the average brightness of the single images afterwards accordingly.

For this I bought several luminosity sensors from Watterott:

  • Sparkfun Weather Shield
  • TSL2561 light sensor (digital) (0.1 to 40,000 Lux)
  • TSL45315 light sensor Breakout (3 Lux bis 220k Lux)
  • CoreLight (0.015 lux to 64,000 lux)

I will try which one is the best, measure some sunsets and gauge the camera against it.

In order to better understand what I am doing, I am developing some small tool, which tells me some astronomical data – as the position of the sun by time and date and some star positions.

For this I will look for a better tool than Excel and VBA… 🙂

 

First I downloaded a data base of star positions:

And an OpenGL-Sample containing the pattern of the earth:

  • http://www.ziyoo.com/

A website containing C-code for positions of planets, the moon and the sun (based on the book “Astronomie mit dem Personal Computer” von Oliver Montenbruck und Thomas Pfleger):

Using the TSL2561 light sensor:

Using the TSL45315 light sensor:

Using the CoreLight light sensor:

  • http://soldercore.com/products/sensecore/corelight/
  • Connect as follows:

corelight

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 Posted by at 8:43 pm