Where is my left foot?

I returned home with our evening victuals from Señor Café when…

I returned from picking up dinner immediately after sunset this evening and noticed low in the western sky an illuminated object which I initially suspected was a planet or a satellite reflecting light from the sun. To the naked eye the object was approximately as bright as Venus would be. I noticed that no other stars were visible yet, and that the object was slightly to the south of where the sun had set (in other words WSW). I thought it was odd that it would reflect light toward me if it were between me and the sun. I went and got my camera, a Panasonic FZ5. I shot some shots with a normal exposure:

http://205.244.202.158/P1090293.jpg
http://205.244.202.158/P1090294.jpg
http://205.244.202.158/P1090295.jpg
http://205.244.202.158/P1090296.jpg
http://205.244.202.158/P1090297.jpg
http://205.244.202.158/P1090298.jpg
http://205.244.202.158/P1090299.jpg
http://205.244.202.158/P1090300.jpg

I then shot 2:41 of 320×240 video on the camera with the same exposure setting:

http://205.244.202.158/P1090301.MOV

Pardon the size (72mb), I did not further compress the video from the original. I did notice the red and green flashing while shooting the video, but attributed it to the low pixel res of the viewfinder.

I then began stopping down to capture more detail in the object if possible and reduce glare. The first few were too dark, but at

http://205.244.202.158/P1090308.jpg

I hit the right exposure (F3.2, 1/40 sec. exposure) and shot some shots in burst mode. Some are clear, some are blurred:

http://205.244.202.158/P1090309.jpg
http://205.244.202.158/P1090310.jpg
http://205.244.202.158/P1090311.jpg
http://205.244.202.158/P1090312.jpg
http://205.244.202.158/P1090313.jpg
http://205.244.202.158/P1090314.jpg
http://205.244.202.158/P1090315.jpg
http://205.244.202.158/P1090316.jpg
http://205.244.202.158/P1090317.jpg

All shots are cropped to 1280×1024 from 2560×1920 with the object centered in the frame, but they are not resized.

(Throughout the white balance was set on the “sunlight” setting.)

I then went inside and ate dinner with the family. My wife watched the video after dinner and confirmed that it was “strange”.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 28th, 2006 at 1:13 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.