Mike's Astro Photos » Clouds

Lightning Over The Caribbean, Atlantis Bahamas

Mike Hankey — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 23:45:59 +0000

I was on vacation last week at Atlantis in the Bahamas. Here are some pictures I took of a lightning storm over the Caribbean.

Lightning, Atlantis Bahamas - July 25th, 2011

The constellation in the background is the big dipper.

Lightning, Atlantis Bahamas - July 25th, 2011

I caught a faint meteor during the session.

Meteor - Atlantis Bahamas - July 2011

This is the third year in a row we’ve been to Atlantis Bahamas for vacation and it was the best one yet.

Lightning Storm

Mike Hankey — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 18:42:10 +0000

A lightning storm blew through Baltimore County this past Wednesday September 22, 2010. It was a nice show with visible bolts firing every couple of seconds.

Strange Contrail

Mike Hankey — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:51:07 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I was outside taking a break with a couple of work buddies. We noticed a very strange cloud in the sky that started below the horizon and went up at a very steep angle. It was too close to the horizon to be a plane contrail and much too steep. I joked that it was probably a meteor trail because it reminded me of the Sikhote meteor painting. My friend Matt took some pictures with his cell phone and emailed them to me. I had forgotten about it until a couple of weeks later when I read that the Space Shuttle had just landed after completing the mission STS-129. I thought, maybe that weird cloud was the contrail from the Space Shuttle. I checked that dates for the mission launch and sure enough the Space Shuttle took off at 2:28 EST on November 16th, 2009. Matt took the pictures a few minutes after 3:00 PM EST on November 16th. The cloud was east of our position. I’m 99% sure this strange contrail was left by the Space Shuttle Atlantis.

Space Shuttle Contrail - November 16th, 2009 3:05 PM EST

Lightning Over Atlantis

Mike Hankey — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 04:07:04 +0000

Lightning Over Atlantis

We had two nights of thunderstorms while we were in the Bahamas. This was the first time I ever tried to photograph lightning and I got lucky. It was actually pretty easy to do. I setup the camera on the tripod and programmed it to do continuous shooting at ISO800. Each shot was an 8 second exposure so this gave me a continous stream of pictures. The lightning was happening every minute for a few hours. I took over 200-300 pictures and these two were the best. The night before I took this, I got a great picture of a huge lightning bolt, but the camera was way out of focus, I was so sad.. I hate it when that happens, but it was still a good learning experience. Atlantis Bahamas is an incredible place to go for vacation, its very expensive, but well worth it if you have cash you can afford to burn. Stay away from Nobu though, it was a let down and ridiculously priced.

Lightning Over Atlantis

I got this one over the water the same night. Pretty nifty. Shooting a lightning storm is definately a thrill. Its one of those split second things that happens and to be able to capture it permenatly is really cool. I will definately try and do this again the next time a good electric storm comes around. It helps to have a pretty background like the Caribian Sea or a billion dollar resort.

Sun and clouds

Mike Hankey — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:33:50 +0000

Here’s a quick pic of the sun and some clouds on March 29, 2009.

The sun and some clouds