Turns out there are as many ways to photograph an eclipse as there are to watch it. With a bit of preparation and the generosity of strangers, I got to experience five of them during Sunday's annular eclipse.

My husband and I drove from the Bay Area up to Mt. Hirz near Lake Shasta which was smack in the middle of the optimal eclipse viewing path. About a mile from the top, we ran into an amateur astronomer named Ben who'd scoped the whole mountain the previous day and decided this was the best spot. He had a telescope, so we stayed with him.

A bit of cloud cover when the eclipse started had us all chewing our fingernails, but then it cleared up–and what a view!

Although I am an admirer of photography, I am not the most skilled practitioner. Flickr, however, is a treasure trove of beautiful images. All the pictures in this post are from photographers kind enough to share their work openly, for the enjoyment of the masses.

To make a hokey pinhole camera like I did, cut a square out of a piece of cardbord, tape aluminum foil over the empty square, and poke a hole in the foil with a pin. Stand with your back to the sun and hold the cardboard so the sun shines directly through the pinhole onto a piece of white paper. (This photographer made three holes, one of which was obviously best.)

photo by stevendamron

A better technique is to replace the pinhole with a pair of binoculars like my husband did. You keep your back to the sun and hold the binoculars in the same position as the pinhole camera and you get a larger, clearer view of the sun on the paper.

photo by jinxmcc

Astronomer Ben's wife had a pair of eclipse viewing glasses that were the best way to see color–the "ring of fire" when the moon is totally inside the sun. You can put these glasses–or a really thick filter, which is the same thing–in front of a camera as well as in front of your eyes. But the sun looks really small.

photo by °Florian

Best of all is an actual telescope. Then you can see sunspots!

photo by Mark Langridge

The fifth, final, and possibly my favorite way to see/photograph the eclipse requires no equipment at all–just some trees. When the sun is a crescent, it shines through the leaves to create hundreds of little crescents on the ground or wall.

photo by niiicedave

Photographing the sun is one thing. But the full mood of an eclipse, with its cool air and dusky light, is difficult to capture. Here's one picture (not from the path of full annularity) that really pulled it off:

photo by jimnista

Photo Credit: Amy Miller

In addition to the QUEST TV segments we call, “Your Photos on QUEST,” we’ve recently launched a new segment called, “Your Videos on QUEST” where we feature the work of Bay Area filmmakers who make videos about Bay Area science and nature.

So, when I discovered Swiss-born animator and photographer Simon Christen’s amazing time-lapse videos of fog creeping over the tops of a forest in the Berkeley Hills, the moon rising over the Marin Headlands and the sun setting over San Francisco Bay, I wasn’t sure if we were doing a YPOQ or YVOQ story with him.

When I first spoke with Christen on the phone, he quickly cleared up my confusion. When asked if he considers his lyrical landscapes to be photography or filmmaking, he responds unequivocally that they are photographs.

Photo credit: Simon Christen

More specifically, time-lapse photography is when you use a still camera to capture multiple photographs in a row within a time interval and then stitch them together to create the illusion of a moving image. Indeed, this is the “magic” behind all motion pictures or film and really goes back to its invention in the late 1800’s.

Christen didn’t set out to be a time-lapse photographer. In fact, his experimentation with photography began with shooting still images of lush landscapes, in part as a contrast to his day-to-day work as an animator at Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville, CA. “I think I became interested in photography because it’s in a way the exact opposite to animation,” says Christen. “You’re focusing on split second in, in time, just make sure that that one frame is really interesting to look at and kind of tells a story within one frame. And in animation, you know, we’re telling the story with over many frames.”

In light of this approach, I found it interesting that it wasn’t long after Christen began teaching himself the art of still photography that he began to introduce the element of motion to those still images. Now, he feels that time-lapse is the “perfect combination” of the two art forms of animation and still photography.

From the film, “The Unseen Sea” by Simon Christen

But for Christen, it seems that one of the main draws to this kind of photography is the fact that it gets him away from his computer and out into nature. Time-lapse photography takes patience. And it takes time–lots of it. Christen regularly hikes to the tops of hills and mountains in the Bay Area to get the best vantage points on the rising moon or the incoming fog. And of course, these events happen in the wee hours of the morning or late evening into night. Once he sets up his camera and intervalometer, he’ll frequently be at that site for 3 or 4 hours capturing a single image sequence.

When asked if time-lapse photography requires a lot of patience he says, “It’s really peaceful and there’s always something going on. It’s like you’re seeing the light change and you’re seeing life in general evolve in front of you,” he explains. “I don’t have a TV at home. It’s kind of shocking to me of how much TV people watch these days. And like how much nonsense is on. And, and I think it’s just so much more interesting going out there and seeing real life in front of you.”

Stu Weiss uses hemispherical photography to analyse the forest canopy in the Monarch Grove Sanctuary, Paicific Grove, CA. Image: Joshua Cassidy

Weiss uses a technique called hemispherical photography to analyze monarch butterfly overwintering habitat. While facing north, he aims his digital camera directly up towards the forest canopy. The camera is affixed with a 180° fish-eye lens that produces an image of the sky partially blocked by the trees. Weiss takes a series of these images at specific locations corresponding to a grid. With the help of some special software, he is able to map out how much sunlight and wind is able to penetrate the forest at specific locations. This information is important because overwintering monarchs prefer microhabitats that provide both plenty of sunlight, but are protected from the wind.

With the information gleaned from his hemispherical photography, Weiss is able to characterize the monarch habitat and provide guidance on the long-term management of the major monarch overwintering sites. The City of Pacific Grove placed Weiss in charge of developing the habitat restoration and management plan for the Monarch Grove Sanctuary, and he has overseen the planting of additional Eucalyptus trees to improve wind protection for the monarchs. While small in size, the Sanctuary is a vital destination for monarchs and a major tourist attraction boasting visitors from around the world.

In addition to their pleasing appearance, monarch butterflies are famous for their extended migrations. The type of lengthy annual north-south migration undergone by monarchs is more commonly associated with birds. Monarchs spent most of the year in close proximity to their host plant, milkweed. Each fall, as the days grow shorter and the milkweed recedes, monarchs journey to their overwintering grounds.

The Rocky Mountains split monarch Butterflies into Eastern and Western populations. Image: Monarch Watch

The Rocky Mountains split the monarchs into two populations. Those butterflies that spend their summers east of the Rocky Mountains descent upon forests located within the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt Pine-Oak Forests not far from Mexico City. The monarchs that spend their summers west of the Rockies wait out the winter months in forests along the California Coast. Overwintering monarch populations return to the same forests year after year, even though none of the individual butterflies have ever been to these locations before.

Depending on the climatic conditions, monarch butterflies have three or four generations per year. How the butterfly’s great-grandchildren are able to find the same specific forests year after year remains a mystery. New research indicates that monarch butterflies possess photosensitive proteins called Cryptochromes that allow them to set an internal circadian clock. When exposed to UV light, Cryptochromes are also sensitive to magnetism. This allows the monarchs to follow patterns in the Earth’s magnetic field which guide them in their far-reaching travels. Monarch butterflies may also return to specific groves because the overwintering conditions at those particular spots are similarly attractive year after year. As Weiss explained, “The presence of other monarchs is a really good indicator it’s a good place to be a monarch, kind of crowd sourcing. So if a butterfly’s flying around looking for a place to land, if there are other monarchs there, it’s a good indicator that hey, that’s a good place to land.”

Monarch butterflies form a cluster on a Monterey Pine branch. Image: Joshua Cssidy

In the spring, the monarchs go into a mating frenzy, and then they depart from there overwintering spots to find the emerging milkweed throughout their range. Female monarchs lay hundreds of eggs on milkweed plants. The eggs hatch and the caterpillars gorge on the host plant. As the caterpillars grow, they sequester compounds called cardiac glycosides which make them distasteful – even toxic – to predators. During the pupae life stage the caterpillars transform into butterflies within the solitude of their chrysalises. As flying adults they feed on sugary nectar from milkweeds and other plants with their long tube-like proboscises. This cycle of reproduction repeats throughout the spring and summer as the monarchs disperse, filling out their geographic range.

Because monarch butterflies are intimately tied to milkweed, they are especially vulnerable to habitat loss from development and agriculture. Monarchs also need to find dependable overwintering sites, and both the eastern and western overwintering populations experience threats to these locations.

Erica Krygsman counts monarch butterflies at the Monarch Sanctuary Grove in Pacific Grove, CA. Image: Joshua Cassidy

Monarchs do have one advantage, which is that humans find them beautiful. Enticed by the monarch butterfly’s beauty, people have gone to great lengths to study them and provide for their needs. Erica Krygsman, Monarch Alert Monterey Co. Field Coordinator is one of those people. She has the colossal task of counting the overwintering monarchs. So how does someone count thousands of fidgeting butterflies as they hang from a tree?

“Well you don’t count them individually”, Krygsman said. “Basically you count the butterflies when they are in clusters in the trees, and you go by each group and you count…you count a small group and extrapolate to the rest of the cluster.” For the Monarch Grove Sanctuary location, Krygsman’s counts for the winter 2011-2012 hover around 10,000 butterflies. The detailed counts made by Monarch Alert help the scientific community trace the fluctuations in the western monarch butterfly population size and demographics.

Visitors to the Monarch Grove Sanctuary. Image: Joshua Cassidy

According to Weiss, “monarch butterflies are listed as an endangered phenomenon, because of the mass of the migration, the length of the migration, and the concentration of butterflies in relatively few overwintering sites. They’re actually vulnerable. You could cut down 20 groves of trees in coastal California and pretty much kill off the overwintering monarchs in California, they’re that concentrated. In Mexico, they occupy maybe a few dozen hectares of high elevation fir forests that are under extreme pressure.”

You can visit the overwintering monarchs during the winter months at the Pacific Grove Monarch Grove Sanctuary, and take a tour of the Monarch Sanctuary offered by the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History. Other good places to find overwintering monarchs are Natural Bridges State Beach and Pt. Lobos Nature Preserve.

This clean roadcut exposure of Marin County's finest ribbon chert is documented in a gigapan image that can be enlarged 100 times. Image by Ron Schott.

If you've ever wished your camera could take a humongous photo that captures everything, then gigapans are for you. Gigapans are billion-pixel images that are stitched together, like a patchwork quilt, from hundreds of shots made by ordinary cameras. A special mount and software programs the camera to take precisely overlapping images, which are then seamlessly merged into one colossal shot tens of thousands of pixels across.

Many of us first witnessed the potential of gigapans when photographers compiled them during President Obama's inauguration ceremony on January 20, 2009. This example, by David Bergman, allows you to zoom in and study every face in the crowd that day, from four former presidents to Jane and Joe Blow (and Newt Gingrich is there too).

There are over 50,000 gigapans uploaded at gigapan.com. Their subjects range from the night sky, to cityscapes, to hotel room interiors.

Naturally I would want such a thing used for geology. First I would want to see eye candy, like the Grand Canyon. And places I'll never visit, like the South Pole. Scientists have made gigapans like those—how could they resist?—but they've also made real teaching and research tools.

For instance, you and I in the Bay Area can easily drive to the Marin Headlands or elsewhere in Marin County and inspect all the deep-sea red ribbon chert we want. But geology teacher Ron Schott, the leading geological gigapanner, has captured a fine roadcut exposure in the image at the top of this post. Now his students in Kansas can zoom into it as close as being there, inches from the rock face:

Detail near the left edge of the Marin County roadcut. Image by Ron Schott.

Any teacher, anywhere, can assign a lab exercise built around this image that's almost as good as a day trip. Instructors can show students the classic wave-cut platforms of the California coast in a gigapan that's every bit as good for teaching as standing on the spot with binoculars—in fact there's a 3D version, too.

It gets better. Northern Virginia Community College's Mid-Atlantic Geo-Imagery Collection (M.A.G.I.C.) has great outcrops, but also great macros of sand. A petri dish of Hawaii's green sand, for instance, can be blown up to display every gorgeous olivine grain, microscope style. M.A.G.I.C. is the brainchild of Callan Bentley, an NVCC professor who features gigapans often in his Mountain Beltway blog.

M.A.G.I.C. image

The Obama inauguration gigapan hints at another thing scientists can do, which is to archive and document large-scale natural features in detail. A great example from Yosemite Valley is the Extreme Panoramic Imaging Project, which compiled a photographic dataset of the granite walls of the entire valley by stitching together 20 gigapans into something I can only call a humongapan. Then this image was tied to a 3D terrain model, constructed from laser scans, for real 21st-century analysis. The project has already pinpointed the sources of rockfalls to aid in analyzing where they may come next, helping protect the public from danger. You can explore the walls of Yosemite in a gigapan of the final product.

NASA's Juno spacecraft is shown in orbit above Jupiter's colorful clouds in this artist's rendering. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Even though NASA is no longer in the business of deploying manned-missions to outer space, they continue to explore the cosmos in ways that have never before been possible.  Their next target is Earth's bigger, gassier neighbor: Jupiter.

On August 5, 2011 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in conjunction with the Southwest Research Institute launched the Juno mission,  which NASA says will, "improve our understanding of the solar system’s beginnings by revealing the origin and evolution of Jupiter."

This is a pretty big deal in the world of astrophysics.   NASA scientists theorize they will be able to determine the origin of The Giant Planet, "and thereby the solar system" by measuring the amount of water and ammonia in Jupiter's atmosphere.

Scott Bolton, Juno's principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio explains the significance of the mission:

"Jupiter is the Rosetta Stone of our solar system.  It is by far the oldest planet, contains more material than all the other planets, asteroids and comets combined, and carries deep inside it the story of not only the solar system but of us. Juno is going there as our emissary — to interpret what Jupiter has to say."

But scientists will have to wait a few years to test their theories.  Even though Juno is traveling at a relative speed of over 13,000 miles an hour, it is not scheduled to reach its final destination until July 2016.

And the ride to Jupiter is not exactly a clear path.  Juno will face many obstacles – including large mentors – that can potentially derail the $1.1 billion project.

Thankfully, scientists can rely on old "maps," or astro-photographic images of the night sky to plan a flight path that will steer the spacecraft away from debris.

Dr. Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, says the astro-photographic plates housed at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute (PARI) contributed directly to the success of the Juno mission;

"Juno, for example, in order for it to be successful they have to design it.  And one of the things they have to design it for is to protect it from meteoroids out in space.  Well we never measured meteoroids around Jupiter, because we don't go there very often, right?  So we have to take what             we've learned here at Earth to help us design that spacecraft to go to Jupiter and those negatives [at the Astronomical Photographic Data Archive] helped formulate the model we used to design that spacecraft to go to Jupiter.

Dr. Cooke is referring to a collection of nearly 150,000 old astro-photographic plates and film known as APDA, or the Astronomical Photographic Data Archive.  The APDA collection is stored at PARI's secure facility in Western North Carolina.

Dr. Cooke became aware of the collection a few years ago and has quickly become on of its biggest advocates:

"The photo archive which contains a lot of the photographs that form the basis of modern meteor science are housed … at ADPA.  They collected them from around the country, but those old photographs, that data, formed the basis for everything we know now in regards to meteors.  So it's kind of like visiting a treasure trove of ancient data.  The great hieroglyphic inscriptions out there in APDA."

Brendan Fallon of the American Meteor Society examines film in the APDA collection.

The connection between APDA and the Juno mission came full orbit during this year's annual NASA Fireball Workshop, which took place at PARI's Rosman, North Carolina campus.  Attendees were able to watch the Juno launch and then walk into the archives to hold the original pieces of film that helped Juno's engineers develop a safe flight path.

By relying on old astronomical plates and film – some of which date over 100 years old – today's astronomers can safely stand on the shoulders of their predecessors and reach for the stars, without fear of being knocked down by meteors.

For more info check out NASA's website for the JUNO mission:

twitter: @NASAJuno

http://missionjuno.swri.edu/

Before he takes the plunge, Mr. Austin spends months preparing to film in the wild by working with whale biologists who study specific populations of whales. Mr. Austin travels with these experts, to identify unique individual whales who posses the personality and sense of curiosity to be agreeable subjects. Austin returns to the whales day after day to build a sense of familiarity which will eventually allow them to feel comfortable enough to approach him on their own terms. Swimming with whales is intrinsically very dangerous if for no other reason than their enormous size. A single accidental flick from a pectoral fin or fluke could pummel a human swimmer. A threatened whale or a mother protecting her calf can be particularly dangerous. While whales have the potential to be destructive, it is much more likely that a whale disturbed by a human swimmer will simply swim away. For this reason Austin works hard to build the trust of his subjects.

Whales, like humans, are intelligent mammals that live within social structures. As such, whales have a kind of etiquette based on behavioral cues. To get close enough to photograph the whales Mr. Austin has to abide by a different species code of conduct. For example, Austin does not use SCUBA while visiting the whales because the bubbles produced by the equipment can be construed as a threat display between whales.

“Although we can’t communicate with whales verbally, you can communicate intention. And I do this by being very slow and predictable when I move. And I remain motionless most of the time, and I want to communicate to them that I’m interested in them, but I’m also respectful, and I’m just going be very passive and patient. Most of the time, they ignore me or swim away, and there’s just that, those few exceptional moments in the season where they decide to come up to me and spend a few moments”

It's within these few rare moments that Bryant Austin is able to create his stunning photographs. In fact, his entire collection to date represents interactions with only 9 particularly curious individual whales. As top predators, whales generally tend to demonstrate curiosity in exploring their environment. Some species like humpback whales tend to be more curious than other species, but even within a species individual whales will show different personality traits. Through his non-profit organization Marine Mammal Conservation Through the Arts, Mr. Austin works for months for the brief seconds and minutes when the whales come to inspect him.

“The camera I’m holding in a way is like the world’s eye, humanity’s eye, so we can make whales visible and hopefully change our perception and behavior towards them. So it’s ironic that this little 210-pound person really can be more powerful than this 40-ton whale.”

Here's a recent photo from "Music and Games Galore", part of The Tech Museum's new adults-only monthly event, "After Hours".

Please vote on your favorite caption by Friday, September 2. The winning entry will receive (2) free tickets to their upcoming After Hours event, "DNA With A Twist", on Wednesday, September 7. The winner will also receive a QUEST prize package.

UPDATE: The contest is now closed. Congrats to Arlene, the winner of the contest, with her submission: "Just a little further now, all that Yoga gotta to pay off. All TECH considered."

Here's a recent photo from "Music and Games Galore", part of The Tech Museum's new adults-only monthly event, "After Hours". Put your creative hats on and participate in our photo caption contest with The Tech Museum. Submit only (1) caption for this photo in the comments section below by Friday, August 26. Then we'll take all the submissions and have you vote on which one you like best. The winning entry will receive (2) free tickets to their upcoming After Hours event, "DNA With A Twist", on Wednesday, September 7. The winner will also receive a QUEST prize package.

“Pleasanton Circular File ” by Steven Christenson

Back in the early days of QUEST, when we were first piloting the Your Photos on QUEST segments, Steven Christenson was one of the first photographers to respond to our call for submissions, posting on the QUEST YPOQ Flickr page his set of photos from Mission Peak Preserve near Fremont, California.

When I was trolling for our first YPOQ photographer for the new season of QUEST TV, I went back to some of those early submissions and was immediately struck by Christenson’s set of vibrant, kinetic images, especially his night sky photographs and star circles. Not only are they totally unique and beautiful, there’s obviously a good story to be told in how he actually makes them.

Shooting photographs in very low light is a special skill, one that Christenson has honed to a fine art over the last few years. In fact, he’s gotten so good at it, he was honored as one of the winners of the International Astronomy Photographer of the Year, 2010 awards in the “People and Space” category. Here’s his winning photo, taken at Pfeiffer Beach in Big Sur, California. He shot it as people gathered on the beach during one of the few days each year when the setting sun shines directly through the archway of a large rock formation.

“Photon Worshipers” by Steven Christenson

“Bristlecone Pine Star Circle ” by Steven Christenson

Indeed the process of “finding light in the darkness”, as Christenson puts it, is more involved than one might imagine. First off, you have to get to a place that has a good vantage point on the stars. In Christenson’s case, this usually involves driving and/ or hiking a good distance before he even sets down the tripod. Then, you have to deal with the notoriously foggy/ rainy/ cold Bay Area weather. He’s been battling with the weather at Pigeon Point Light House State Historic Park in Pescadero for years. But he’s managed to get some spectacular images there nonetheless.

Once all the stars align so to speak, and Christenson has set up his shot, the waiting begins. As the earth rotates and orbits the sun, the stars appear to travel through the sky and his camera is set to take an image at set intervals. It can take all night for him to get the images he needs to stitch together his final images. He often sleeps in his car or out under the open sky if weather permits.

For our shoot with Christenson, he took us hiking up Mission Peak, his favorite location in the Bay Area to shoot. Between our audio tech, Helen, associate producer Josh and myself, we’ve collectively lived in the Bay Area for more than half a century and none of us had ever been to Mission Peak. It’s absolutely spectacular up there. It’s one of the things I love most about this job that I have the opportunity to see and experience things that have been under my nose for years but have never noticed.

And if you’d like to join Steven Christenson for a nighttime photography tour of Mission Peak or several other Bay Area locations, be sure to check out the Star Circle Academy website.

QUEST on KQED Public Media.

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We'd like to thank everyone who participated in our photo caption contest with The Monterey Bay Aquarium! Now vote on your favorite entry, and the winner will receive (2) free tickets to the Aquarium. Voting closes on Thursday, January 13th.

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