Noctilucent (“night-shining”) clouds are the highest in the atmosphere, at around 76-85km altitude. They only appear in the summer months at latitudes from 50-70º (north or south), when the sun is more than 6º below the horizon. Formed in the mesosphere at very cold temperatures from ice, dust and water vapour, their gossamer threads undulate […]
Many moons ago… the parents and I were on holiday around Caithness and having trouble finding the way to Whaligoe Steps. As his tractor turned by the end of the field, we stopped a farmer to ask directions. To southern ears, the instructions sounded memorably like “turn right at the fussky-osk”. With a little thought […]
A long time ago I wrote a python utility to interpolate frames for use in timelapse. This project was timelapse.py. Back in 2014 I ported the idea to the very-alpha-level language Julia. In recent weeks Julia released version v1.0.0, followed shortly by compatibility fixes in the Images.jl library. And so I’m pleased to announce that the […]
Having visited my favoured spot overlooking the Caledonian Forest, I proceeded up the side of Am Meallan to the well-known location with a view over the lodge and along the length of Loch Affric. It’s definitely an autumn morning location: the sun rises behind you, skimming up and over the tops of mountains beyond Loch […]
One of my favourite views is the Highland Boundary Fault running through the landscape, immediately in front of me standing at Stair Bridge Viewpoint part-way up Birnam Hill. It looks particularly pleasant with light and cloud-shadows zipping over the trees too:
Just to the south of Loch Lomond beside the village of Gatocharn lies Duncryne Hill – a positively cute protrusion consisting of sandstone and conglomerate from the Emsian era early in the Devonian Period, affectionately known as The Dumpling. Having discovered it on Google Earth, thinking it might afford good views over Loch Lomond and […]
That was 2017-06-20, that was. A beautiful blue sky with white fluffy wispy cirrus cloud catching the setting sun… …followed by a noctilucent cloud display around 1am: NLCs are the highest-flying clouds, occurring at altitudes up to 80km where the next highest type (cumulonimbus) only reaches 12km and most are lower still. Most typically they […]
Having spent a few days based in my favourite Glen Affric hunting scenery up in the far North, I drove back down Loch Ness. Thinking to take a detour along the A827 (toward Skye), I joined the A87 south only to be met with road-closed signs. There was a bit of light in the layby […]
Further experiments making timelapse videos – this time the sunset looking across Strathearn to Crieff – from my favourite spot for hunting aurora. The second has Ursa Major emerging, one star at a time, over the course of 50 minutes around midnight. Both were taken using the Olympus Pen-F with its built-in intervalometer – the […]
On Sunday, on a whim, I went down to Edinburgh. As always, the city was fairly heaving but I revisited one of my favourite locations – the Radical Road along the Salisbury Crags, which affords an excellent view from Blackford Hill round to the Parliament buildings. So I tested the Pen-F’s timelapse video ability for […]