I thought I’d share some of the time-lapse photography I’ve been doing, starting off with some more imagery of Redoubt Volcano and then moving further afield.

Composite Lightning

Composite image of lightning during the 11:20 pm eruption on March 27, 2009. At the bottom, lightning silhouettes the 10,000 foot cone of Redoubt Volcano, providing some sense of scale. Click on the image to get a larger version.

The photos of lightning I got a couple weeks ago were taken automatically. I was off watching a DVD of Pixar Shorts with my family, and didn’t even know the eruption had happened until it had mostly quieted down. But the camera diligently clicked away, taking 4 photos that showed lightning during that eruption and then another four after the 1:20 am eruption. I’ve been trying every night since to replicate this, but weather and volcano haven’t yet lined up again. But I did go back to the Mar 27-28 images to create composite images of the two eruptions. In each case I took the photos from the eruption and overlayed them (using a Photoshop “lighten” filter) to produce a single image. The results are pretty cool.

Composite image of lightning during the 1:20 am eruption on March 28, 2009. Click on the image to get a larger version.

Eruption time-lapse

I remember during the 1989-90 eruptions, when I was 13 years old, hearing people describe watching the lightning over Redoubt. I never saw it… Redoubt wasn’t visible from our house then. This is what inspired me to take the photos in the first place, and it makes me hopeful that it’s not so unusual that I wouldn’t be able to get some more. During the 6 am eruption on April 4, the camera did catch a glimpse of the lightning through haze and a small window in the clouds. To show this in the time-lapse I had to really push the images, so I made the black-and-white to reduce distracting color noise and such. The ash plume from this eruption came nearly straight at us, and the timelapse captures the approach and the ashfall, as well as the melting of the snow when the sun hit the ash a while later (that section I left in color.)

There’s a lot to see in this video. At about 2 seconds the explosion happens, and lightning sets in a second or so later. Then the ash cloud gradually obscures the scene. At some point in there my mom called to wake me up, and I covered the camera in plastic, which shows up as a few blurry frames. Shortly after, ash starts accumulating on the snow. Because there was a little wind, it forms bands and patches initially. Then the ash finishes falling and eventually the sun comes out. Racing the sun, Erin collects a measured area sample for AVO, and as the tree shadows receeded the sun melted the snow causing the ash to ball up. Because the ash goes from a uniform layer to discrete balls, it exposes the white snow beneath and on average it’s much brighter.

Max Miller got a video of this eruption from much closer, showing the lightning. You can see his video on Cook Inlet Regional Citizenzens Advisory Council webpage, or follow this direct link. I’d recommend downloading the video and playing it. Right-click and select “save link as.”

Sun on ashy snow

We’ve had quite a bit of sun over the past few days, and the sun heating the ash has made the snow melt back very quickly. I think we’ve probably lost 8-12 inches of packed snow since April 4th. The patterns of melting snow and ice have been very intriguing, so I set up another time-lapse to see what’s happening.

I packed icy snow into a 1/2 gallon yogurt container and then dusted it with a thin coat (less than half a millimeter) of volcanic ash from Redoubt’s April 4th eruption. There are two days of time-lapse in this video. The first was looking down on the ash, and the second is a macro lens up close and oblique. After the water from the first day of melting froze over night the style of melting changed a lot.

Ice growing in silty soil

This isn’t actually my first experiment with dirt and ice. During a cold spell this winter I put some silt in a baking dish and let it go through a series of freeze-thaw cycles (outside to freeze, inside to thaw.) Eventually it started forming dramatic cracks and growing fibrous ice crystals. I think there might be other interesting things to do, following this further and using mixed particle sizes. Some of the soil scientists who were in my department in grad school were looking at how ice behaves in soil because they can result in stirring of arctic soils that might lead either to the sequestration of carbon, or to the release of previously sequestered carbon. Over the long term these processes churn the soil, pulling organic material from the surface to bury it deep or carrying old stored organics up to the surface to oxidize into the atmosphere.

Timelapse of everyday things

A staple of timelapse is taking your everyday boring life and making it look more exciting by speeding it up a few hundred times. Over the winter I took timelapses including cleaning up, social gatherings, and cutting wood… now you can catch a glimpse of how we live, if your eyes are quick.

Redoubt Sunsets

And finally, some nice sunset time-lapse of Redoubt gently erupting. This is what it does almost all the time these days.

1 Comment - Click to Read and Comment »