Two panoramas of sites of the Clifton Campus were supposed to be obtained today but because of complications with the equipment and time constraints, only one panorama was obtained.
The two sites that were intended to be captured were the area around the Atom sculpture in the courtyard in front of the Erasmus Darwin building and the 3G Sports Pitch in the southwestern corner of the campus.
The main complication with taking a panorama on the sports pitch is if it is being used at the same time, the final panorama stitched together will struggle to capture the parts of the image when the people are moving because of the minimal overlap. This is what happened the first time we went up to work on the sports pitch. The camera also had a faulty battery so we were stymied here.
Setting up the camera on the tripod so that it is level in all directions was the main time constraint. Once this had been done, collecting data was simple. The camera was rotated by 10 degrees for every image to ensure that when they are stitched together, there is sufficient overlap between the images .for the Autostitch programme, the software used to create a panorama from the separate images. However, levelling the camera on the tripod at the Erasmus Darwin site was extremely difficult because the ground is uneven and the spirit level is extremely sensitive to any inclination. Levelling the camera alone took more than half an hour. The evenness of the ground at the 3G Pitch made the camera easier to level but there were people using it so this site had to be revisited at a later point in the day. After the first panorama was complete, a suggestion was made to include the balancing pond near the Peverell Accommodation. This would not only be an acknowledgement of the hydrology of the site and nod to a memory of the campus itself but it would also align with some aquatic constellations in the sky like Aquarius and Delphinus.
In between these attempts to capture images were two more interviews to gather more data on memory points. The interviewees gave us locations like The Point and the greenhouse by the Erasmus Darwin cafeteria which overlap with points other people have given us. Perhaps these points will be ideal sites to create panoramas because of the great memories and experiences people associate with them.
Tomorrow, it is hoped, weather-allowing, that a light pollution survey of the Clifton Campus, to inform the green agenda and give us another perspective of the campus, will be complete and the possibility of more panoramas will be explored. Tomorrow is the Open Dome event at our campus, where the observatory is open to members of the public and guest speakers come in to talk about things in astronomy or astrophysics. More data can be obtained from members of the public and this should give us more memory points to include in our final Stellarium landscape.
The two sites that were intended to be captured were the area around the Atom sculpture in the courtyard in front of the Erasmus Darwin building and the 3G Sports Pitch in the southwestern corner of the campus.
The main complication with taking a panorama on the sports pitch is if it is being used at the same time, the final panorama stitched together will struggle to capture the parts of the image when the people are moving because of the minimal overlap. This is what happened the first time we went up to work on the sports pitch. The camera also had a faulty battery so we were stymied here.
Setting up the camera on the tripod so that it is level in all directions was the main time constraint. Once this had been done, collecting data was simple. The camera was rotated by 10 degrees for every image to ensure that when they are stitched together, there is sufficient overlap between the images .for the Autostitch programme, the software used to create a panorama from the separate images. However, levelling the camera on the tripod at the Erasmus Darwin site was extremely difficult because the ground is uneven and the spirit level is extremely sensitive to any inclination. Levelling the camera alone took more than half an hour. The evenness of the ground at the 3G Pitch made the camera easier to level but there were people using it so this site had to be revisited at a later point in the day. After the first panorama was complete, a suggestion was made to include the balancing pond near the Peverell Accommodation. This would not only be an acknowledgement of the hydrology of the site and nod to a memory of the campus itself but it would also align with some aquatic constellations in the sky like Aquarius and Delphinus.
In between these attempts to capture images were two more interviews to gather more data on memory points. The interviewees gave us locations like The Point and the greenhouse by the Erasmus Darwin cafeteria which overlap with points other people have given us. Perhaps these points will be ideal sites to create panoramas because of the great memories and experiences people associate with them.
Tomorrow, it is hoped, weather-allowing, that a light pollution survey of the Clifton Campus, to inform the green agenda and give us another perspective of the campus, will be complete and the possibility of more panoramas will be explored. Tomorrow is the Open Dome event at our campus, where the observatory is open to members of the public and guest speakers come in to talk about things in astronomy or astrophysics. More data can be obtained from members of the public and this should give us more memory points to include in our final Stellarium landscape.