Tonopah Test Range images June 2010

small panorama of the TTR
or
Large panorama of the TTR

I suggest saving the files and viewing with Irfanview as these files will probably be too large for your browser.

More TTR images to come in this thread.

Impressive! Are those Janet flights on the runway? Cool!

Looks busy...3 jannets...2 on runways

Originally posted by gariac
small panorama of the TTR
or
Large panorama of the TTR

I suggest saving the files and viewing with Irfanview as these files will probably be too large for your browser.

More TTR images to come in this thread.

Were the pics taken from Mount Diablo (37°53'46.76"N, 116°45'20.61"W)?
I went down that road, but felt a bit too intimidated to climb up and take some pics... and man, what a CRAP road!

Next time you're up there you should consider applying image stacking. It would remove a lot of the atmospheric effects.

I would love to get my thermal imager up there to see what goes on at night.

reply to post by dainoyfb


Image stacking makes the image blurrier. I don't know how this rumor got started that stacking makes a sharper image. Now you can stack with "unwarp" using imagej, but it is a huge amount of work. What you get is an image that is not as "thin", if you understand that terminology.

In astronomy, they stack images that are taken over a long integration time. However, what they are doing there is registering the images so they are all aligned, and in effect taking out error due to the mount not being perfect.

reply to post by FosterVS


Those photos were taken at a point south of Brainwash Butte. It's about 25 miles off-road.

You can drive up to Mt. Diablo, but it is really in their face. You are next to the security shack and close to the "man camp."

Incidentally, there was probably only one or maybe two Janets on the ground. It takes a long time to shoot the panorama, and thus one Janet could appear in many frames. You can see that a number of images are used in the photo, but what you don't see is each view was shot about 6 to 8 times in order to be able to choose the sharpest image.

Not sure what you mean by "thin" but I'll look into it. I'm not talking about making the image sharper. I'm talking about removing the atmospheric distortions. Maybe we are thinking about two different processes. I've had considerable success using stacking to remove the type of distortion I'm seeing in your images. In daylight conditions integration times are fairly quick with exposure times allowing hundreds of images in just a few seconds. Freeware makes the image stacking pretty much labor free. For basic stacking I use StarTrails
I'm no expert but you might want to look into it.

reply to post by dainoyfb


Thin refers to the narrow range of intensity used in the image. If you look at the histogram, it is just a blip at the center of the range.

I have spent about 50 hours messing with stacking. Never did I get a sharper image. With film, I could reduce grain via stacking. Not an issue with a DSLR.

It is simple logic that stacking makes the image blurry. You have a area of the image that is moving. You stack the moving image, the information is spread out over a wider area, hence the blur. If you use imagej with an unwarp plugin, you can force the images to align. This will fatten the histogram, but it is a huge amount of work.

unwarp

bunwarp

I rather have more detail in the image, even if warped, than a blurred image.

I'm sorry. I didn't realize your image was moving.

reply to post by dainoyfb


What is thermal distortion but wiggling images? My point is averaging images that wiggle without doing an unwrap leads to blurry photos.

wasn't tonopah renamed creech afb, or am i mistaken?

Here is another pano, plus two photographs of facilities up in the hills. This pano is of the area around the dry lake:

dry lake pano

The Black Mountain radomes can be seen from high spots along route 95. Obviously they look a bit different from the TTR:

Black Mountain radomes

This is a facility in the hills south of Site-4:
hill top (well side) facility

reply to post by Esoteric Teacher


Indian Springs was renamed Creech.

Just wanted to say thank you for all of these interesting pics! Makes you really want to know what they have down there. I wish I had the clearance!!