Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Orion Rising


I drove out to Sunken Meadow State Park, on the North Shore of Long Island tonight, to do some observing with friends from the astronomy club. Man, it was COLD! Well, not in the beginning, but after a couple of hours sitting at the eyepiece, without moving much, the cold starts to soak in. It was really nice to observe with friends, because someone will say "I have the galaxies M81 & M82 in the eyepiece" and then we will come over to look through each others' telescopes, or find the same objects in our own scopes. And there were some visitors who don't know the skies at all, so it is really fun to show newcomers some of the more interesting objects in the sky at the moment. After I packed up my scopes, I wandered over to a nearby tree, and did this photograph of Orion rising in the east. It was a long exposure - 16 seconds at an ISO of 1600. The only thing is, I was unable to determine correct focus in the dark, and as a result, this image is slightly out of focus... :-(

2 comments:

Trace said...

Great photograph of the nightime sky! Another terrific picture of nature's scenery!

Anonymous said...

I see what you mean about the image being out of focus, but you really captured the essence of the silhouetted tree beautifully. I really like the color of the sky too. Do you ever see any UFO's? Just curious :)
Kelsey