A Different Kind of Camera

This photograph of the sky seen through trees in the neighbor's back yard looks different.  The color is a bit strange and the image is not razor sharp.  I thought it was kind of impressionistic, though and worth posting in these desperate times.  "Desperate" because this is the hardest time of year to find photographs for the blog, with bare trees and overcast skies and nothing green!  The reason this photograph is different is because it was done with a specialized astronomical camera, the kind that is used on the back end of telescopes to photograph the night sky.  This is the camera I used to photograph the Orion Nebula which I posted a while back: The Orion Nebula  But before I could photograph the nebula with this camera, I had to learn how to use it.  So I attached it to one of my small telescopes and put the telescope on a tripod in the back room and aimed it through a window that still had the screen on it!  Hardly the way to take great photographs.  Then I experimented to learn how to focus the telescope with the camera and  how to make correct  exposures.  So that's where this photograph came from.  

So the round red device on the back of the telescope is the camera.  It works differently from the hand-held cameras I have used all my life.  It connects with a wire to that small red box with an antenna to the left of the telescope.  Then, get this, that red box transmits the photographs from the camera by wireless, to my iPad!  Yeah, I know.  Crazy!  It is a brilliant setup and that little red box was designed by a genius and the combination almost works by itself.  Anyhow, now you know why my photograph, above, looks different.