What a night! The weather changed today and a cold front swept through early in the day. By the time night came, it was clearer than any of us can remember in recent years here at the Stellafane Convention. I set up my little 8" telescope and we observed with friends for hours, and then thought I should take some astrophotos just for fun. I happened over to where my friend John has his gigantic telescope with the 32" diameter mirror set up, and decided to do a long time exposure of someone looking through the eyepiece, up on his ten-foot tall ladder. It was a 30 second long time exposure, at an ISO of 3200, and I told the person on the ladder not to move, to keep from blurring the photo. And this is the result! The really bright "star" to the right in the photograph is the planet Jupiter, rising in the east. It was SO clear that even in my small telescope I could see so much detail in faint galaxies wherever I looked in the sky. What a wonderful night of observing! A night to remember. I am typing this at 3 AM, before heading off to bed, one happy camper. If you click on the photo you will get an extra large image to look at and I think you will find it really nice to see so much more detail.
Happy you had a wonderful clear night. Great photo - but I like my fee on the ground!
ReplyDeleteJoan
what an AMAZING shot!!!!!! the only thing better than seeing it like this and reading your description would be BEING THERE!!!
ReplyDeletesoooo cool!!!! thanks so much...
which camera did you use?
ReplyDeleteNikon D300. The more expensive the camera, generally, the better the quality of the sensor chip, and that means less "noise" in the image when using higher "film speed" or ISO setings. My SONY alpha 200K would have way too much noise in the images, and it only goes to ISO 1600. I used the Nikon on ISO 3200.
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