Much sky to be had: some had tonight

After this morning's brilliant sunrise as I observed it while driving on Hwy. 512 looking toward Mt. Rainier I hoped tonight would yield clear skies. Sarah's mom (my mother-in-law, how silly is that?) was over tonight while working up here in Lakewood. She was here a week or two ago as well but, although the skies were clear, we were all too tired to set up the telescope. Tonight, however, was another case. The skies were clear, our bellies were full of tasty cheese fondue (thanks, Sarah!) and we had no trouble setting up on the cement slab in the backyard. Since we hadn't used the scope since viewing the somewhat recent total lunar eclipse I made sure to take care in setting up the scope and making certain everything was in alignment.

Tonight's targets were Saturn and the Pleiades. Saturn was in a perfect spot in the sky above our little backyard. Our window above extends from about 50° up since the yard is closely surrounded by house, fence, trees, and two neighbor's houses. I think it's a gem of a spot though since we can turn on the porch light, set everything up, then make things dark for observing. Thankfully there aren't any other lights immediately near except one across a neighbor's yard and across and ally. Their house and our fence pretty much block that anyway. We first focused on Saturn and had no trouble spying it just to the south of Castor and Pollux in Gemini. Sarah's mom had never seen Saturn with her own eyes and was delighted that it could be done in and urban backyard. I snapped a few photos then we moved on to the Pleiades. The cloud was barely visible with the naked eyes but even through the spotting scope individual stars resolved and made a beautiful sight. Sarah bugged out a little early but Sherry and I stayed out and took some star trail photos of the Pleiades and grabbed some more of Saturn.

You can always keep track of any astronomy I do in my astro photo gallery.

Comments (8) | To Top

2/9/2005 @ 7:19am

Thanks again for the astronomy lesson. It was great fun and I look forward to a future session with the tele. Saturn is an awesome subject to view.

by Sherry Champion

2/9/2005 @ 9:49am

Nice one, man! Its skies like that that make me rethink my urban lifestyle.

by Alaric

2/9/2005 @ 11:09am

Cool pics. I've held my inner photo nerd in check for too long so here goes. What camera/lens do you typically use? Do you use filters or do you adjust colors digitally?

PS - you've inspired me to creat my own blog. Check it out sometime.

by Court

2/9/2005 @ 11:24am

Alan: Hey, that was taken from my backyard here in good old urban North Tacoma. You'd be surprised what you can see! Although, larger cities filter out even more stars. When I was in New York in 2003 I couldn't believe how bright the night sky is with light pollution.

Court: I'll check out your blog! I'm using a Fuji FinePix S602Z digital camera. The lens is built-in but it's pretty top-of-the-line consumer. I can manually control focus, aperature and shutter. The aperature can do F2.8 and I can do shutter speeds from 1/10,000 down to 15 sec.

I take all my astronomy shots through the eyepiece, if you can believe that. My next camera will be something like the Nikon D70 (http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs/Nikon/nikon_d70.asp) Full manual SLR -- I could do some serious astrophotograpy with no shutter speed limit via bulb mode. Mmm...

by KevinFreitas

2/9/2005 @ 11:34am

Oh yeah, and when it comes to processing image I use Photoshop. Usually little more than adjusting levels is necessary. For digital astrophotography there are a plethora of image processing and stacking freeware available. There's a huge group of folks who use off-the-shelf or slightly modified webcams to take some pretty impressive shots (http://www.webcam-astrophotography.com/) I look forward to finding a house someday where I can build my own shed/observatory (http://fp.themvo.f9.co.uk/My%20Observatory.htm) to try and get semi-serious about this stuff.

by KevinFreitas

2/10/2005 @ 9:08am

Cool. I am still unwilling to give up print photography, but I can certainly see some advantages to digital (especially in post-exposure processing).

by Court

2/10/2005 @ 10:41am

Digital is also about cheap volume. I can shoot as much as I want with few consequences. The concept of re-usable media for photography is pretty revolutionary in and of itself. That's only really existed, thus far, with video tape technology.

by KevinFreitas

8/5/2005 @ 3:18pm

great photos,

by fay purdy