The Universe. Can you fathom the depth of space? Uncounted suns spot the night, but all we see are stars.
Uncounted galaxies show us we are not alone, and travelling to distant planets is no longer science fiction.
How much thought goes into space, unanswered, unreturned? How far out do we echo from years gone by? Does our light
appear to anything?
What noise we make, and we think are mighty, tho in truth, we are not even considered. We ride a large galaxy on a
slow spin, with stars which do not change in a lifetime. We spy the deep heavens, and still can't see where we started
from.
God is reveled in all that we see and we find. He is found in the smallest parts of an atom, and in the dark
matter which dominates all of space.
Here is the place where my imaging and observing passions lie. From constellations to nebula. From star clusters to
galaxies. From lightyears to Earth...
I have some new photos i've taken with my Nikon Coolpix 8700, that I thought wouldn't do night
shots.
The top photo is the constellation Perseus. Perseus looks more to me like a giraff with a long curly tail. It contains
no brite stars, but the variable star Algol is redish in color and will change in brightness. Algol is also the glowing
eye of the evil Madusas' head, which Perseus carries in his hand!
The second photo is another set of startrails. (A new photo of Mars and the pleiades can be seen in Planets.)
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The neighboring lights are absorbed into the night airs, and can only be released in photographs!
The various star colors are apparent when observed in slow motion. The earth moves so slow, we don't feel it.
If you were to go outside at dark and stare up at the stars, you would see spots of light stationary against a black
backdrop of space. If you look carefully and long, you will disern the color differences in the stars. When you
photograph the stars with long exposure times of from 1 to 60 minutes, their colors become more obvious. When you
watch a star slowly drop down behind an old barn on a dark country road, you'll see the giant upon whose back we ride
through space, is indeed moving!
The star trails in the two photos below are from exposures of 30 minutes and 10 minutes, repectively.
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I had recently borrowed a Canon EOS Rebel digital camera, and took it
through quite a workout! The quality and speed of capturing and editing images is
outstanding! I took it out on April 23, 2004, to test out the nighttime capabilities,
and was amazed. I heard about the noise problems the digital cameras have, but only
encountered 'graniness'.
The photo of Auriga was shot at 25 seconds at f/4, and ISO 400. The lens
was a 17-40mm Canon lens set to 30mm
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To shoot star trails, all you need is a SLR camera with a bulb setting, a tripod, and a cable release.
Point the camera towards any part of the sky for any duration of time (like 10 minutes with a 24mm lens) and marvel at
the results!
I have here some constellations from August, 2003. In the foreground of some of the photos, stands my house.
Pentax K1000, 24mm lens, f/2.8, fuji 200 film
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Here is what I can provide, until I can afford a telescope.
