We lucked out with a moonless, no-haze, no smoke night sky yesterday. I set up the little Ioptron Sky-Tracker and mounted my camera and 600mm lens, and commenced to focus/shoot/adjust/repeat. Two hours later I had a couple of respectable images. The first, M22, is a star cluster containing 70,000 or so stars. The second is M8, or the Lagoon Nebula. These are both 20 second guided 600mm single exposures.
I carry a camera in my cupholder, so when I ride, I’m ready to shoot. Even so, it is easy to NOT stop and make a photo. I think a lot of learning photography is training your habit-rutted mind to be open to the fleeting artistic impulse.
Recent moonless nights have favored long meteor-hunting sessions, and this month it coincides with the Perseids. Famous meteor showers get a lot of press and draw our attention, but meteors happen EVERY night. Mark your calendar for all moonless nights!
These are all 30-second exposures f/2.8 at ISO 6400 shot off a fixed tripod.
5-second exposures taken at 4:10AM today. Taos NM
Twenty minutes of night sky, lit from behind by the Moon.
– The World keeps turning.
Looking for Comet SWAN, but it was lost in the glare of sunrise. Had another camera shooting north 30 sec exposures. This is a composite of 30 frames.
4,000-8,000th of a second – these are some of the best from 320 frames, all shot off a tripod. Everything is severely cropped-in for detail (see below).
