We take a lot of pictures so we can bring the sky into the classroom. As time permits, we will post a images here to show that an urban observing site is not so bad - at least for digital photography. I am not a keen astrophotographer, so the images I will be posting here will not be herculean efforts of stamina. But I think they are neat.
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| For the telescopic shots from the City, I use this 32 cm F/4 reflecting telescope. It is mounted on a home made English Mount that I finished in the spring of 2007. The Telescope's name is "FRED".
I had made the mirror back in the early 1970's and refurbished the optics tube in 2006. |
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This comet flared up in October 2007 from obsurity to one of the brighest in the last few decades. It came as a welcome addition to our northern skies after we were able to see so little of Comet McNaughton in 2006. This image of Comet Holms was taken on November 8, 2007 as it very slowly drifted through the Constellation Perseus. It was reported to be about magnitude 2.7 (www.cfa.harvard.edu/icq/CometMags.html), or about as bright as delta Persei. This is pretty bright, but remember the comet's light is spread over the apparent area of about the full Moon. The picture was taken with a Canon Rebel XT set at ISO 800 with FRED using a Celestron coma corrector. The exposure was 90 seconds. At this time the comet was 1.621 A.U. (243 million km away). Based on this distance and angular size, the diameter of the comets head is about 1.6 million km - or about 4X the Earth-Moon distance. It is slowly drifting towards the northwest (upper right corner). |
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We attended a Dark Sky Preserve meeting at th MMO in September of 2007 representing the Royal Astonomical Society of Canada (RASC) Light Pollution Abatement Committee (LPAC). There were about 100 in attendance. During a tour of the 1.6 meter telescope, I took this picture of the dome with the Moon illuminating the left side and a "convenient" television camera light on the right side. The town of La Petrie is visible near the base of the mountain. The meeting was in the recognition of the site as the first Internation Darksky Association (IDA) "International Dark Sky" Site. Staff at the Observatory worked with surrounding municipalities to reduce their sky glow. It was reported the program was so successful that it was "like turning back the clock by 30 years". |
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