Camping and astronomy are two of my favorite summer pass times. I love to get away from the hustle and bustle of daily life and surround myself with the wonders of nature. The silence of a clear mornings sunrise is not something we get to experience often enough these days. Daily hiking and mountain biking allow me to stretch my legs in ways my regular schedule does not allow.

Astronomy is also high on my list of ways to spend my time. For those of you with a similar mindset, there is no better way to observe the night sky than from a remote campsite. Far from the overwhelming light pollution of major cities, remote campsites offer some of the best observing opportunities left in the industrialized world. Here, star-filled skies are the norm. The Milky Way stretches overhead from horizon to horizon. The constellations you know and love are lost in the infinite number of stars that seem to fill the sky. As we’re just now coming into the warmer months, I’d urge you to make plans to get yourself out under the darkest skies you can find. Be sure to plan your trip so that the moon is in a smaller and/or later rising phase. I prefer last quarter through just past new. The last quarter moon is 1/2 illuminated (and shrinking nightly) and it doesn’t rise until after midnight. This leaves all the hours from sunset until moonrise as the darkest hours of the night. As I’m typically pretty wiped after a long week of work, these are about the only hours I can be guaranteed to be awake for anyway

Pictured here, you can see the ObDob…. a 25″ Obsession Dobsonian Telescope. This beast loves to get to places like this where it can really perform. This shot was taken a couple of weekends ago at our campsite on Gooseberry Mesa in extreme southern Utah. This is a regular spring/fall location of ours, as temperatures are ideal for all kinds of outdoor events (including deep sky observing). Skies are also quite good (minus the light pollution spewing out of nearby St. George (25 miles away). With your back to the offending portion of the sky, the view of the Milky Way is a wonderous site.

Winter still refuses to relinquish its grip on the Park City area. 6-8″ of snow fell again yesterday (4/24/08). Skies did clear for the approaching weekend, though and the forecast is calling for mostly clear skies for the next few days at least. I woke a bit earlier than hoped for… (5ish)… and decided to take advantage of some nice early morning views. I managed to checkout the giant planet, Jupiter… which was sitting high in the southeast. I snapped a couple of prime focus pics, but I didn’t get these focused sharp enough to be worth anything. The moon was sitting due south when I came out… and slightly to the west as I focused the camera on it. For all my complaining about how bright the moon can be, it is one sweet astro-photography target. Focusing on the moon is a non-issue as you can so clearly see the details in your camera’s view finder.

Details on the lunar surface are clear and crisp. The lunar terminator can be seen running along the edge of Mare Serenitatis, lighting up the far edge of Crater Posidonius. Visibility along the terminator is especially detailed because of the stark contrast.

Here’s a shot I snagged a while back of a waxing crescent moon. This was taken on a rare clear night this past February. I’m hoping the (eventual) arrival of spring here in Park City will allow me to get outside and start taking astro images again. Only time will tell…

I’ll start my first post in quite some time with this sweet shot of Sunday evenings crescent moon. This was a tiny sliver of a moon, just shy of 24 hours old. It was only because of the incredibly flat horizons to the west that I was able to snag this shot. This was taken from our campsite down at Gooseberry Mesa in extreme southern Utah. Note the existence of Earthshine in the image. Earthshine is sunlight that reflects off of the Earth and illuminates the non-sunlit portions of the moon. This is why you can actually see the moon in its entirety in this image

I need to tell you just how amazing the skies were here. Except for some sky glow along the western horizon (light pollution comes from nearby St. George, Ut and more distant Las Vegas, NV), the skies were nearly pristine. In the wee hours, the Milky Way spanned from southern horizon to the northern horizon. It was an almost spiritual sight. It was also nice to see some of my old friends… the summer constellations of Hercules, Cygnus, Lyra, Sagittarius, etc.

I got several nice hours of dark sky time after the moon had set. I hit a bunch of old favorites. The Orion Nebula was sitting low in the western sky as it got dark. The galactic pair of M81 & M82 were almost directly over head. This made for some incredible views through the big scope. With its long focal length, I could just barely squeeze the two galaxies into the field of view simultaneously. Cranking up the power forced me to look at one or the other in much more detail (not exactly a bad thing).

Astro Photo Details:

* Designation: The Moon
* Magnitude: roughly mag -12
* Size: roughly 1/2*
* Phase: 23.9 hours past new

Astro Photo Processing Details

* Canon Digital Rebel XTi
* 0.3s at ISO800
* PhotoShop CS2 Curves & Levels (mac version)