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.

Many people find themselves in the possession of a new telescope this time of year. For some, it is the fulfillment of a dream, for others, a quite unexpected surprise. If you’re one of these people, you may be wondering to yourself… now what? What in the world am I going to do with this shiny new telescope? How in the world will I ever be able to find anything besides the Moon to observe? Let me give you some advice right up front. Stop. Take a deep breath. Relax. It doesn’t need to be an overwhelming proposition. Getting to know your telescope… and the night sky… are things that virtually anyone can do. Think of it like this… when you first met your best friend… did it instantly feel like a future best friendship? LIkely not. Sure, you may have hit it off well, but friendships take time to develop. The same is true for your understanding of your telescope… and (perhaps more importantly) with the night sky. Take it night by night and step by step and you’ll develop a passion that will last a lifetime.

Ok, you’re feeling more relaxed now, right? The first thing you need to do is get to learn about your telescope. Is it a reflector? A refractor? A catadioptric (huh?)? A catadioptric is a mix of a reflector and a refractor. First up… reflectors have mirrors and reflect the light that strikes them. Refractors have lenses and refract light. Catadioptric telescopes are hybrids… having lenses and mirrors. The type of telescope that you have determines how it collects light. Light collection (not magnification) is the single most significant characteristic of telescopes. Most of what you’ll be looking at through your telescope is too faint to see with the unaided eye. Galaxies, nebulae and star clusters are all quite distant and (typically) quite faint. It is the light gathering ability of your telescope that will reveal them to you. Your telescope will typically have a focuser. This is where you’ll put your eyepieces and focus the image being created. There are many good resources on each type of telescope. Search for a couple of these and you should find out more than you’re likely to need to know to operate your new piece of equipment. Read as much or as little for you to feel comfortable.

The next thing you’ll need to do is to familiarize yourself with the night sky. Even if you got a ‘goto telescope’, I can’t tell you with stronger conviction that you should gain a very comfortable understanding of the layout of the night sky. For this, a star chart or planisphere is key. These show you the night sky for a given time of year. Seek out and learn the names of the brightest stars in the sky… at least for the current season. Many people are familiar with the constellation Orion and its famous belt. This is a great starting point. If not, this is an easy one to find. Simply head outside shortly after dark and look to the southeast (for those in the northern hemisphere). Orion is a large constellation with a number of very bright stars. It is generally rectangular in shape and is cut by 3 bright stars in a diagonal. This is the belt of Orion. This is your key to learning the winter night sky. The stars of Orion are so bright that they tend to stand out even under light polluted skies. To the upper left of Orion is Betelgeuse.  To the lower right is Rigel. These are 2 of the 20 brightest stars in the night sky. From here, you can use your star chart to learn the constellations that border Orion.

Above Orion is the Constellation Taurus led by the bright star Aldebaran. Above this (north) is the constellation Auriga led by the bright star Capella. East of these constellations is Gemini with its twins Castor and Pollux. Smack in the middle of all of this is the red planet Mars. Mars is currently at its biggest and brightest for the year, so you won’t be able to miss this. This little swath of night sky is full of literally dozens of Messier Objects. Messy what? Messier Objects. Google this. Seriously. The Messier Objects are what you’ll spend a good portion of your observing time chasing after and observing. These are what most amateur astronomers cut their teeth on. They are a list of some of the finest objects to be observed in amateur telescopes. The Orion Nebula, The Andromeda Galaxy, The Hercules Cluster. These are just a few of the amazing astronomical objects that inhabit the night sky… waiting for you to seek and eventually find them. The stars and constellations listed above are your roadmap. Study them well and these and countless other objects are there for the taking. Head out whenever you have the opportunity. Even if you won’t be able to use your telescope. Just get out under the stars and you’ll slowly come to know them as you know your good friends.

Winter has finally arrive here in Park City. About 20″ or so fell in the last couple of days with more likely (and hopefully) on the way. Park City is ski country. That’s one of the main reasons that I’m here. That said, I’m also an avid astronomer. Park City’s snow filled winters can be a bit of a challenge to the hobby. Here’s a picture of what I awoke to this morning. I spent quite a bit of time clearing off the deck (twice) and the driveway (twice). Summer and fall are generally quite clear and great for observing. Winter, on the other hand tends to be quite a bit stormier. We get lots of snow here typically, and that means considerably more cloud cover.

On top of the cloud cover, snow is quite reflective. As such, light pollution from outdoor lighting is magnified considerably in the winter. Even night sky friendly down lights hit the reflective snow and send a huge proportion of this light back up into the night sky. In some instances, this requires astro-imagers to cut their exposure times considerably. This just makes it that much harder to get the killer photos that I’m aiming for.

Don’t let me bum you out too bad though. There are many pluses to astronomy in the winter. First of all, it gets dark really early… and stays dark until well into the morning. Finding time to get out and observe is typically much easier. Also, the winter night sky is chock full of some truly amazing astronomical targets. We’ve already seen M42, the Orion Nebula. It’s been amazing, and its not even really well positioned yet. The constellation Andromeda is sitting over head as soon as it gets dark. Andromeda is home to the sweetest galaxy visible to northern observers, M31 the Andromeda Galaxy. Swinging in the other direction, M45 the Pleiades Star Cluster in Taurus is an awesome rich field target. Just behind (east) this, the constellation Gemini is home to a few treats as well.

So, don’t think that you can’t do astronomy in the winter. You’ll certainly will want to bundle up as temps can be quite low in many areas… especially given that this is a predominantly low energy endeavor. However, the number and diversity of astronomical targets make it more than worth the effort.

I’ll finish by mentioning that next Thursday night into Friday morning (12/13-12/14), the annual Geminid Meteor Shower peaks. This is probably the best meteor shower of the year. It routinely puts 50+ meteors per hour during its peak and can easily top 100 per hour during better shows. This years event is pretty nicely helped by the fact that the moon will be less than 1/2 illuminated and setting before midnight.

We headed down to Goblin Valley for the weekend. This seemed like an ideal time to go… weather was forecast to be nice (and it mostly was)… and we were to be under a full hunter’s moon. Hunter’s Moon is the name given to the October full moon by native Americans. As it turned out, we never did get into Goblin Valley for a moon light hike. Skies were cloudy the only night that would have worked for us. We had to make do with sunny, day light hikes. This is, by no means a sad situation, as Goblin Valley State Park is amazing under almost any conditions imaginable. Anyway….

I caught the moon rising as I headed south on Highway 6, just north of Green River, UT. I pulled over, broke out the tripod and snapped a few shots through the Rebel XTi. The moon is a bit overexposed. I should try to clean this up with Photoshop or Gimp. I was setup right on the side of the highway, so I had to be concerned about the cars and trucks speeding by at 80mph. Anyway, it still manages to convey the beauty of the scene, with the orange moon rising above the red rock cliffs.

I didn’t expect to get any deep sky imaging in because of the full phase of the moon. I figured I do some tweaking on my system (I actually did some). Then, I got an email alert of a new comet suddenly brightening to naked eye visibility. I figured, what the heck… I’ll go out and see if I could see it. Well… duh…. I certainly could… it was right there… as if a new star had been added to the venerable constellation Perseus. Reports were indicating that the comet had brightened from mag 17 yesterday (this is beyond the reach of backyard telescopes) to mag 2 (easily naked eye visible). This is a 500,000x increase in brightness… for the mathematically challenged Maybe there was more to it than I’d expected? Only a look through the telescope would tell for sure.

I’d rebalanced the telescope earlier in the day, so I figured I’d do a quick 3 star alignment. I did this quickly and pointed the scope towards what I assumed was Comet Holmes. At low power (40x) there wasn’t any doubt that I was looking at a non-stellar object. A round, ‘fuzzy’ star. I quickly cranked up the power and a bunch of detail in the comet’s core was instantly visible. The core was a bit oblong and somewhat off-centered. It was also surrounded by a bright, hazy coma. This was a really sweet surprise

Ok, so this is an astro photography site, right. Well, I did post an image of the comet… though I spent a fairly sizable portion of my time outside glued to the eyepiece. The accompanying image was a 2 second exposure at prime focus using a Canon Digital Rebel XTi at ISO 100. I was shooting through my Astro Physics Starfire 160 refractor.

Because of the nature of the comet, I had some trouble getting properly focused initially. I decided to slew the scope over to nearby Capella in the constellation Auriga. This object was bright enough that I could get a good focus. Next, I slewed over to Mirfak in Perseus. This was the nearest star to comet Holmes. From here, I slewed and centered by hand. I took a variety of exposures from 1/4 of a second up to about 20 seconds. The longer exposures were completely over exposed… showing none of the comet’s inner details. A series of stacked shorter exposures likely would have been the best approach. This would have given me the short quick detailed images… that combined would have given me the larger extent of a longer exposure. Regardless, this surprise comet was a welcome treat. I’m not sure how long it’ll be visible (its currently visible all night long… rare for comets), but previous outburst comets have stayed visible for many weeks. I’m hoping that Comet Holmes will spend a bit more time with us as well.

Need more? Checkout Comet 17/P Holmes at higher power and Comet 17/P Holmes II.1 with some background stars. More recently, see how the comet has grown in Comet 17P/Holmes III.

Astro Photo Details:

* Designation: Comet 17P/Holmes
* Constellation: Perseus
* Magnitude: 2.5
* Size: 15′ (roughly 1/2 the diameter of the full moon!)
NOTE: Now roughly 30′… same size as the full moon

Astro Photo Processing Details

* Canon Digital Rebel XTi
* Astro Physics Refractor
* 18 x 75s exposures at ISO1600
* Stacked using RegiStax 4
* Neat Image
* Photo Shop Levels
* Gimp Levels

My name is Anthony. I live in Park City, Utah. I have been obsessed with the night sky for over 10 years now. This site will attempt to convey my experiences in capturing the night sky digitally. For much of the time I’ve been interested in astronomy, I’ve been amazed by the ever improving results of “amateur” astro-photographers. Many of these so called amateurs are producing images that exceed the quality of top notch observatories only a decade or two ago. I have always wanted to join the ranks of this elite group. I’ve finally obtained the caliber of equipment that will (hopefully) allow me to venture in that direction.

Pictured here is a shot I took of myself and my trusty Astro Physics Starfire (AP-160) refractor. It was taken on the front deck of my home just before sunrise on August 13, 2007. This was the morning that the 2007 Perseid Meteor Shower peaked. This is where I’ll be doing the bulk of my imaging. Skies are not quite ideal here… not anymore, anyway. But, they are still pretty nice. I’ve estimated them to be in the neighborhood of mag 5.5. I can drive an hour or so and get to mag 7 skies, but… the ease and simplicity of walking out my front door makes this a good compromise.

Ok, so the site is entitled “Adventures in Astrophotography”. I came up with this a bit tongue in cheek. As I am currently not an “A-List” astrophotographer (or even B-List for that matter), I am setting out to become one. I have much to learn… and will undoubtedly make a bunch of mistakes along the way. I hope to share these experiences with you… and perhaps help you to take better images of the night sky… or at least share my photos with you.

I have been taking astro photos for a number of years now, so I’m not an absolute beginner. That said, my only real successes have for the most part been for short exposure, shallow sky images. The Sun, the Moon, Aurora, Meteors. I’ve never had the setup to be able to do my passion justice. I’m hoping and actually expecting that this will change over the coming months. Stay tuned, and wish me luck.