[AZ-Observing] Antennas site over the weekend
- From: "Steve Coe" <stevecoe@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 12:03:25 -0700
Howdy all;
Dave Fredericksen and I made our way out to the Antennas site and watched
the trees roll around in the breeze as we drove to the site. The good news
is that it did die off nicely about 9:30 and we observed a pretty wide Milky
Way and I took photos with my new Canon Xt camera on the barn door tracker.
At about 11 or so I had to know if I was getting decent results, so I fired
up the laptop and David and I saw that the stars were small, and it sure did
look like Sagittarius and Lyra. I observed with the 6" refractor for a
while, shot a few more "photos" and fell into the sleeping bag around 2 AM.
We awoke to clear, but breezy, day and the wind never completely went away.
Saturday night Rich Walker drove in and we chatted over sandwiches in the
twilight. I shot more photos and laid down for a nap about midnight. I set
the alarm and woke at 4:30 to a beautiful conjunction of the Moon, Venus,
Saturn and Regulus in Leo. It was beautiful in all forms-naked eye,
binoculars and in the scope. After about two dozen shots with a variety of
focal lengths the battery went dead and I went back to sleep for a few hours
until we awoke, tore down and drove home.
I think I learned a valuable lesson. Because I was trying to both observe
and shoot pictures I did not do either one to my satisfaction. The images
turned out OK, but some are out of focus and if I was not in a hurry to get
back to observing I probably would have double checked focus before opening
the shutter. In the same way, I got interrupted while observing by the
timer telling me to close the shutter on the image. I think in the future,
I will choose one activity or the other.
But, we had fun;
Steve Coe
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