A Night at the Winter Star Party

While at the Winter Star Party in February, I imaged with multiple cameras through the night. The primary camera was on the telescope with a secondary wide angle camera on the G11 mount and a third camera for night landscape from a tripod. One of the techniques I wanted to experiment with was a time-lapse of our imaging area with a star field for the entire night. My first results of this can be found on my Vimeo page linked below. A higher quality video is available for download from the Vimeo webpage for Vimeo members. Registration is simple and takes only a few seconds.

I really hope to explore this technique more fully over the coming months and to incorporate the results in a more comprehensive artistic output. I hope you enjoy the video and there is more information on the Vimeo webpage. I am also experimenting with the video capabilities of the 5D Mark II and will update the blog with results from that soon. Thanks and take care...

A Night at the Winter Star Party 2009

The Globular Cluster of Stars

What contains over 5 million solar masses, has about the same mass of the smallest whole galaxies, and is the second brightest globular cluster in the local group of galaxies? The globular cluster known as Omega Centauri or NGC 5139 is the answer. This image was captured along the beaches of the Florida Keys during the Winter Star Party in February. (Please click on the image for a larger presentation.)

The image was taken with a relatively short focal length telescope at 400mm. This view is very close to approximating the view through a nice pair of astronomical binoculars. That is my favorite way to view this object as the sparkling cluster shimmers against a backdrop of dark space. For more information on the object please see
http://messier.obspm.fr/xtra/ngc/n5139.html.

The image information is: captured with a modified Canon 450D, 11 frames of 3.5 minutes each at ISO 1600 on a TMB 92mm telescope at f5. The mount used was an Astro-Physics 400GOTO. All processing in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. Please contact me if you have any further questions and I hope you enjoy the image.

If you are ever at a southern location in northern hemisphere winter, please do yourself a favor and gaze through a pair of binoculars at this heavenly site.