Monday, October 20, 2003

Astrophotography

The sky was really clear and dark Wednesday night, so I set my alarm for 4 am. on Thursday. When the alarm went off, I peered outside through blurry eyes and it still looked good. So I dragged out a table and chair, power cords, telescope, computer, monitor, keyboard, mouse, and most importantly - the Phillips Toucam Pro webcam.

The Moon and Saturn were conveniently positioned right next to each other, straight overhead. I shot a bunch of avi movies of Saturn and the Moon, and a couple of Jupiter, which was coming up as dawn broke.

Now I'm ready for hours of fun indoors at the computer as I learn how to process the image files and make beautiful pictures. I've done one of Saturn and posted it on Club Photo, along with a shot of Mars that I made last summer when it was closest to the Earth.

I had tried my hand at astro photography some 15 years ago using film cameras, and I must say that I'm having a lot more fun in the digital age. It is much easier to get usable results, although it will take a lot of practice to match the truly awesome images I've seen on the internet. (no web link here, ha-ha, don't want my images to suffer by comparison)
I can see why web cam astrophotography is a rapidly growing worldwide phenomenon.

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