Rick's Blog

Star Trails - or Star Wheel I took this picture a few years ago but I thought it was a little to bright (over exposed). So now that I have gotten a little better with my processing AP Pixinsight, I thought I would try to see what I could do with it. I was able to darken it a little and by doing so it brought out the colors of the stars. I think it looks pretty good now.  

The Milky Way In August of this year I went to Spruce Knob W.V. which is a dark sky site. Looking east you can see Virginia. I wanted to get pictures of the Milky Way. here are two of them. They were taken with my film camera. I used Kodak Ultra Max 400 speed color film. This picture was a 5 minute exposure with a 28mm lens. The next picture is a 4 minute exposure with a 50mm lens.

The Milky Way This is a 4 minute exposure with a 50mm lens.  

Oh boy, another picture of the moon  When the moon is big and bright it washes out the night sky so much that you can't photograph any thing else. So to give me something to do..... I photographed the moon.... again. The atmosphere was calm and transparent and I think this is the best picture of the moon I have taken so far.

Saturn This picture was taken the same night as the next picture of Jupiter but this picture was taken at 10:30 p.m. The same processing was done with this picture as was done with Jupiter. But you can see how much difference it makes when the target is much higher in the sky.

Jupiter  Jupiter is the highest in the sky that I have ever seen it. So at 3:30 in the A.M. I took 10,000 video frames. Aligned and stacked 1,000 frames. And this is the result. This picture was taken with low power focal length. The next clear night I will do it again with high power focal length.