Tag: Astrophotography
Spiraling Star Dust

Spiraling Star Dust

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M 81

I laid on the porch, gazing into the clear sky, as Orion slowly moved across the sky. In another area of the immenseness of space, my little smart telescope took 10 second exposures for 1 ½ hours of a small section of Ursa Major known as M 81 or Bode’s Galaxy.

The stars seemed to enhance the stillness of the evening as I allowed my mind to wander through constellations and galaxies. All chaos of the external world dropped away and the ‘I’ slowly dissolved into the vastness of the heavens.

I’m finding the night sky my haven, my place of refuge and safety, during these times of social discord and unrest. This quote I came up with sums it up for me:

The image I see on my iPhone–as the telescope works its magic–is below, but what I see when I look into the night sky is pure awe sprinkled with the stardust of Oneness.

If you want to know how the Hubble telescope sees in the M81 galaxy…..

M 81 is 11.6 million light years away and is a 6.9 magnitude spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major. In the center is a black hole 70 million times the mass of the Sun. This image taken by Hubble uses visible light and infrared light. Ultraviolet light from hot, young stars is fluorescing the clouds of hydrogen gas. M 81 is 15 times the mass of the Milky Way, our home galaxy. Thanks to NASA for the information and image.

My images won’t be perfect. I do very little post-processing because I want more moments under the sky and less hours in front of a computer. Some amateur astrophotographers devote hours to stacking, color correcting and come up with lovely images and that’s their bliss. I’m super-grateful there are those who choose to push the boundaries of software and computers to show us even more beauty. I’ll just sit outside as long as I can with a far-away look in my eyes and an open heart to the magnificence of the Universe. That’s my bliss.
Work With What You Have

Work With What You Have

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_tsl7170The moon was supposed to be in crescent phase. No clouds were forecast. I was ready to play with stars!

So the moon was half full and there were clouds. And there was wind which made sea oats blur with time exposures. But moonlight illuminated the snow-white sand and the clouds provided an interesting addition to some images. And waving sea oats provided an element of flow to the stillness of the heavens.

_tsl7169As I stood on the beach adjusting shutter speed, ISO, f-stop and focus, I thought how wonderful it is to be surprised in life. As I counted to 25, 34, 41….I considered the joy that can come from working with what we have, not necessarily what we want. The photographs looked really nice in my LCD screen so as I stood there, under the multitude of stars I thought, Who cares if there are clouds and the moon makes photographing the Milky Way challenging or even impossible? Isn’t it awesome that the sea oats are dancing?

_tsl7187If we always have exactly what we want, how would we learn to be creative? Anyone can take the formula for astrophotography and make a decent shot. But what if conditions are simply not conducive for the sought after goal? Give up and go home? Or play?

Life is like that. We wish for events to turn out as we envision but it’s not always like that. And in the end, sometimes it’s even better. I aimed my camera and counted off the seconds with the shutter timer over and over. This morning a shooting star awaited me. Never expected that….but what a nice surprise.

_tsl7193More than anything though, the night of photographing stars finally helped me illustrate the feelings of wonder and awe I experience when monitoring sea turtle nests under such amazing celestial beings on the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico.

“We show up, burn brightly, live passionately, hold nothing back, and when the moment is over, when our work is done, we step back and let go.” (Rolf Gates) And sometimes we yell with joy, “WOO HOO!!!”

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