BOUMATIC DAIRY EQUIPMENT

... for newborn stars of course. Young ones in the 2 million yr old range...

OK, I forewarned y’all back in August that I was going to get more into the astrophotography thing : ). I finally finished my project to get a tracking mount motorized. A 2x4 was involved, so you know it was a good project. I’m going to save the gory equipment details unless someone with an interest prompts me for them : ). But this was taken with a 400mm lens, not a telescope.

I took my first “astrophotos” as a geeky teen in the late 80’s. Placing my Pentax K1000 on a tripod and pointing to Orion… waiting several days to get film developed and find out if they read my note about what it was and how to process them. (Very often—not) I thought it was too cool that you could pick up color in that fuzzy smudge in Orion’s sword, the famous Orion Nebula. (And what else would I choose as my first subject?) But seeing long exposure tracked photos, and all the color and detail that was invisible to our eyes… I always wondered if I could eventually capture something like that.

That was an expensive proposition “back in the day”, but astrophotography is now more accessible than ever to amateurs. There are many steps along the way that you have to learn, but capturing this image really wasn’t that difficult. The astronomy stacking software that is available for free is unbelievable.

So I’m pretty pleased with this as a first effort... from geeky childhood to geeky adulthood, here we have my inaugural deep space photo. There is much still to be tweaked. The processing itself is an art, and it’ll be awhile before I get that conquered. If I were doing this image “right”, I’d have blended a separate exposure for the core of the nebula, which is clearly blown out.

The question then becomes: why do it? If I want to see images of the Orion Nebula, I could just search flickr or astronomy sites for pictures that are 100 times better. I don’t know if I can answer that! Maybe I did at the end of the 2nd paragraph. No matter what type of photography you enjoy, the appeal is having an image that is of your own creation, and progressing to find your personal best.

Unlike my lovely and talented wife, who can paint and draw and write poetry, I have few creative natural abilities. Can’t even play a musical instrument. Sniff, sniff. So the camera is that outlet. (She would be a much better photographer than I if she ever got into it) So, Dear, if you’re reading this—CAN’T I SPEND A LOT MORE MONEY ON PHOTOGRAPHY AND ASTRONOMY GEAR???

The End

Some of the children on the play equipment