The night sky

I've been cleaning the optics on my old catadioptric and that's almost ready to get back into service.  New T-ring adapter for the Nikon... so a think a lunar post or maybe the rings of Jupiter will make there way into this blog soon.  Just need another good clear night and some anti-bug stuff.

So last night it was a clear sky, and I took these two pics with the camera stopped down to F3.5 and an ISO of 100.  Just a little experiment with long exposures.

I actually saw a couple of the Perseid meteorites this evening. But wasn't set up in the right place to capture those.

A proper 30 minute long exposure focused on Polaris. 

Dubhe and Merak were very bright in last nights low haze atmosphere.  Not as good as a winter pic, but still fun! Did you know that the pole star has changed over time?  If you look carefully at the 30 minute exposure there is very little tracking around several faint stars clustered around Polaris.

AML NLO, JRO, SEC AML