Eclipse and Night Sky, this project is a direct result of a trip we made out to Fort Griffin State Historic site for a star party. Seeing the MilkyWay agin in the night sky, had forgotten what it was like. I had picked up a nice spotting scope and found I could adapt a digital camera to it and that opened the door of many, many photos of our Moon. Night, Astro, photography is where a digital camera really shines.The ability to capture the Moon, I use a 150mm-600mm lens with 1.4x extension for many shots. In April of 2024 there was a total eclipse of the sun and I was able to view and photograph it from my backyard. Felt very fortunate that I could view it from my backyard as it made setting up a 6 inch schmidt cassegrain telescope with a digital camera attached to it. Using the display on the back of the camera you could still see the progress of the eclipse. Another digital camera was setup with 150-600mm lens but you had to manually track the sun.
The MilkyWay photos were typically made using a wide to very wide lens with moderately long exposure times. The goal was to capture as much information as possible and still not have the star start to show movement. Another popular subject for night sky are meteor showers and comets. Comet Hale-Bopp was the first comet I photographed, and back in 1997 it was done with film. It wasn’t that good, but the fact you could tell it was a comet was great. Today, photographing a comet is much easier and the challenge becomes finding a good location with interesting foreground.
Spending time outdoors with friends while photographing the night sky is some of the best and relaxing time I have enjoyed.