Dave Wallace's Adventures in Astronomy

09/28/2003 0000 UTC

I spent the evening doing wide-field astrophotography. For this task, I removed the OTA from the mount and substituted a 35mm SLR camera with a 50mm f/1.4 lens, stopped down to f/2.5. Since I'm shooting on film (ISO 200 Elite Chrome), I have no idea what (if anything) I got.

I took exposures of 1.5, 3, 5 and 10 minutes aimed at the heart of Cygnus (just about straight up a 8 PM local time). This had two purposes: first, I was hoping to get some nice shots of the nebulousity in that area and second I'm still trying to "calibrate" the local (suburban Massachusetts) sky. I think the sky glow should fog the film at about 7 minutes with this photographic set-up. So the 5 minute shot should be on one side of that and the 10 minute shot should be on the other.

Then I did a series of 1, 2, 4 and 8 minutes aimed at M31. In the telescope, M31 shows as a low-contrast fuzzy oval patch.

Next, more or less just for fun, I shot a 1, 2 and 4 minute series of Ursa Major and 1 and 2 minute exposures of Cassiopeia, Delphinus, Aquila and Lyra. That burned up most of the roll. I wanted to save a couple of frames for daytime shots so that the photo lab can cut the negatives in the right spot, so I called it quits at about 9:30 local time. Just as well -- I was starting to get dew on the lens. (The Lyra series might come out a little soft.)