Last year after getting a Canon DSLR camera, I spent as much time as I could doing some basic astrophotography. I took photos of stars, planets, the Moon, and even did some star trails. One thing I quickly realized is that there are limitations if you don’t have a tracking mount or a telescope adaptor. The tracking gives you a method for taking longer exposures, and the telescope adaptor as expected gives you the ability to zoom in on distant objects. Even with these temporary limitations (I hope to invest in them someday) there are still a lot of options...
Even though the weather has been insanely cold in Canada the past few weeks, there is an upside for astronomers. Call me a perpetual optimist, but when it’s colder in Canada than it is on Mars, you have to find some kind of silver lining. The upside is that colder weather and clear skies are sometimes synonymous. I’m not a meteorologist so I don’t have any reason to go into detail as to why, but we have had a lot of cold, clear evenings. I’ve had a chance to go outside and test my new DSLR camera, at least for a...
Yesterday’s post had me discuss the partial Solar Eclipse that occurred around sunset for most of North America. The one thing I neglected to mention was regarding safe viewing of it. In reality if you saw the sun with your bare eyes during a partial eclipse, it looks like the sun any other time of day – its bright. Don’t damage your eyes. I found a bit of time in the afternoon to build a pinhole camera, which basically consists of a tube or box with a pinhole in one end and a film or ‘viewing area’ at the other...
