Southern Trails & Meteor
Facing south at the HAS site this image shows the two brightest stars in the night sky. Orion's 3 blue belt stars are easily seen, while some red nebulosity from M42, the Orion Nebula, is more subtle below that. The brightest star in the night sky is Sirius, the Dog Star, arching through the center at magnitude -1.44. Canopus is the bright star low on the southern horizon at mag -.62. A meteor is visible just right of the middle of the picture. And of course, all the red is from my flashlight during the estimated 5 hours exposure. Note you have to be south of 37 degrees N to be able to see Canopus. Here's a good discussion of the brightest stars. Here's a view further NE, but still showing Canopus.
Nikon F2 Camera, Nikon Nikkor 15mm f3.5 lens at f8, Fuji SHQ film.
North-Facing Star Trails
Nikon F3 camera with Sigma 14mm f3.5 lens at f8, looks like about a 5 hour exposure give or take an hour. I stopped this one because of dew. This is a really wide angle and you can make out the general layout of the HAS site with the trailer area and exit road on the right (east) side of the site.
Incidentally, my Nikon F3 seems to have "frozen" up at about 1:00 a.m., ambient temp 31 deg. F and sitting unprotected in the dark for 8 hours (doing the first star trails exposure). It had fresh batteries, but I'm guessing it just was too cold to work? The shutter released OK the next day when the camera was at room temp.
Copyright © 2006 by Dick Locke. All Rights Reserved.
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