Astro 9A/B/C: Astrophotography

Schedule and Suggested Projects

Welcome! Astro 9 is a bit of an interdisciplinary class, bridging the worlds of astronomical imaging and the visual arts. Students from both areas enjoy these classes. Astro 9 is taught 7-10pm in the Fall semester, when nights are longer and the skies usually clearer. Clear nights are spent at Cabrillo Observatory, cloudy and full moon nights in the photolab. Learn either classic film/darkroom techniques or digital imaging - your choice. We have the gear, and will do our best to help you realize your own goals. Formal requirements are minimal, as often we have busy adults who want an enjoyable experience and learn somethings along the way. Photographic subjects include star trails, widefield, telescopic moon shots, special effects, and high magnification digital imaging of nebulae, galaxies, and clusters. Our goal is for you to take home some beautiful and creative mounted photographs of night sky subjects at the end of the semester. Returning students sign up for 9B then 9C. The class includes an optional overnight camping/astrophoto trip to a scenic dark sky location, often determined by first looking at the central California light pollution map, and the wider area light pollution map. (I and Astro 9 alumni also do strategic guerrilla-style photo mini-trips for targeted opportunities, and these are usually at one of the nearby dark sky sites listed on this link). Some of our photo trips in recent years have been to the crest of the Panoche Hills above Mercey Hot Springs, about a 2 1/4 hour drive southeast of Santa Cruz. We also go to Bonny Doon Airfield on a night when the Santa Cruz Astronomy Club opens it for the astronomy communitie's use. It's much closer, but not quite as dark as Mercey Hot Springs.

Equipment and Facilities

This is an exciting time for Cabrillo Astronomy. Our new observatory is almost finished and will be ready for the Fall '08 semester. Constructed by the CEM students under Chuck Mornard as well as myself over the past year, this new 400 sqft building houses our 12" f/10 Schmidt Cassegrain on a G11 computer controlled mount, under a TI fiberglass dome controlled by infra-red dome sensors for positioning. The warm room has two computers for student control of the telescope and of the new ST2000XCM color CCD camera - a 1600x1200 single-shot color detector that should allow us incredible pictures. Other computers in the control room are available for student processing of their digital images with a full collection of software. The construction of the observatory is chronicled here.

In addition to use of the Cabrillo College photo lab (room 2023 in the new VAPA complex), the Astronomy Department has 6 computers for student use in room 705, each loaded with Adobe Photoshop and other astronomy-oriented imaging software. Room 705 also has a Minolta Scan Elite II film & negative scanner. The observatory also has several computers for student use, and desk space for operating your own laptop on those nights when clouds come in early. The observatory has a Minolta A1 digital camera, and Canon ZR45MC camcorder which can be mounted for afocal work to our Meade telescopes. Our 12" Meade f/10 (w/ f/6.3 reducer) under the dome has an SBIG ST2000XCM CCD camera, and we have an additional ST2000XCM color CCD camera as well as a 2Kx2K ST4000XCM camera for use on our portable telescopes - a Meade LXD75 8" f/4 on Losmandy GM-8 mount, and a Megrez APO 80mm flourite refractor on GM-8 mount. Our best photo setup uses our SBIG ST2000XCM color CCD camera mounted on either an 8" f/4 Schmidt Newtonian Meade LXD75 telescope system, or our Megrez 80mm APO flourite refractor, on a Losmandy GM-8 mount. See my photo page for the kind of pictures this setup can do. We also have a new Meade LX200GPS 8" scope for high magnification autoguided pictures with the ST2000XCM. For film work, most students should expect to use their own cameras. However, we do have an Olympus OM-1 and one or two other film cameras. These can be mounted on the department's tripods, or on a mounting board which is carried on our GM-8 mounted for long exposure guided shots. An Orion Short-Tube refractor can be used as a telephoto lens for many film camera types.

Our field trips will take advantage of some of our favorite local dark sky sites.

Fall '08 Course Highlights

Jupiter - will be closest to the earth in summer and still be well placed for photography for most of the semester. At the October 25 trip perhaps we'll try using the camcorder to record footage and later stack frames into a finished image. However, it's in Sagittarius and we'll be seeing it through a lot of atmosphere, which may make the project unfeasible.

Projects: Here's suggested projects for students. Astro 9A students may choose between doing projects using class film techniques, or using digital imaging, or a combination of both.

Optional Field Trip

We traditionally have a Saturday night overnight field trip to a dark sky location so you can get a chance to really photograph faint Milky Way star fields and nebulae using our portable telescopes and digital cameras. It's optional, but is a highlight of the class. Past trips have gone to Mercey Hot Springs 2 hours southeast of Santa Cruz in 2003, 2004, and 2005, and a special trip to Pleasure Point to photograph the total lunar eclipse in Oct 2004.

Our past events page is full of other impromptu astrophoto mini-adventures locally, enjoy!

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