Probably the coolest project you'll do is to use our ST2000XCM color camera to take a gorgeous picture of some deep sky wonder - a star cluster, an emission nebula, a comet, a spiral galaxy... I'll help you get it set up, connect the camera to our laptop computer, and you'll take a series of 5-minute exposures while the camera carefully self-guides, tracking the motion of the stars across the sky. Then, on a cloudy night when you're in the classroom you'll use software on the computers in the labroom to turn your raw images into a beautiful color picture. You'll then make an 8x10 color print and submit it for me. Make another one and frame it for your wall - a memento of our time together! Maybe you'll get hooked on astrophotography and join us for my Astro 9 series of courses in a later semester. With the prints you'll submit, I'll be framing and showing your artwork at venues around town, as opportunity permits, and also keeping them for decorating our new Observatory building. The Good Times and Weekly Metro have listings of local art showings at local coffee houses etc.
Here are the gallery pages for each semester...
This is a new project - first added to our festivities in the Spring '06. The galleries will grow as time goes on. Using the same equipment, I often take my own images so you can see what they're capable of. My own images have the luxury of longer exposure times, typically an hour. Here's my gallery page. Others can be found amongst the past events, and on the Astro 9 gallery pages.