Suggested textbook (not required): "Photoshop Astronomy" by Scott Ireland
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 (in the astronomy / geology lab room 705), when nights are longer and the skies usually clearer. Clear nights are spent at Cabrillo Observatory, cloudy and full moon nights in the classroom. 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,. We also go to Bonny Doon Airfield on a night when the Santa Cruz Astronomy Club opens it for the astronomy community's use. It's much closer, but not quite as dark as Mercey Hot Springs.
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Check out... Our Image Project Galleries... |
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Our new observatory was completed recently. Constructed by the CEM students under Chuck Mornard as well as myself, this 400 sqft building houses our 12" f/10 Schmidt Cassegrain on a G11 computer controlled mount, under a 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 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 film photo lab (room 2023 in the new VAPA complex), the Astronomy Department has 6-8 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 an Olympus OM-1 film camera and Nikon D40 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 ST4000XCM color CCD camera for use on our portable telescopes - two Meade LXD75 8" f/4's on Losmandy GM-8 mounts, and a Megrez APO 80mm flourite refractor on GM-8 mount. See my photo page for the kind of pictures this setup can do. We also have a 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.We now also have our new Nikon D40 camera. With this, students to do wide-angle digital images of stars and foreground+stars compositions. Here's a link showing the technical performance of this camera. And sensor cleaning link.
Our field trips will take advantage of some of our favorite local dark sky sites.
We continue our evolution from a primarily film-based class to a primarily digital astrophotography class. Unlike the old photo lab, the new film photo lab is not suitable for the increasing digital photography that we do, and our class for the first time is being held in the Astronomy/Geology lab classroom 705. This will make our digital work MUCH easier to accomplish. Those who would like to do film work can still do so, however they will need to pay the Art Photography department (not the astronomy department) their lab fee for use of the photo lab and arrange their own times for use of the lab.
Projects:Here's suggested projects for students. Astro 9A students may choose between doing projects using classic film techniques, or using digital imaging, or a combination of both. (Note that since the class is no longer held in the film lab, it will be very useful if the film students have already had experience in developing and printing black and white photos so that they will be able to do that portion of their work fairly independently). Each photograph needs to be well documented - part of the process of learning and refining your techniques. Here's an example of what you should turn in as far as documentation of each photo.
Must turn in your best 5 photo projects. Film or digital - your choice. Each film project must be developed and printed by you in the photo lab, and mounted (or framed) on mountboard, and include a typed label on the front with your name, object, date, exposures. On the back of the frame or mountboard must be another typed description of the techniques you used. Digital images are submitted by email to me as full resolution .jpg's. You must also submit a typed label for every photo, and another typed description of all the software and steps done in producing the final image. An example of a framed digital image with label is on this page
30 points possible per image
-- 5 pts for typed image label
-- 8 pts for full description of image, steps
-- 17 pts for image itself. Processed well?: properly cropped, noise minimized,
colors right, sharpened as well as possible?
150 pts total possible +
10 pts for attendence = 160 points for course
-- 135 pts = A (85%)
-- 115 pts = B (72%)
-- 96 pts = C (60%) or “credit”
-- 80 pts = D (50%)
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, and you'll need every opportunity you can to get photos with our limited amount of equipment. 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. We'll decide after discussing with the class whether you'd like a trip to Mercey Hot Springs.
Directions to Mercey Hot Springs: Drive to Watsonville, then Hwy 129 to San Juan Bautista and Hollister, south to Paicines and turn left onto Panoche Road, over the hills into Panoche Valley and past the old cowboy bar and left onto Little Panoche Rd to Mercey Hot Springs. Then go one mile further past the hot springs and look for a dirt road - Panoche Access (sign is pictured on this page). Drive up this road a few miles till you get to a locked gate, at the hilltop, which has a panoramic view in all directions. Click here to see a large scale map and note "Mercey Hot Springs" on the right side. Click here for a close up and note the red "X" circle where our site is. If you have a GPS, the coordinates are at the bottom of the page. And this link shows an aerial picture of our site from close up. Here's some more maps I made. Here, here, here, and here.
Dark Sky field trip - Saturday Nov 14, 2009. 8:45pm - midnightBonny Doon Airfield Directions: Drive up Empire Grade past UCSC, past Felton-Empire Rd, and look for Sunlit Lane on your left. Then drive another 1/2 mile past and look for a string of wooden posts set in the ground on the left. There you'll see a big fancy metal gate which will be open. Drive in and you'll see a large paved parking area and a huge grassy airfield and a scattering of nerdy astronomers. We'll be on the left side most likely. The SCAC site has more directions |
Dark Sky Trip to the Hills Above Mercey Hot Springs - Nov 20 Fridayprobably cancelled due to rain on Friday and partly cloudy conditions forecast. Fred has bailed and I'm coming down with a cold... Too bad we didn't get more people at last week's successful Bonny Doon trip. That's all folks, for the dark sky trips!
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If it turns out to be impossible for you to get your pix on our Cabrillo 8" or 12" scopes, remember you can use your own camera and our tripod and shot pix around the observatory. Also, worst case, we'll get you some photos from past classes which you can then work on and turn into your projects.
Images from our past Dark Sky trips are in the galleries webpage for this class. Our past events page is full of other impromptu astrophoto mini-adventures locally, enjoy!
