My original plan for tomorrow was to go to Sprague and start planning the Castle Rock Family ATV Club's scavenger hunt. Not too many Sundays left between now and June 21st. But, sounds like rain all day tomorrow.

I tried experimenting with taking pictures through my telescope. Won't work. The lens on my camera is so large, and even my lowest power eyepiece for my telescope is so small that all I get is a dot in the middle of the picture. A cheaper camera with a smaller lens would actually work better. I noticed that places on the Web sell bigger eyepieces to fit my telescope, just for such instances, but they cost more than my old beat up scope is worth.

So far I'm batting a thousand! Just my luck! Ha ha! Doesn't matter to me, I don't depend on luck.

Wow! Last night was an absolute gorgeous evening for stargazing! Not a cloud in the sky and the stars were so bright. The following pictures don't do it justice, but they are where I'm at so far in my night sky photography skills! I've got this great program (and it's free for downloading from the Internet!) that I use for looking up things in the night sky. It's called Stellarium. Awesome program. It shows you the night sky for, shit, I don't even know, maybe 1000 years into the future and 1000 years in the past? Anyway, I hadn't loaded it on my laptop yet so I did that last night. Then I carried my camera, binoculars, laptop, and some of my notes outside and looked at stars half the night - until I had no more juice in any of my batteries!


Mars, the crescent Moon, and the twins of Gemini - Castor and Pollux. I took this picture with moderate zoom. The more zoom you use, the more apparent the movement of the Earth becomes, producing star trails in this 15 second exposure.
ISO speed rating: 80
Shutter speed: 15.0 sec
Aperture: f/4.0
Zoom (Focal length): 111mm (equiv.)*
Exposure bias: +0.0 EV
Original image size: 640 x 480 Pixels
Flash used: No
Date taken: Friday, May 09, 2008
Time taken: 9:04 PM
Camera make: Canon
Camera model: Canon PowerShot SX100 IS


Saturn and Regulus. High zoom created even longer star trails in this 15 second exposure.
ISO speed rating: 80
Shutter speed: 15.0 sec
Aperture: f/4.3
Zoom (Focal length): 330mm (equiv.)*
Exposure bias: +0.0 EV
Original image size: 640 x 480 Pixels
Flash used: No
Date taken: Friday, May 09, 2008
Time taken: 9:09 PM
Camera make: Canon
Camera model: Canon PowerShot SX100 IS


Last night's Moon, craters, and even a mountaintop visible just inside the shadow.
ISO speed rating: 80
Shutter speed: 1/15 sec
Aperture: f/8.0
Zoom (Focal length): 330mm (equiv.)*
Exposure bias: +0.0 EV
Original image size: 640 x 480 Pixels
Flash used: No
Date taken: Friday, May 09, 2008
Time taken: 9:19 PM
Camera make: Canon
Camera model: Canon PowerShot SX100 IS


Mars, Moon, Gemini Twins again, but with many surrounding stars.
ISO speed rating: 400
Shutter speed: 15.0 sec
Aperture: f/2.8
Zoom (Focal length): 33mm (equiv.)*
Exposure bias: +0.0 EV
Original image size: 640 x 480 Pixels
Flash used: No
Date taken: Friday, May 09, 2008
Time taken: 9:40 PM
Camera make: Canon
Camera model: Canon PowerShot SX100 IS


The dotted streak in the lower right corner is a jet.
ISO speed rating: 400
Shutter speed: 15.0 sec
Aperture: f/2.8
Zoom (Focal length): 33mm (equiv.)*
Exposure bias: +0.0 EV
Original image size: 640 x 480 Pixels
Flash used: No
Date taken: Friday, May 09, 2008
Time taken: 9:41 PM
Camera make: Canon
Camera model: Canon PowerShot SX100 IS


Stars, stars, stars!
ISO speed rating: 400
Shutter speed: 15.0 sec
Aperture: f/2.8
Zoom (Focal length): 33mm (equiv.)*
Exposure bias: +0.0 EV
Original image size: 640 x 480 Pixels
Flash used: No
Date taken: Friday, May 09, 2008
Time taken: 9:52 PM
Camera make: Canon
Camera model: Canon PowerShot SX100 IS