What the sky looks like to an astronomer, 3.0 (I think) in The irresistible Urge To Play with Light

June 19, 2014, 12:19 p.m.
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I've been away for a while. First, you see, there was the planning for an astronomy field trip, and then there was the field trip itself, in a place with dubious internet... but we got through all that and I came back with.. I dunno. Maybe it's a lot. Maybe it's a little.

Regardless, my students and myself went up to Port Dickson in Malaysia, tagging along on the local astronomy society's retreat

and... well,.

The sky was not cooperative. Although that came with fringe benefits: The evenings were stunning:

Day 1

Day 2

So how bad was it? This bad (This is actually the second night. On the first night the clouds were so thick you couldn't even see the glow of the moon.)

And because of schedule clashes, the trip was pushed forwards, resulting in it happening just around the full moon.

It makes for difficult astrophotography, and once you've photographed the moon once, there isn't much more to it, really.

Creative minds get bored easily.

Creative minds in the presence of lightsticks and lasers and cameras get... creative.

The second night was better. I was able to photograph the moon:

and a quick shot of the Southern Cross, with Omega Centauri visible in the top left corner:

And then? Clouds. Naturally.

(Vega and Lyra)

Day 3 gave us a wonderful sky, at least initially.

So I was able to set up my tracking mount and get one -- one-- shot of Omega Centauri at maximum zoom before it set

and take a shot of the Milky Way. (Kind of. There are clouds in the bottom left corner)

Note that this is a single photo, unlike the previous ones which were combined together from various shots. And it's not because I didn't want to stack them; the sky was simply too fickle to allow it.

But it was good enough for visual astronomy. Since the object of the trip was not, in fact, to perform astrophotography, but to introduce my students to astronomy, that was fine.