Truly a stargazing mermaid

I don't make resolutions. But after I started photographing the Northern Lights, I realized that it has been a long time since I saw the Milky Way with my own eyes. What with living in a city and all. I decided that I was going to see and photograph the Milky Way at some point in 2014.

I've actually made camping plans for later this year to address that. But that wasn't my only plan.

The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada - Calgary chapter held "Milky Way Nights" last week during the new moon. It was at the Rothney Astrophysical Observatory. I went there as part of a meetup, but due to circumstances, only met one other person. It's okay. Because the event itself was awesome. There were astronomers at all three big telescopes, plus lots of others at smaller telescopes, and a guy with a laser pointer pointing out constellations and planets and stars. I saw Saturn. And a double star that's part of the Big Dipper. And globular clusters. It was fun and I would totally do it again.

And I saw the Milky Way.

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Penumbral eclipse

The moon is entering the Earth's penumbra, before the clouds rolled in.

Unfortunately a thick cloud cover rolled in. This was one of the last photos I took before the moon completely disappeared behind the clouds.

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Photography mojo

I posted in the Aurora Chasers Facebook group about needing to learn more about night photography. I got some really great constructive feedback.

And tonight I took this in my backyard, with my camera and telephoto lens. It felt good to grab this image.


Tomorrow night - the eclipse!

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I photographed Mars

Tonight, I made sure the tripod was stable and played around with different settings, including a faster shutter speed. I also used my handy-dandy new remote control.

I cropped this, but did not use filters or make any other adjustments. I think a telescope would definitely give a better picture. But, I did it. I figured out how to get a non-blurry photo of Mars and I'm happy with it.

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Mars over Calgary

Since Mars is close to the Earth now, and there is an eclipse happening next week, I decided I ought to experiment with photographing the night sky.

Mars over Calgary. In the middle of the photograph.

I used a timer on the camera to reduce jiggle. I need to tweak the shutter speed because all of the close-ups showed jiggling. This is a heavily cropped image of one of the close-ups. And holy crap, my camera photographed another freaking planet. Who cares if it isn't perfect? Teenage me, who used to spend a lot of time in the backyard looking up, is very pleased with this.

FYI, if you ever want to buy one of my photos, that can be arranged. I don't tend to post links here because this is more of a personal blog, but I do have photographs for sale on other sites.

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Moon photography

From a park in the neighbourhood.


From my backyard, with a telephoto lens and cropped.

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Moon

Moon, a photo by angelamermaid on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
When I was younger, I asked my parents for a telescope. I envisioned a really cool telescope that I could closely examine the moon with, maybe spot a few planets. They got me a foldable telescope that you might see on a sailing ship.

So in 2013, it boggles my mind a bit that I can see the moon like this, with the telephoto lens on my camera.

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