Twenty eight years ago today, on August 17, 1984 I exposed Ektachrome for the first time and accomplished my very first astrophotos. These are certainly not my best work, but they are still fondly remembered. I still recall the excitement of viewing the slide for the first time and proudly projecting it at family gatherings.
It was a pivotal moment. It fueled the dreams of a young astrophotographer yearning to capture the magnificent fields of the Milky Way. This photographer is no longer sixteen, but I still get a thrill of exposing the night sky. And when the film comes back, poring over the fresh images, I’m realizing the completion of the dream of that midsummer night.
Pentax Spotmatic II with 50mm f/1.4 SMC Takumar and 10 minute exposure on Kodak Ektachrome 100 slide film from my front yard in Ellsworth, Maine
Thursday, August 16, 2012
All Those Years Ago......... Cygnus
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Messier 22 Region
What's old is new again. This shot from 2007 was a brief exposure which capitalizes on star colors.
Located near the top of the Teapot in Sagittarius, Messier 22 is a huge globular that is big enough to be prominent in wide-field images, suspended near the rich edge of Sagittarius Milky Way. Compare its size to the tiny M-28 to the lower right of the frame. Messier 22 is plainly visible to the unaided eye, even when low on the horizon on a clear dark night.
Pentax Spotmatic II & 300mm SMC Takumar 15 minutes @ f/4 Kodak ED200
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Black and White Dreams
For some time I have been wanting to produce a tribute to the great Edward Emerson Barnard with a set of B&W photographs captured in very much a similar manner as Barnard himself had completed over 100 years ago. Barnard was a pioneer in the field of astrophotography, indeed often attributed as the Father of Milky Way photography.
In June and July I set out to produce an initial effort to produce such a photograph. Although not the first B&W analog image I have taken on, this image is the first in a series just for this project.
This image, a mosaic of two frames, was taken on one of the shortest nights of the year and with sky conditions deteriorating as night turned to morning.
Featuring the Milky Way of Ophiuchus and Scorpius with many of the dark nebulae recorded and cataloged by the great Barnard himself, this image is markedly wider. This is due in part to being a mosaic, as the two images themselves have been taken with as Barnard did, with a portrait lens.
From the observatory notes:
My observatory notes from that night:
June 18, 2012 Shortest Night of the Year.
"Clear with threat of fog. Transparency average, becoming poor with sky becoming brighter by early morning. Transparency became very poor by end of run. I continued as stars were dimmed, but not condensed. All frames used the SMC Pentax 200mm f/4 @ f/5.6 and B+W 021 light-yellow filter."
Scorpius Frame: 10:30-11:30 SQM 21.14
Ophiuchus Frame: 11:35-12:35 SQM 21.22
Average SQM reading for my astrophotography site are on average, 21.5 mags/sq-arc-sec. So the night was much brighter than average.
Perhaps the filter helped with the low contrast sky, which was muddy in appearance. I stuck with it and I'm glad I did. I might not have if I was using color transparency film.
Friday, July 6, 2012
Scutum & Sagittarius Region
The multitudes of stars, star clusters, both dark and bright nebulae populate this rich region of southern Scutum and northern Sagittarius.
A much "bothersome" area for Charles Messier, who could not fathom what these objects were and was primarily interested in comets. I'll take the permanence of these objects any day. Sorry Charlie!
A heavily cropped section of a single frame shot with the Pentax 67 and SMC 200MM F/4 @ F/5.6 and Kodak E200 exposed for 45 minutes and developed N + 1.5 .
nightflyphotography.blogspot.com/
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Tao
"The almost legendary Chinese sage, Lao Tzu, speaking to us across a gulf of 2500 years, finds the ultimate source of wisdom in the contemplation of the infinite; in lines which foreshadow some of the speculation of modern cosmologists he tells us, in the Tao Teh Ching or "Book of Tao"
With high regard for Robert Burnham Jr.
Reference Burnham's Celestial Handbook volume 3 Pages 1631-1633
Image copyright 2012, James W. Cormier
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Legacy Astrophotography: Heart of the Milky Way
For deep sky observers and astrophotographers; the stuff of dreams.
Happy Fathers Day!
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
The Great Sagittarius Star Cloud
The brightest and grandest star cloud in all the Milky Way captured with traditional B&W methods. The structure and detail of the Great Cloud is visible in binoculars or a richest-field telescope. This photograph was taken last June on a particularly clear night. This upcoming dark of the Moon will have my camera revisit these familiar areas.