NightScapes: Chasing the Light across the night sky. Exploring the techniques of capturing one of Natures most exciting photographic opportunities. We'll look at still photography, deepsky photography, and time lapse photography. We'll talk about navigating across the Constellations to identify what we discover. We will keep it as simple as possible and try to have some fun along the way as we explore techniques and contraptions, capturing and processing, posting and sharing, and maybe throw in a workshop or two. Join me as I set sail across the ocean of the sky...it's gonna be fun!

Sunday, August 31, 2014

Orions Belt

One of the more distinctive groups of stars in the winter night sky is Orions Belt. It is made up of three rather bright stars; Alnitak, a super giant star about 10,000 time brighter and 20 times the mass of our sun, Alnilam, another super giant blue white star about 18,000 brighter than our sun and 20 times the mass, and Mintaka, yet another giant about 7,000 times brighterand 20 times the mass of our sun. All three probably formed from the molecular clouds found in the constellation. All three are about 800 to 1000 light years from earth. Angling below them is Orions nebula, a star factory where new young stars are being formed.

Photographing Orion is rather easy as the stars stand out brightly on a clear winter night. As the summer approaches its end and fall filters into place, anticipation for the arrival of Orion grow quickly for those who find its form a fascinating image across the night sky.

Heres one from last April a few weeks before Orion disappeared for the summer. 50mm - f/6.3 - ISO 3200 - tracked for 40 seconds.

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