Look At All Those Stars!

Oracle State Park Dark Skies Star Party

Star Party participants waiting in line for the telescopes

We went to another star party last night; this time at Oracle State Park, north of Tuscon. It was about a 2 hours drive from our house in Sierra Vista, but I think the pictures we got made it worthwhile.

This was our second attempt at photographing the nigth sky. The first time when we went to Chiricahua National Monument I had no idea what I was doing, and we kind of learned on the fly. Being a little better prepared, plus having that previous experience under our belts I think made a difference.

To be honest, the hardest part of the whole process was being able to visualize the shot in the dark when setting up the mini-tripod, then having to sit stil and quiet for 4 minutes while the Pixel captures the image(s).

I thought about writing up a tutorial for this, but it’s really as easy as making sure you have a sturdy mini-tripod, putting the Pixel in “night sight” mode, then waiting for a dark enough sky for the button to change from a moon to a star.

Making sure the tripod setup worked while there was still some light.

We were out there for about 3 hours. It cost $20 to get into the park, but they had live music for the first hour or so, and several high-powered telescopes set up for those who wanted to get a really good look at the constellations. We were even treated to a bonus Space-X launch just after the sun went down.

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Your Turn:

Have you ever tried to take pictures of the night sky?

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Til next time,

Todd

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