Learning

Recently I have been trying to use my star tracker without any good results. My star tracker did not come with any instructions, so yesterday I went onto the manufacturers website to see if it had any tutorials that may help with my learning. As it turns out, it does. My star tracker was made in China and as most of us know, Chinese instruction manuals are generally poorly written, so it’s probably good that it didn’t come with one. So I spent most of the day yesterday learning about my star tracker and how it works. In addition, I recently added another lens to my camera bag. This lens, comes highly recommended by other astrophotography enthusiasts. Last night I tried out what I learned and my new lens.

I started out trying to get photos of the Andromeda Galaxy. Unfortunately, even with an app on my phone showing where things are in the night sky, I was not able to find it. So I moved on to the Pleiades (Seven Sisters) star cluster. I was able to get some good photos of Pleiades. Some of these photos even have jet trails. It’s amazing to me how many planes fly through eastern Oregon, especially at night. I tried to get some good photos of Jupiter too, which is very bright in the night sky right now, but they didn’t come out well. I’m going to keep trying. Take a look at the three photos below and let me know what you think.