Capturing an Asteroid

Capturing an Asteroid

by JonathanNo Comments
Sometimes the happiest results happen by accident. This is the story of how I unintentionally managed to image a small, distant asteroid with my Nikon camera and a wide-angle lens! Shooting Orion with a Guided CameraSaturday night, January 5, 2019 brought North Carolina the first clear skies in what seemed like ages. I planned to shoot some nebulas with my telescope and specialized camera. But tonight I also wanted to try out a new wide-angle lens I recently purchased, a Rokinon 24mm f/1.4 lens for my Nikon D5500. My goal was to point the Nikon at Orion and see how much detail I could capture if I kept shooting exposures as long as I was in the field. I set up the Nikon on my iOptron SkyTracker Pro mount and a sturdy tripod. The SkyTracker is a motorized one-axis equatorial mount. Simply put, once you've pointed it at the celestial pole, it will follow the Earth's rotation all night long. This prevents...
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Astronomy on the High Seas

by JonathanNo Comments
When Jane and I first booked this adventure in April 2017, the Viking Spirit was identified as our vessel. The Spirit was still under construction at the time. When the ship was christened, Astronaut Anna Fisher (“the first mother in space”) named the ship Orion. We had dinner with Dr. Fisher at Spacefest in July. She told me then that the Orion was a great ship, and that it had a planetarium! This was going to be an interesting voyage for sure. The Ship When we boarded Orion on August 19, I immediately checked out the Explorers Lounge, on Decks 7 and 8 forward. There’s an amazing library of books on astronomy and space exploration. (And now including the three books I wrote, he said humbly.) The two halves of the Lounge’s library flank the entrance to the planetarium. This is a rather small facility as planetariums go, but what it lacks in size it more than makes up for in state-of-the-art equipment. Shows are...
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