Welcome! Astro 9 is a bit of an interdisciplinary class, bridging the worlds of astronomical imaging and the visual arts. Students from both areas enjoy these classes. Astro 9 is taught 7:00-10:00pm in the Fall semester, in the astronomy / geology lab room 705, when nights are longer and the skies usually clearer. Clear nights are spent at Cabrillo Observatory, cloudy and full moon nights in the classroom. With your camera and our gear, and will do our best to help you realize your own goals. Photographic subjects include star trails, widefield, telescopic moon shots, special effects, and both medium and high magnification digital imaging of nebulae, galaxies, comets, and star clusters. Our goal is for you to take home some beautiful and creative photographs of night sky subjects at the end of the semester. Returning students sign up for 9B then 9C. The class includes an optional overnight camping/astrophoto trip to a scenic dark sky location, often determined by first looking at the central California light pollution map, and a link to nearby dark sky sites ). Some of our photo trips in recent years have been to the crest of the Panoche Hills above Mercey Hot Springs. More typically we have gone to Bonny Doon Airfield on a night when the Santa Cruz Astronomy Club opens it for the astronomy community's use. However, the Bonny Doon site is no longer available.
Facilities
Our observatory was completed
in 2008. Constructed by the CEM students under Chuck Mornard as well as myself,
this 400 sqft building houses our 12" f/10 Schmidt Cassegrain on a
G11 computer controlled mount, under a fiberglass dome controlled by infra-red
dome sensors for positioning. The warm room has 4 computers, including one, "Spock", for student
control of the telescope and of the ST2000XCM
color CCD camera - a 1600x1200 single-shot color detector
that allows us some beautiful pictures. The other computers in the control
room are available for student processing of their digital images with
a full collection of software and connections to the web. The construction
of the observatory is chronicled here.
Equipment as of 2023
The Astronomy Department
has 6 computers for student use in room 705, each loaded with Adobe Photoshop, C2A, CCDOPS
and other astronomy-oriented imaging software. The observatory also has 3 computers
for student use, and desk space for operating your own laptop on those nights
when clouds come in early. The observatory has several Rebel T-1000 cameras for student at-observatory use. Our 12" Meade f/10 (w/ f/6.3 reducer)
under the dome has an SBIG
ST2000XCM CCD camera, and we have an additional ST2000XCM color
CCD camera as well as a ST4000XCM
color CCD camera for use on our portable telescopes. We also have two Celestron 8SE telescopes on alt/az mounts with "go-to" capability. For mounting your own digital SLR cameras, we have a couple of tripods, and we have a Williams Optics
APO 80mm flourite refractor. on a Losmandy
GM-8 mount. We also have a Nikon D7000 digital SLR cameras with a zoom lens, fisheye, and with a fixed 50mm lens. With these, students can do wide-angle digital images of
star fields and foreground+stars compositions. A sensor
cleaning link.
See my
photo page for the kind of pictures this setup can do.
Film Photography: Astrophotography has migrated completely away from film use. It's just far too limited in its ability to capture astronomical subjects, and the processing options are just not competitive with software today. However, if you are a self-motivated student and want to do film work, then talk to me. We do not have access to the film lab in the lower campus. If you bring proof that you are registered with an art photography class and therefore have access to their photo lab, and will do your own film processing, developing, printing, and mounting at the photo lab, then it is possible we can work out a project scenario for you. However, I will not be able to supervise you. As a film student, you should expect to use their own camera. These can be mounted on the department's tripods, or on a mounting board which is carried on our GM-8 mounted for long exposure guided shots. I need to verify that you indeed do film developing, processing work yourself (vs. just turning it in to Bay Photo! You should plan to get a T-ring for your particular camera model so that it can be mated to a telescope.
Our field trips will take advantage
of some of our favorite local dark sky sites.
Projects:Here's
suggested projects for students.
You must turn in 5 finished photos complete with documentation and
processing details, as .jpgs ready for posting in our online gallery, and your two
best need to additionally be printed (8x10"), framed and annotated; suitable for mounting
in our Observatory Gallery walls if so selected (or your own walls!) Each photograph
needs to be well documented - part of the process of learning and refining
your techniques is solid documentation! Here's an example of what you should turn in as far as documentation
of each photo.
Optional Field Dark-Sky Field Trip
We traditionally have a Saturday
night overnight field trip to a dark sky location so you can get a chance
to really photograph faint Milky Way star fields and nebulae using our portable
telescopes and digital cameras. It's optional, but is a highlight of the
class, and you'll need every opportunity you can to get photos with our
limited amount of equipment. Past trips have gone to Bonny Doon Airfield with the Santa Cruz Astronomy Club (probably where we'll go - it's a much shorter drive than...), and also to Mercey
Hot Springs 2 hours southeast of Santa Cruz (directions)
in 2003,
2004, and 2005,
and a special trip to Pleasure
Point to photograph the total lunar eclipse in Oct 2004.
More on this as the semester gets going.
Special Solar Eclipse Opportunity
This year, we have a rare annular solar eclipse passing through the Western U.S. On Oct 14, 2023 there will be an annular eclipse of the sun and the path passes across the NE tip of CA and across all of Nevada. We plan to have an optional (optional!) van trip to go to this eclipse for photography, and for other good science. This trip is still in the planning phase. I am hoping to get to Great Basin National Park for this, since there are other science opportunities to explore there, as well as the eclipse: limestone caverns (which have been so important in learning paleo-climatology), the last and southernmost glacier in the U.S., a bristlecone pine forest, and alpine tundra ecology on the slopes of Wheeler Peak (13,000 ft). It's also possible we'll instead drive to the extreme NE tip of CA, not far from Lava Beds National Monument, however this will be only my 2nd choice. Either way, this trip will take many days and require you to likely miss some of your other Cabrillo classes if you come. We have one van for transporting up to 7 students, and another which will take me, an assistant, and all of our gear. The eclipse is on a Saturday morning, and the plan is to leave Cabrillo the prior Wednesday Oct 11 at noon, and return to campus late Tuesday Oct 17. We would not have an on-campus meeting on Oct 12. I'm making an eclipse trip webpage for details on this trip as it takes shape.
Other (Out-of-class) opportunities for Astrophotography:
There are now impressive telescopes at observatories in pristine dark skies and which can be "rented" remotely by amateurs like you. You pay a fee, fill out the forms which allow your object to be queued and photo'd, and it's quite a nice experience!... If you decide to try this, keep your receipts and forms and I'll give you some extra credit for turning in any images gained by this way. However, since you'll not be getting the photos yourself, they don't substitute for your class projects.
Global Rent-A-Scope. The scopes are big and frankly you'll get a MUCH more impressive photo with this route than anything we have at Cabrillo (stunning though our best Cabrillo photos are). I'd recommend the $20 starter month, which gives you 1 hour worth of combined exposure times on a single-shot color camera (like ours) on a big scope in a dark sky in either the Northern Hemisphere (New Mexico) or the Southern Hemisphere (Australia). Check out the starter trial here.
LightBuckets. They've got two observatory locations in New Mexico, and one in France. Their largest scope is 24" ($75 per hour of exposure time) and will give beautiful images. See their procedures here.