Astro 9: Astrophotography
Past Year's Class Highlights and Trips
Fall '03 Course:
This semester we did more emphasis on digital photography. I distributed CD
ROM's containing our Canon camcorder footage of Mars at its closest so students
could do stacking and processing. However, shooting, processing, and printing
film continues to be the main focus for Astro 9A students. As usual, this semester
included some optional field trips....
Field Trip #0: Some of our returning students got together
for a trip to Chews Ridge, 
about
the darkest and best observing site on the Central Coast. The goal was to get
some photo material to work with once class began, and especially to get some
video footage of the Great Mars Opposition (closest in 50,000 years!) this summer.
Chews Ridge has the most reliably excellent astronomical seeing in California,
and one of the better places in the world - really important for quality planetary
photography. We got a lot of good footage, and some of it has even been turned
into images! (not mine; it's still on miniDV). See our Mars
page for more.
Field Trip #1: Our Oct 25/26 trip
to the mountains above Mercey Hot Springs for dark-sky astrophotography.
Field Trip #2: .... didn't happen! Our total lunar eclipse
trip got rained out.
about
the darkest and best observing site on the Central Coast. The goal was to get
some photo material to work with once class began, and especially to get some
video footage of the Great Mars Opposition (closest in 50,000 years!) this summer.
Chews Ridge has the most reliably excellent astronomical seeing in California,
and one of the better places in the world - really important for quality planetary
photography. We got a lot of good footage, and some of it has even been turned
into images! (not mine; it's still on miniDV). See our Mars
page for more.