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Alone With My Thoughts…The Appeal of Astrophotography.

While many people appreciate the products of astrophotography, i.e. beautiful photos of the celestial heavens, far fewer people are really interested in the process that leads to said photos.

Honestly, that’s okay.

To be fair, driving to the middle of nowhere so that you can be in the middle of nowhere to take pictures of the night sky with the hope that the weather will cooperate probably won’t sound super appealing to a lot of people.

I’ve asked people if they wanted to tag along with me on my excursions, but generally people have plans or tell me they really prefer sleeping as opposed to trouncing around in the wilderness in the dark. That’s fine–I am not offended.

However, I have found the whole astrophotography process to be pretty meditative.

When I am driving to a spot, I put on music I like to break the silence of the drive there. It gets me in the mood to to speak. Usually, I will pick something ambient for the drive.

When I get the spot, I set up my equipment and once that is done, I’m waiting for it to get dark. Normally, most people are leaving the area by this point or I am by myself. Rarely will other people stick around, but I have run into other astrophotographers out in the wilds of Colorado.

I may get the occasional question from a hiker or family leaving wondering why I am just arriving and I explain what I plan to do.

As it gets dark, that is when celestial objects start to appear–first a couple stars, then more and more. Planets shine brightly and appear as super vibrant stars. Soon, the Milky Way becomes visible.

Stars peeking out after the sun sets. Taken in Park County, Colorado.

Every time I see the Milky Way, I really am in awe of it.

Honestly, I like sitting on something–maybe the ground or a camping chair I brought with me or maybe I am sitting with the door open in my car or on a sturdy structure that happens to be in the area.

I am just looking into infinity. That is what it feels like to me.

I feel like I am witnessing something sacred and ancient. I am seeing something that existed long before I ever set foot on this Earth and will continue long after I pass away. I feel so small, but also intimately connected to everyone and everything. Carl Sagan once said we are made of star stuff–I think that is a great way of explaining how we are all interlinked in this thing called existence.

The things that worried me or bothered me me earlier–well, I start to revaluate. Maybe that thing I was obsessing over in my mind wasn’t that big of a deal and I need to let it go. Or maybe that thing that is kind of a big deal–well, let me revaluate the things that are in my control versus the things that are not in my control because I can only do so much.

I honestly couldn’t tell you the how of how I go through this process, I can only tell you that it happens.

Seeing the stars puts me as ease. Can’t really explain the why. Milky Way rising above the horizon near Guanella pass.

Being in the wilderness is my sanctuary of sorts. Seeing the celestial bodies in the sky is my sermon of sorts.

My First Real Attempt At Astrophotography

I got into astrophotography in earnest right as the COVID-19 pandemic was about to hit parts of the United States.

When the pandemic happened, I was living in Colorado. I still live in Colorado. I moved there for work, i.e. I left grad school, needed a job, and Colorado provided said job. The fact that it is a beautiful place to live in was simply an added benefit.

Now, pre-pandemic, I was averaging about 50-60 hours of work during the week. It was a grueling schedule.

Also, around this time, a lot had been going on nationwide in the United States. It was a lot of civil unrest. To be honest, using the past tense feels too premature here, because for me personally, I still feel that general civil unrest.

There was an increasing politicization of basic things that used to seem common-sense.

Increasing divides across race, ethnicity, etc.

It takes a toll. I needed time to think. Time to reflect. Time to engage with something other than work and whatever was going on in the country.

I am not even sure what exactly motivated me, but one day I looked up several videos on Youtube regarding getting basic settings for astrophotography. I just wanted to get away from my apartment and do something to take my mind off my existence at that point.

The basic settings that I planned on using:

  • Manual Mode for Camera
  • Put Lens from Automatic Mode to Manual Mode
  • ISO set at about 1600
  • Set Exposure for 15-20 seconds.
  • I think at this point adjusting my white balance was too advanced for me, so I am pretty sure I never messed with that setting.

It was the dead of winter and I decided to give astrophotography a try (like a real try this time beyond mom’s backyard), since I was actually driving to a location to avoid the light pollution.

I packed up my 1000D, my tripod, several jackets and layers as I wasn’t sure what the weather would be like in the location I headed to. I loaded up my car and took off.

There weren’t a lot of people on the road–unsurprisingly. I ended up picking a mountain location since I correctly deduced not many people would go there given the weather and lack of ski amenities.

I arrived at the spot. It was freezing, cold, and snow covered the roadway–really the entire area.

But…it was dark and there were no other cars around.

I set up the camera on the tripod, input the previous settings.

I actually got a semi-decent astrophotography picture.

My first legitimate astro photo taken one night in the mountains outside of Idaho Springs, Colorado. Taken with my 1000D.

Honestly, I am still proud of this picture. I recognize that it’s not the best astrophotography picture. However, for me, it represents the culmination of something I have wanted to achieve for a really long time. I went from being an observer of astrophotography to being an active participant in it.

  • You can see some of the noise showing up as a weird pillar in the background.
  • Clouds are rolling in.
  • Clouds rolled in completely and it started to snow, albeit lightly.
Some of the pictures that I was able to capture that first night on the mountain. All taken with my 1000D.

I stayed up there for as long as I could withstand the cold, which was probably about 1-1.5 hours. I went home and I was absolutely giddy. I couldn’t wait to get home.

While I was generally happy with my pictures, I realized these weird little scribbles and lines would show up in pictures. These were things that were not actually in the background of what was being photographed. You can see an example of that in the first picture in the trio above.

I later learned that that was “noise”–distortions that can show up in photos.

It got me to thinking about whether my camera was a bit dated for astrophotography and whether I needed to upgrade my gear.

Again, a post for another day.

My Relationship With Cameras

I used to see photographs of the night sky, celestial bodies, or even galaxies and wonder at how people were even able to take those kinds of photographs.

I remember showing a college friend a picture of the Milky Way rising over the horizon and she thought it was fake and photoshopped. In hindsight, I guess I don’t blame her. When you grow up in light-polluted areas like the two of us did on the East Coast, from our perspectives, the actual night sky actually looks really fake.

Absolutely stunning, but also absolutely foreign to someone who is exposed to roughly twenty years’ worth of light pollution. A nighttime shot taken at Rocky Mountain National Park in the summertime. Photo taken with Canon 5D Mark IV.

Anyway, I still enjoyed learning about space, looking at astronomy pictures, and also watching sci-fi movies focused on space.

Did I ever pursue a career related to astronomy later in life? No. I guess you could say that I went in the opposite direction career-wise. However, that is a post for another day.

In high school, my mom bought me a Canon Powershot S3 IS. It was a simple, albeit satisfactory point-and-shoot camera. I later learned it got this moniker because in spite of the variety of camera settings, you could spin the dial to a camera setting, point the camera, press the shutter release button, and get a decent shot.

That camera was fine for a teenage girl who wanted to take pictures of squirrels at the park or take pictures of friends drinking boba tea or take pictures of relatives at family events. However, it was absolutely terrible for night sky photography as I learned when my few attempts at Milky Way photography resulted in weird, streaky lights in a background of black. Disappointed, I left astrophotography alone.

In college, I was still really interested in astronomy, but it mostly focused on looking at photography books or looking at pictures on Image hosting websites (Do you remember Fotki?!?). I even signed up for an introductory level astronomy course, but withdrew from the class when I felt as if the professor was speaking an entirely different language.

Taken with my Canon Powershot S3 IS . Overlooking a cliff with fall foliage on display during a college hike in western Virginia.

When I graduated from college, not only did my mom present me with a bouquet of flowers, she also gave me a really nice camera as she knew I loved taking pictures of anything and everything. I was gifted with a Canon Rebel XS aka Canon 1000D.

It was my first “serious” camera. I retired my Powershot and used the 1000D to photograph everything. I actually started googling how to do astrophotography online. In my 15 minutes of research, my takeaways were that I needed a tripod and I needed to go somewhere dark.

Purchase tripod? Check.

Find a dark area? Backyard of mom’s house should work. Cool beans.

As you can guess, it was a failure again. While I had not put in a lot of research into the proper setup for astrophotography, astrophotography seemed too technical for me to grasp.

While I loved looking at astrophotography, I had more-or-less resigned myself to someone who would see astrophotography, but never do astrophotography.

While I took my 1000D with me when I criss-crossed the country for school and work, it wasn’t until after I graduated from graduate school, left a fellowship, and started working that I began looking at the “how to” behind astrophotography.

My 1000D was able to get some great details. A curious neighborhood cat looks through a fence. Photo taken near my former workplace with my Canon 1000D.

Why?

I was living by myself with no family within a 1000 mile radius in the middle of the pandemic.

I think now would be a good stopping point, since I was definitely in my feelings in the middle of the pandemic when I actually took up astrophotography in earnest. I will save that for another post.

How it all started…?

I just happened to come across a photo of the night sky taken somewhere in the desert.

It might have been right as I was nearing the end of high school or maybe right before I started college.

I had a habit of going through deviant art profiles because I loved the heavily photoshopped images showing planets placed into some random starry background.

I also had a habit of going through NASA’s Astronomy Photo of the Day.

On NASA’s website, I came across this photograph of the Milky Way arching across the horizon of some desert at night. I was absolutely mesmerized by what I saw. It didn’t seem real, but there it was.

Credit: Dan Duriscoe and National Park Service

It was beautiful, mesmerizing, eye-catching. That picture was all of those things.

The picture was taken on a clear night in Death Valley National Park.

It was beauty somehow captured into a photograph.

It sounds really dramatic, but I really was in awe at what I was seeing.

I knew that I wanted to try to do the same. I later learned that this particular field of photography was called astrophotography, literally taking photos of the night sky and celestial objects.

I started googling it and learning as much as I could about astrophotography…given the limitations of my dial-up internet and really janky computer.

And that is how my interest in astrophotography started….