The Sky is falling . . .

Well - I'm back up at Kitt Peak National Observatory again - this time to play (or so I thought). The Perseid meteor shower is tonight and my friend Scott and I decided to make a night of it under the dark skies of the observatory mountain top. We started the night observing Jupiter with the 90 inch telescope. Although it was clear, the atmospheric "seeing" wasn't that good and we got some mediocre images of the planet.

I took the opportunity to test out my new Canon 50mm F/1.2L lens on the Milky Way using the 90" as a big piggy-back mount for my 5D. Pretty funny seeing that tiny camera attached to the top of that big scope . . .




Anyway here are a couple of shoots I managed to get before the TCS computer took a dump. Remember I said I came to play - well - not so lucky. Seems that one of the interface cards decided to fail and along the way trashed windows. We managed to boot the system up in DOS and continuing observing, but the system needs some serious repair work now. Sigh.





Its midnight and the meteor shower is starting to pick up - so I'm off to try my luck . . .

Oh - BTW - for you photo-geeks: exposure time was 120 seconds at f/2.8 and ISO 1000.