I sit in the dark with my laptop on my knees. That’s how I’ve been writing all my blog posts since I’ve been at the Winter Star Party if I write the posts at night.
It is nighttime now and dark outside. To guard our night vision, all bright lights have to be squelched. Only red filtered flashlights are allowed.
The inconvenience is worth it because our eyes are adjusted to the darkness well enough that we can see the Milky Way Galaxy, that band of stars that are our home galaxy.
It’s a good feeling to be among my amateur astronomer friends looking at the heavens.
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After my great success making a digital photograph of the galactic center yesterday morning, I awoke this morning at 2:30 AM full of enthusiasm for making a videotape of the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. The galactic center is the place with which the earth will be lined up on the winter solstice, December 21, 2012. Many people believe this momentous event will herald great changes on earth.
Therefore, I wanted to photograph the galactic center which happens to be in the constellation of Sagittarius close to Scorpio. And I did.
However, when I woke up this morning and tried to take a videotape of the center of the Milky Way, I was not successful at all. As one of my amateur astronomer friends explained to me today, since the video camera shutter operates at 1/30th of a second, it is simply too fast to capture the night sky.
Yesterday, I had called my camera manufacturer and asked one of their technicians how to set the camcorder so it would videotape star constellations. The technician said it could NOT be done. I had to try anyway. I set the camcorder on “night” and gave it a try. As I said, it did not work. Now I know.
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