(with my wife's pointing directions) She could pick it out in the twilight sky. I could maybe see it, I'm not 100% sure.






Sadly, these are the first two photos that I've posted this year! Well, in terms of creative photography.

We went to a pullout that should have had a good angle, but it had 8-10 cars, and the first person that I saw - before we got out of my wife's car - was not wearing a mask. So I said 'let's just go to the observatory.'

She relented and we went to the observatory.

We couldn't go inside the control room to visit until after sundown - visitors are no longer allowed except under extraordinary circumstances, and spouses are no longer extraordinary. So we went up on to one of the small telescope catwalks, and the angle was great! Excellent elevation to avoid trees and other obstacles. I took a number of shots, including bracketing to try HDR, but that didn't work: with 5-20 second exposures, there was too much star streak for automated HDR to be viable. I might work with it some more, but I like the results of these.

I tried another angle, trying to get one of the telescope domes into the shot, but it just wasn't viable. Maybe another night. I'd also like to try my 6D and see if I can get some less noisy shots with its better sensor.

They're kind of noisy, they were shot at an ISO of 6400, 10 seconds at f7.1 with a Canon SL1 using a remote control as a trigger. The lens is a Canon 75-300 zoom at 75mm. Minimal Photoshop post-processing.