plains milky way

Randy Halverson proves at DakotaLapse.com with dedication a person can take first rate pix and create wonderful time-lapse montages such as "Plains Milky Way"! A recent Wired Science article shows behind the scenes effort taken by Halverson to produce his art!

"A star-tracking mount for a telescope allows Halverson’s still camera to pan and tilt with the stars. It not only prevents blur, but also gives a walk-about motion to his videos. A motorized rail creates the zooming effect; a computer controller that moves the mount and snaps the camera’s shutter. Each scene in the montage represents about 300 still photographs taken over a period of several hours."

Halverson also points out in the same article, "it takes a lot of trial and error to get right, but it's worth it. It shows motion into the stars you don’t normally notice. When you look up at them, you often don’t realize how much they’re moving." Halverson looks to the stars to create just plains wonderful astrophotography!

discovery docked at space station video

amazing pictures of discovery docking with the iss...
French astrophotographer, Thierry Legault (pictured), captures images at 10 fps and plays back video at 25 fps of Discovery docked at the International Space Station (ISS). It's excellent video. Mission STS-133 is the final shuttle flight for Discovery. The video was taken on February 28th 2011 at 17:58UT from the area of Weimar, Germany. You can view many more exceptional images at Legault's website here.

international space station's moon transit

French Astrophotographer Theirry Legault captured image, at right, of International Space Station crossing the Moon (near center of picture).  Legault took this impressive shot on December 20th from Normandy, France just a few hours before the eclipse. Please view article and more pictures at Universe Today.