Last night seemed to be clearer than usual for this week in the Washington, DC
area, so I put my Sony DSC F717 camera on my telescope tripod and took
some pictures in my front yard. I used 30 second exposure (the max
this camera can do) without zooming, so these are "naked eye" scale pictures,
except that fainter objects are recorded. No tracking, so the stars are slightly
elongated, but I still thought my pics didn't come out too badly!
(second attempt at astrophotography; first attempt was the other day
when it was hazy; that wasn't very good.) I of course deleted the
photos where I jogged the camera (e.g. there was one in which Jupiter
looked like a squiggly line).

You can find the photos here:

http://mysite.verizon.net/vze33d9w/astronomy/id16.html

The first is the old standard, The Big Dipper, with Mizar/Alcor easily
visible and seperated.

The second is the Summer Triangle, proving that there IS a Milky Way
even in Bowie, MD! Look for the rather subtle strip of different-colored sky through the Northern Cross...above the horizon skyglow, below the darker area of Vega and above.

Todd

tdvance,

I live on Belair drive in bowie and when I looked at your pictures for some unknown reason the sky looked familiar. When I checked your profile I was surprised to see that you too live in Bowie. I get my scope out every clear night I can, and if you would like to observe with me you can come on over and we can trade notes on astronomy. you can also go to my web page and check out some of my pics. http://www.roseastronomy.com

I like the pics too.