Post 11 - Astrophotography and Alien Abductions
3-minute read for the main post - 6 minutes total with photo captions at bottom
No preamble, I’ll just drop the bombshell.
I was abducted by ALIENS.
That’s right.
The truth is so out there.
On Aug 30th, 2019, I was minding my own bidness, doing a Milky Way shoot in the dead of night along Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park, and this ship just landed right in front of me.
I happened to be doing a timelapse sequence, and with the camera firing automatically, I managed to capture the moment when the alien scout ship landed in the parking lot and beamed me up.
I was unceremoniously bundled aboard the Mother Ship and taken for a joy ride around the solar system.
Didn’t even offer me a cocktail or nothing. Happy to report, no probing of any orifices took place. No world-domination and destruction neither. Just a star-blurring ride - while I stared out the window, and they watched some TV and YouTube vids.
It was pretty cool, actually, even without the cocktail.
Don’t believe me? Watch this:
Joyrides in an alien spaceships notwithstanding, the best part about the first night I went out to Shenandoah (Aug 24th, 2019), was that I learned the basics of how to do astrophotography. It’s a huge genre of photography, and can get very complex - and expensive - if you dig into it, but you can also do it on-the-cheap, with no extra expenses other than what you already have in your camera bag. Some of the newer, high-end, camera phones can even make a passable effort with the help of AI-based computational photography.
Thanks to the efforts of Andy Sentipal and the leadership team of the Fresh Start Photography Group Meetup (with the joint participation of the Night and Low Light Photography Group Meetup), about 20 photographers that night learned the basics of astrophotography (or in some cases, honed existing skills).
Andy has also published a very informative and useful 50-page eBook entitled: Shenandoah National Park: Photographer’s Guide. It’s full of practical and actionable advice for wildlife and astrophotography, and has specific notes on the most popular overlooks and trails for photography in the park. If you’re interested, it can be purchased for $9.99 on Amazon.com.
That first night we learned:
the best exposure settings for our camera gear (I used my Nikon D810 for the main still shots and my Nikon D5300 for the timelapses)
The Milky Way photos I shot were all done at: ISO 3200, wide open (f/4) at 24mm on my Nikkor 24 - 120mm zoom, with shutter speeds ranging from 10 to 20 seconds
This goes to show that you can do astrophotography without specialized gear - an f/4 lens would be considered “too slow” by most people
While I’d love to get something like the Nikon NIKKOR Z 58mm f/0.95 S Noct Lens, I don’t happen to have $8000 (!!!) lying around, so an f/4 zoom sounds really great to me!
how to focus at night (by illuminating an object in the middle distance with a flashlight)
how to tape up the lens with gaffer’s tape to avoid any accidental zoom or focus shifts after it was dialed in
I used a wireless remote shutter release to avoid camera shake, but did not use the “mirror-up” mode on the D810
Since we were in a group, there wasn’t as much of an opportunity for me to experiment with timelapses that first night. That’s why I went back the next time the skies were clear (Aug 30th).
Here are some photos from both of the trips I made to Shenandoah as part of this project.
You can see these photos without commentary in the Gallery for this post.
An HDR panorama of Big Meadows taken on Aug 24th, shortly before sunset
The clouds rolling in around sunset on the 24th had us a bit worried, but the sky cleared quite a bit later on to allow for some nice Milky Way shots
The sunset on the 24th was memorable, running a whole gamut of warm and cool colors
Looking southward as the sun sank below the horizon on the right, it was amazing how the meadow grasses picked up that orange glow
As the sun dropped fully below the horizon - and the sky turned a deeper blue to contrast the rosy clouds - the meadow took on a stunning purplish hue
The sunset seemed to go on forever, even as the clouds began to dissipate and the air began to take on a distinct chill
This was probably the best Milky Way shot of the evening - taken at 9:06 PM - 13 secs at f/4, ISO 3200, 24mm
Curious about that bright object in the middle-right part of the frame, I used the Online Planetarium feature on In-The-Sky.org to go “back in time” - turns out that bright object was Jupiter
As the night wore on, the clouds started to build up again. This was one of the last shots I took the night of the 24th, at 10:52 PM
20 secs at f/4, ISO 3200, 24mm
Before the night ended, I did manage to get a shot of some aliens loitering in the field, illuminated by the headlights of a passing car….Little did I know they’d be back to beam me up a few nights later!
A few nights later, on Aug 30th, shooting the Milky Way from the Hazel Mountain Overlook on Skyline Drive, I noticed the first mysterious light shining on the ground at 11:58 PM - it reminded me of that scene in Close Encounters when Richard Dreyfus has his first encounter with the alien craft. I only realized later when I looked at these shots on the monitor at home that the streak in the sky must have been the Mother Ship in orbit while it launched the scout ship that landed in the parking lot (that’s my car off to the right).
The scout ship hovers for a moment, checking things out….
The scout ship - which appears as a wavy green line due to its cloaking device - briefly scans my car for life signs.
Then it finds me sitting on the stone wall further down the parking lot. This is the moment the scout ship beams me up!
The rest of the night is sort of a blur in my memory - I think they zapped my brain so I wouldn’t reveal too many details about them. All I remember were blurred stars as I looked out the window of the Mother Ship. The camera ran the whole time I was aboard their ship, but of course the battery had run out by the time they beamed me back down, so I never got any shots of that. Oh well, I least I still had some video footage from the joy ride - right?
The images above were compiled with the freeware StarStax, which I highly recommend - it also several functions besides creating star trails.
Hasta la vista, baby!
Next week I go for a walk in downtown Fredericksburg, VA.
No ghosts or aliens, just some cool B&W photos (shot before the current corona incarceration!).
See you then!
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Thanks again!
