City - Near Camas Valley State - OREGON Country - United States
About
This is the first in a series of three photos that I took of the 1997 Hale Bopp comet. I traveled 60 miles away to a location at about 3000 feet elevation to be sure of escaping our coastal fog and ensuring a clear sky. My reward was worth the effort. I took three images this night using three different lenses, all by Canon. I used a 20-35L, a 70-210 and a 300L. I noticed the value of my "L" series lenses when this film came back from developing. Keep an eye out for the differences in the blue tail of the comet using the two "L" series lenses. The standard glass in the 70 to 210 lens renders the blue tail almost invisible. With the "L" series lenses, the blue is vivid, and overall quality much better in print than you see here from a CD conversion.
All exposures were 16 minutes long and at 4.0 aperture taken in succession using my home made "Flintstone era" tracking device. These next three photos I am posting over the next three nights are the end result of a very difficult project for me. As far as the Hale Bopp comet photos go, these are the only ones that I am truly happy with. A good thing too. After this night, the clouds and wind set in as the comet sunk lower and lower below the horizon, never to be seen again. (not in my lifetime anyway ;) ) So my last attempt at this comet was the final night that I could have done this.... I was so lucky.
Thank you Brigette. It goes sorta like this. ....I bought a rickety old used wooden telescope tripod, the kind with the small gears and control knobs like most of the cheap ones have. I removed the knobs and made an aluminum camera platform then installed a large ball type camera mount for my camera, and also made a snap on mount to the small platform for an old 9 power rifle scope to use for polar alignment. I drilled a hole in the barrel of the rifle scope and glued in a red LED to light up the black cross hairs in the scope for visibility. (hard to see the cross hairs at night without some illumination)
Stop laughing, I'm not done yet! ;)
Next, for my "electronic" drive system, I coupled together the gear head portions of two small Black and Decker rechargeable screwdrivers like the one shown below. I did this to greatly reduce the speed of the motor to about 2 RPM. To reduce motor vibrations to the tripod, the motor was distanced from the tripod by using a 36" Dremel flex shaft, (similar to a speedometer cable) This "high tech" drive motor and cable was then connected to yet another old power drill gearhead mounted to where I had previously removed the original tripod knobs.
I said stop launghing! ;)
I used a 6 volt lantern battery and a couple of potentiometers for a speed control. I needed this variable speed control to constantly vary the erratic motor speed to keep this heap of gears and parts tracking as smoothly and consistently as possible. It would take me a good 15 minutes to get this contraption set up and polar aligned and ready for use. If I had the money, I would have bought a "real" telescope mount with GPS and a heavily computerized "Go To" library. Those are cool, because you "just set it, and forget it" :)
I have the 300mm Photo coming up tonight, the last of the comet stuff. I did take a couple of other images with it tho and I may show them later.
...........so, Brigette, you asked for it. My "Flintstone era" tracker. I hope you were able to follow at least slightly, how this worked. It was rickety, but stable enough to do these 16 minute long exposures. I needed a 16 minute exposure time with the 200 speed film and the F4 aperture of my 300mm lens. Achieving round stars using a 16 minute exposure time with my 300 lens was the entire goal of this setup. Yes, it took quite a while to get this contraption put together.......... but Hale Bopp stayed high in the sky for a looong time, making this jury rigging possible.
These are all VERY good, Randy. Thank you for describing the process and equipment used. I am so glad you got some excellent results from your efforts. Slides are never easy to convert to digital, so I completely understand about the lack of quality, but there are some nice colors coming through in your uploads, especially the blue at the top of the comet. Could you please describe the "Flinstone era" tracking you mentioned? Thanks! :-) 7/7
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{K:25989} 8/18/2009