Saturday, October 13th - Returning to Green Bank
Saturday morning finds us back on the road on our return visit to Green Bank, WV. The weather has turned to its seasonal norm, which required us to don our jackets just to cross the parking lot between the hotel and the car. This road trip, we began to see the colors that we had hoped for on our earlier trip that week. The crisp air, and fall smells and occasional Oktoberfest sign made us clearly aware we were in West Virginia in October.
Upon our late afternoon arrival we went to work to beat the sunset over the GBT. Anita took video of the orange reflecting from the sky onto the white structure of the telescope, as I sought out an appropriate location to shoot this beautiful beast of engineering. The sliver of the new moon and Jupiter indicated to me where I needed to be. My hope was to capture the Miliky Way in the left frame of my camera, the telescope at the right. As the evening progressed, the Milky Way would march across the sky behind the GBT.
This shot would be one of the more difficult shots I have taken, due to the fact that the GBT is lit at night, with aircraft lights and base lights, the issue being that the lights, although minimal, are brighter than the Milky Way. A series of test shots allowed me to quickly determine the ISO’s, f-stop, and timing to balance these issues. I am very pleased with the results. However the cooling night temperatures, the saturated air, soaked my camera with dew. Out of the 260 frames, about 180 of them are useable. There is equipment to prevent this which I will need to remember the next time I come out to the GBT. My lack of preparedness on this trip was caused by the fact that we’d been shooting on dry mountaintops of the southwest, Hawaii, and Chile. It never crossed my mind that I would encounter conditions that would leave dew on my camera. But I am very pleased at the frames I do have, as you see below.