Under the Milky Way

In the middle of a field clearing long past the outskirts of Erie, Pa rests an amateur's astronomy observatory, where a group of people meet up periodically with their mobile telescopes to observe the night's sky.

"Have you ever seen the moon this close?  Look!  You even see all the detail in the craters," said the owner/builder of the observatory, pulling up laptop images to my face before I even sat all my bags down.

The images he showed me were taken from a telescope with a very powerful CCD chip that can be cooled down to 10 degrees Celsius to eliminate dark flow surfacing across the images.  From what I gathered, the card tricks out the noise by making replacements through protons and electrons during long exposures.  Very sensitive equipment. 

Though the sun was already setting and we were out of reach from any atmospheric light pollution coming from most bordering cities, the clouds were at a stand still.  We continued to remain optimistic for the next hour and a half waiting for the rest of the group members to arrive.

Then, all of the sudden there was a great part in the sky stretching as far as the eye could see from both horizons.  It allowed me to get to work.  ...That's word for word how it went down.  It was pretty nuts and I'm very grateful for it. haha.

Black and White (Above):  I've always wanted a heavy foreground B+W image with star trails streaking the night's sky all around it.  Definitely a wall hanger.

Red Cast (Above):  Looks haunting.  The red cast you're seeing above is basically a "safe light."  Its used so you can go inside, see everything you need to see, and come back outside maintaining your eyes own "night vision."  It avoids waiting like 15 minutes trying to readjust to see the nights sky.  Convenient.

Cool Toned (Above):  Once I saw that tree line dipping like that in the distance I set up for it.  I don't know how well you can see it in this photograph, but if you look at the center you can see a strong cluster trail of stars rising up the frame.  That is making up a strong concentration of The Milky Way.

I aimed my rig at The North Star.  When you do that you get the big circle of star trails.  From that point you're caught on the swirl of The Earth's axis.  The lower left corner was Erie's light pollution.  Still!  All the other corners of the sky were fine though.  ...Cause there's absolutely nothing else in eastern Pa haha.

The Night Sky (Above):  I set up the tripod and aimed my camera's lens parallel with the sky.  Just like standing strait up and tilting your head back.  When you're out in the middle of nowhere like this, its as if you could just take your hand across the sky and scrap the stars with it.  I love everything about it.

The Same Night's Sky (Above):  Same scene, but an airplane flew right through the center left.  I almost like this one more just for design's sake, cause there's a single line of light just streaking through it.