[Photos courtesy of Jesús "Astrogades"]

The days of August 6~10 a bunch of amateur astronomers (visual and imaging) met at Pinar de Araceli, in the province of Granada, in Spain. This site was in fact a "short" 100 minutes drive for me, coming from Murcia (my hometown and where I was staying), but people came from all over Spain from places as far as Seville (4 1/2 hours drive), Cadiz (5 1/2 hours) or even Barcelona (over 7 hours drive), .

This was my second visit to the place this summer (and also my second visit ever), but it was the first large "star party" I was attending in Spain. Things are a bit different when comparing with the star parties here in the US, but I won't say which is better - truth is, there's no better or worst, each of them has their own charm. One thing common to both: comradery,  friendship and great atmosphere. One example of that came on the third night I spent at the Pinar. The first two nights were wonderful, but the third night the sky decided to go overcast by 11pm and yet, we stayed up until way past 4am talking and basically having a great time despite the sky decided not to cooperate.

The site is very dark, in the middle of nowhere, deep in the gray zone, and sits at around 6500 feet high. It's populated with around 30+ individual cabins that offer almost everything a home can offer. Here's a view of part of the area where you can see some of the cabins:

There's a restaurant nearby (property of the management of the site) where people gathered for a nice lunch, no BBQ but some really yummy stuff. There's no argument people here know how to enjoy a good meal even when far from civilization!

Not sure if this was a patriotic sign, some leftover paraphernalia from the recent Soccer World Cup win or "all of the above" :-)

The site even has a pool, a reminder you're far from everything but still can enjoy some "civilized activities" during the day (although the water isn't that warm even in the summer months):

Because the are is so large, imagers and visual observers actually setup at different areas. It's not a rule though, and as long as you respect everyone's night vision, you're welcome to setup anywhere you like. Even by your own cabin all alone if you want, of course! Here's a pic of a few scopes in the imaging area at sunset:

It looks like some imagers haven't discovered the benefits of turning red their laptop screens, something I was VERY vocal about during my stay and afterward. Fortunately these were just a few... Here's a night shot of another imaging area where you can see one of such bright screens. It even hurts me to see it in the photo but I think they've got the message. The background sky in the image doesn't do justice to the quality of the sky BTW, and of course, all those red lights you see is the result of a long exposure (there's no excuse for that whiteness in the middle of the photo though!).

The group picture was rather poor, considering there were over 90 attendees, but better than nothing!

Notice the absence of white beards! Yes, I'd say the average age of the group (disregarding kids) was probably between 30 and 40. That was kind of interesting, considering that at a typical star party in the US if you yell "hey you the guy with the white beard!" you may get over 1/3 of the people turn their heads! (ok I'm exaggerating here I know :-) Anyway, yours truly is #7 from the left in the above image.

If you wonder if I actually REALLY managed to bring all my gear over to Spain, here's proof:

Well, the EM200 mount was an acquisition I made while I was there. My EM400 was just too bulky to bring in the plane without paying an expensive fee, so it stayed in the US. The EM200 is pretty much a smaller version of the EM400 but for that type of load it was just as a performer.

Anyway... When I realized I was going to miss GSSP this year I was rather sad. GSSP is such an amazing event!! But I have to say that this "quedada" in Pinar de Araceli - along with a few other outings I did while in Spain - will be unforgettable. The site is amazing, the management are incredibly great people, and although I did miss a bit the "camping" feeling of other star parties such as GSSP or CalStar, I have to say that having a cabin full of commodities was a plus, not to mention the fact we didn't have to deal with batteries of course.

This time around the price couldn't be better: 20€ per person and kids free will give you a complete cabin for one night (min. two people). Compare that with the $200~$300 per night at Lake San Antonio cabins (which also are at an area close to nearby lights), plus the $20 per night for just entering the site. Actually, there's no comparison!

Another plus is that the owners of the site were so pleased with us, they've decided to accommodate a large paved area for future star parties, with parking space, setting up area, and even including a cabin right by that area, accommodated for our astro-needs (red lights only, etc). They'll be inaugurating this new area in another star party that'll take place either in September or October (I forgot) - this one I'll have to miss because in September I'm planning on going to the Central Nevada Star Party and in October there's CalStar.

Regardless, and although I probably won't be coming back for a while (the trip from California is a bit too long), I certainly plan to visit El Pinar every chance I get, and should I ever move to Spain, whether temporarily or permanently, I know that El Pinar de Araceli will become my preferred spot for astrophotograhpy, even in winter, despite the loads of snow the site gets in the winter (the area they're preparing for astronomy will be snow-plowed daily - it was originally a tennis/soccer field that was also getting plowed daily). Needless to say, if you ever visit Spain, especially if you're in the southeast, and are hungry for dark skies, El Pinar de Araceli should be one of your must-do places to visit. Oh, and tell them Rogelio sent ya! (I don't get commission BTW).

Wrapping up: A great star party, with great people, great site, great skies, and of course, images coming up the moment I get some time to process them. See you soon, PDA!

I often get requests from using my images in cases when permission isn't really needed. Before asking, it might be helpful for you to read the following.

As stated at the bottom of all pages in DeepSkyColors.com, all the images I post here are licensed under a BY-NC-ND Creative Commons License.

The BY part means that if you use any of the images posted here, you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author. So what are my requirements as far as work attribution? All I ask you when using any of my images, as far as crediting authorship, is to include at least this minimum required credit line:

Such credit line should be readable when looking at the photograph. That means you shouldn't include the credit line in such a way that a casual viewer of the image isn't able to read the credit line (for example using a font size that is very difficult to read). At the same time, it is suggested that the credit line doesn't distract the viewer from the image

And just to be clear:

• The NC part means Non-Commercial, in other words,  you may not use any of my images or content for commercial purposes.
• The ND part means Non-Derivative, that is,  you may not alter, transform, or build upon any image or content posted on DeepSkyColors.com, regardless of whether I have posted such content somewhere else.

As long as these three conditions are met, you are free to use any image or content posted here on DeepSkyColors.com and no specific permission is required from me.

Does that mean you can not use my images for commercial purposes or that you cannot create derivative works, etc? No. But for any of such uses you must contact me first.

Our good friend Eric Zbinden has put together a table listing all "dark periods" (no moon, between astro twilight) for 2010. The times given in the table are for the night following noon of the shown date and are corrected for daylight saving time in the summer months. Hope you will find it useful

A few tips in how to read the table:

• This Table Summarizes the period of darkness between astronomical twilights with the moon below the horizon.
• Time notation follows military time without trailing zeroes (4=4minutes past midnight, 130=1:30AM, 1458=2:58PM, etc)
• All time shown for a given date are happening during the night immediately following noon time on that date (i.e. if you were to go observing/imaging after work on May 4, the moonless period of the night would start at 9:43PM on May 4 and end at 1:43AM on may 5.
• Blank cells mean the moon is above the horizon between the astronomical twilights.
• Original moon rise/set and astronomical twilight times from the USNO website.
  Underscored cells denote daylight saving time start and finish                               
  

Here's a quick view of most of the ClearSkyClocks around the SF Bay Area (plus a couple not so much "around")... If you would like me to add some more, let me know.

About two years ago, at one HOA meeting, we decided to shut down a private street light, mainly due to the fact that the light wasn't necessary (the area is already suffering from an excess of illumination).

To me it was very good news for a number of reasons. First because, although I barely do any imaging from home, with that light on, even narrowband imaging is greatly affected, as the light is precisely right in front of my "setup area" and in the part of the only usable sky I get from home (SE to SW, the light being at SE). Second, because the light is so bright and without any kind of shielding, that at night I can see the ceiling of my house excessively illuminated, not to mention how bright everything is even when all the lights inside my home are turned off - something that, leaving astronomy aside, is rather annoying to say the least. Of course I could use window blinds, but the question is... what is the point of making my house look like one of those monuments that are being lit so people can admire them? :-) Anyway, so we all agreed to turn that light off and it has stayed off ever since. Until...

A few days ago a city inspector took a walk around the complex, saw the light off and said "that street light should be on or you'd be violating city code", without even checking whether the light being off would in fact be against city code. Mind you, the street light is private and paid by us, it is not a city light, so all the city needs to make sure is whether the area is already sufficiently illuminated according to certain directives - which I can assure you it is. In any case, last night the light was on again.

Here's an image of the street light, taken before it was shut down about two years ago. The image doesn't do justice as far as the light being produced by this lamp because the photo was taken with flash, and so the exposure is just a split of a second.



I will now try to see if at least we can "officially" add some sort of shielding, but I'm not very optimistic. If I was doing little imaging from home before, with this light back on, the imaging time from home has just been reduced to zero.

In the imaging world I often see people making comments about someone else's image having the colors too saturated, or too weak, or too strong...

To me, colors, once you've got them balanced and sorted out, ultimately are nothing but two sliders: one for amount, one for saturation. Well, not always. In PixInsight saturation is actually adjusted with curves, which gives you a lot more freedom, since you can for example adjust saturation for unsaturated areas while leaving untouched areas with an already stronger saturation, or "draw" more elaborated saturation curves, but in general, saturation is definitely one of the easiest things to "dial" during processing.

This means that adjusting for saturation is generally quite easy if you know what you're trying to communicate with your image, so only in very rare occasions I make suggestions about someone else's image being too saturated or too light/strong in color, even if adding at the end the usual "to my taste". I am assuming the person behind the image adjusted those simple sliders right where she or he wanted, and I maybe try to learn about her/him and their image before suggesting my own impressions. Definitely, stating my opinion as "right" while leaving the author's own interpretation as "wrong" is out of the question.

A different case is when you deal with someone with very little experience. Then you may even be helping them know about this little power that they have with the color, and maybe share what you know about it so they can experiment with it. But once a person knows about this "power" they have over an image, unless they're color blind (which does happen!) we need to accept that color intensity and saturation are two tools an astrophotographer can use to craft an image the way they (not us) want it.

Then we can say we would like it more this or that way, but that's our own interpretation, which is OK but in essence it says "I don't like your style when it comes to dialing color intensity", or, in a less destructive interpretation "my taste is different than yours"... Something that shouldn't surprise us since, after all, no two tastes are alike.

Bottom line: IMHO commenting about the saturation of an image taken and processed by an experienced imager is something I try to avoid unless the author is asking about specific feedback in regards to that. Rather, I try to learn about the author/artist. Then, I may like his style/interpretation more or less, just like I don't like every artist, or every painting, or every song, or every building... That is ART.

I've been saying for a while now that in astrophotography there are as many schools of thought as there are astrophotographers.

Yet, every time I see someone using the term "pretty picture" referring to the type of astrophotography that mainly focuses on the aesthetic aspects of imaging celestial objects, I wonder if the work of Ansel Adams or Art Wolfe should also be defined as nothing but "pretty pictures" as well.

Don't get me wrong, I don't really mind people using the term "pretty picture". The term is good enough to describe one of the many ways a person can embrace astrophotography (and probably easier to understand than "aesthetic astrophotography"), and when someone uses it, if they like to photograph and measure asteroids or comets, I'd just say that they like to "take pictures of rocks" (in a FRIENDY way of course!), and if they enjoy measuring imaging devices and optics I may friendly refer to them as "data nuts", although data enthusiasts probably sounds more polite (never mean to call someone "nut" just because they have an interest in something!)

The problem is when the concepts collide - usually in the minds of people who think art and science are rather incompatible when it comes to astrophotography. The fact is, art and science have a lot more in common than what some "data enthusiasts" think - they just can't or simply won't embrace them simultaneously, but doing so is a skill too - just because some people simply reject the concept doesn't make it any less important, valuable or respectable, nor the person who does it is less capable. Many data enthusiasts know that.

For example, not long ago, one of these data enthusiasts (again, I use the term with love, just as others apply it when they talk about pretty pictures) stated that no matter the processing, the data "underneath" is always the same, so "who cares about fancy processing", disregarding any work or creativity in the processing of astro images as something rather pointless. To me that was like saying that a chicken is a chicken no matter how you cook it, literally disregarding the work and creativity of chefs all around the world. Raw chicken is interesting to biologist and other scientists, it just doesn't taste good :-)

Which brings me to the point I really wanted to make... Probably the biggest mistake often made by some (not all!)  data enthusiasts and rock photographers is to disregard the work of those whose goal is partly or mainly aesthetic as images that are useless for astronomy.

Useless for astronomy? Well, usually it is not observing logs, graphs or inverted monochrome linear images, but those fine (and "useless for astronomy") pictures - and the science associated to them - the ones that probably most often capture the mind of a young man or woman and spark the plug that will get them hooked into astronomy, for life. In other words, chances are that many of the astronomers of tomorrow will embrace astronomy as their lifetime work because of those "pretty pictures".

Which to me it means that "pretty pictures" may be useless for astronomers, but definitely not for astronomy.

So if your interest in astrophotography is driven mainly or in part by an aesthetic interest, keep doing what you're doing! The world needs you as much as they need everyone else - plus you will be exercising a much more diverse spectrum of disciplines, because no matter how much art-driven you are, you will still also need to be a bit of a data enthusiast regardless ;-)

About a couple of months, the folks at Ciel Et Espace (the most popular astronomy magazine in France AFAIK) asked me a few questions about some of my images. Two months later I received in the mail the February 2010 issue, with a nice writeup about me commenting some of those images. Perhaps one of the most exciting things, besides the 6-pages portfolio, is that out of the four stories featured on the cover, one of them is the one about my work, and they titled it "Le Photographe de la poussière", which means The Photographer of the dust, which I think it's kind of cool, despite I don't consider myself THE photographer of the dust but just one more, out of many. I feel both humbled and honored to see this article - first complete article ever about my work - on a popular magazine, but at the same time, so excited!

The article features nine images (plus one of yours truly, taken at Dinosaur Point, next to my rig), along with a short comment from me about each of them (translated to French). I hesitate to post the article in readable form here as it will infringe their copyright, but while I wait for their permission to publish it, here's the cover as posted on their web site, a non-readable "preview" of the article (permission for publishing has also been requested), and a list of the images with links to the original version here at DeepSkyColors.com.

The cover:



A reduced non-readable version of the article:



And a list of the images, linked to their original version here in DeepSkyColors.com:

The Witch Head nebula and Rigel
Orion's Belt
The Blue Horsehead nebula
The Helix Nebula
Andromeda
IC405, M38 and the Tadpoles
The Rosette and Cone area
M81/M82 and Integrated Flux nebulosity
The Leo Triplet

A big thanks goes to Emilie and Franck from Ciel Et Espace for beautifully crafting and publishing this article and giving me the honor of sharing cover space in their prestigious magazine! 

I wanted this first post to be about something I might be bringing up often as I write about other topics.

Astrophotography is a type of photography that can be embraced with many different motivations or goals in mind. Some people do astrophotography to measure equipment (cameras, telescopes, etc), others measure celestial objects (their size, distance, etc), others hope to understand the dynamics of the universe, other do so mainly for their aesthetic appeal, etc. Some people do some or all of the above. Others may even embrace it in many other ways.

My astrophotography is mainly aesthetic, at least at this point. I don't do astrophotography to find new objects, to measure their distance, to study how they interact with other celestial objects, and I'm not in the business of measuring the performance of any given camera or telescope, although I may occasionally do it to better understand the tools I use and what to expect from them.

And yet, there are differences between how different people approach the aesthetic aspect of this hobby. In my case, at this point in my journey, one of the many things I do is to associate astrophotography to the way one would approach photography of other "daylight" objects found in nature, and I try to use the same elements a "day" photographer would use, recognizing that some elements aren't there when targeting a dim galaxy or nebula, making out for those missing elements whenever I can and I feel they could help me achieve my goal, and of course, adding to the mix all the elements only found in astrophotography. Needless to say, some typical elements of daylight photography simply cannot be applied, such as the angle (not to be confused with the framing) or perspective, and others, although they can be artificially implemented through image processing, they shouldn't be applied, as they would alter the true nature of the objects, such as the direction of light for example.

Some people may think that this approach is wrong, simply because astrophotography is very different than conventional photography. My answer to that is, yes, astrophotography is very different in so many ways, but to me, it also has many common elements with "daylight photography" and because of that, I try to apply some of those elements the best way I can, along with all the elements specific to astrophotography. If you believe that astrophotography should be embraced with only the elements that are given by this discipline, that's fine. But to me, considering and applying other elements, sometimes not very often considered, does not detract the hobby but it enriches it instead.

This may still sound silly but I will eventually write about some of these elements, and about some ways I think they can be used, at which time I would refer back to this post and then things hopefully make more sense. In fact, the main reason to start with this "concept" (not novel BTW) is not so much to make a point, but to place a reference I know I will be using in the future.

For now I will describe what I would call some of the main "principles" I use when doing astrophotography, and I will do so using a "daylight target" as an example. Keep in mind this is not the truth, just my opinion, my view, at this point in time. Say for instance that I would like to take a picture of a bunch of trees.

- As a technician or scientist, I will adjust my equipment to the best possible settings I know to achieve my goal, and apply my knowledge - whether good, bad or anything in between - to acquire the best possible data I can get, being realistic about my limitations and constrains. Here, knowledge is everything, so I will thrive to learn more and more, realizing I will never be able to "know everything" - which in a way it's a good thing: there will always be something new to learn.

- As a presenter of nature I will make sure I don't add anything to the trees that wasn't there before. I won't touch up a branch because in my image it looked "ugly" to me. I won't remove a cloud from the image because I was hoping to show a clear sky. And I won't paint a flower pink because I feel the image looks nicer than if it was showing its natural - say yellow - color.

- As a communicator I may try to craft the image so that the leaves of the trees become the main element I try to communicate with the image, or the trunks, or the forest as a whole, or even one particular tree, or perhaps that eagle that happened to fly by, or both, or why not, the whole landscape... I may highlight the "crispness" of the branches, while keeping in mind the goals I've set as a "presenter of nature", and I may adjust the color saturation of the tree leaves if that helps me emphasize the message I try to convey as a communicator, also as long as that doesn't detract me from presenting a true object.

- As a perfectionist I will seek for the comments of others to see whether I achieved my goal as well as to find out imperfections in my image. Imperfections when I applied my skills as a technician, as a presenter of nature or as a communicator. I will want to know what others think about the image, both from a technical perspective as well as knowing what they felt the image "told" them. So if I wanted to emphasize the richness of the forest, I would like to know if people was left with the impression that the forest in the image was indeed "rich" or if, on the other hand, their attention shifted to something I didn't think about, and use all that feedback to better learn what I did right and wrong.

- And as a hobbyist, I will have fun doing all of the above!

Which of these aspects I believe is more important in aesthetic astrophotography? Well, they all are important of course, but if I was to highlight one at this point, that would be communication. Why? Because I feel it's the one most forgotten.

One of my "New Year resolutions" was to start an area in DeepSkyColors where I would write about astrophotography and related topics, that could go from simple reports of things that happened during an "outing" (an astrophoto session), opinions and thoughts, how I do certain things (what some might call "tutorials"), or even rants :-) ... I've chosen to start today, January 9th, 2010 because in the future it'll be easy for me to remember when I started it: it's my birthday :-)

This area will be available following the "Blog" link in the left menu on blog.DeepSkyColors.com.

I'm not making any commitments other than writing here every once in a while. Sometimes I might post 3 articles in a row, and then it could take me a month to write something else. The truth is, it's a lot faster to write than to take photographs of the deep night sky! But we'll see... :-) Of course, unless otherwise specified, everything I write will be my opinion, not the sacred truth . You might agree or disagree with me, but if there's something I've found is that the best way to learn is to share our thoughts, rather than lecturing as if we knew it all.

So let this be the announcement for now, and in a few minutes I'll post the first "official" post of the DeepSkyColors Blog! :-)