It's in the Stars

I seem to be hanging with the stars a lot lately.

On our last camping trip to Wrights Lake, Mike and I stayed out by the lake, in the very cold night air, trying to photograph the stars. Mind you, we don't have that much luck because we're still learning. And the playing field isn't quite fair because Mike's camera is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more expensive then mine. But we're both trying.

We went out onto the lake via a long pier. Mike set up his camera towards the North Star, Polaris, so that he could try to capture star lines. Basically he wanted a shot like this:



It's a long exposure to capture the movement of the stars as they appear to rotate around the North Star. Unfortunately for Mike, the Sierras are not a quiet place to shoot stars without airplanes flying through your shot!

I, however, would have been very happy with a shot of just two stars showing up bright enough out of the field of black. So a shot like this would have had me laughing with delight:



Very boring I know, but I would have been pleased with it especially considering my camera and my inexperience.

Anyway, as the night progressed, we spent time reflecting on time, space, destinies, and Mike's love life!

As we spoke though, a fog started rising off the lake. In a few minutes the moon would rise over the Sierras and the sky would be too bright to continue shooting. Mike was ready to stop shooting but I suggested we just stay out there to watch the moon rise.

Within a span of a few minutes, Jupiter rose and then, slowly, the moon did too. My camera suddenly had enough light to work with. I started snapping a dozen shots - of the moon, of Jupiter, of the mountain range, of the lake and the moon, of the rising mist, anything I could get. But after those couple minutes, the light was all wrong again and my camera refused to focus on anything. I quit. Excitedly though I reviewed my 12 pictures and only found 1 that came out beautifully.



And, to continue the star theme, last week Lee and I took Abby to the Discovery Museum. The last time we were there, there was a whole lot of dinosaur stuff. This time they had a whole lot of space stuff.

I was kinda disappointed, but Abby still had fun with everything. She even got to make her very own comet (a glitter covered styrofoam ball pushed onto a popsicle stick with streamers for the tail). She loved it and is still playing with it. And, most shocking of all to me and Lee, Abby sat patiently through the planetarium show. We went inside a completely pitch black room with a domed ceiling and watched a fairly boring video about comets. But it clearly intrigued Abby. She sat through the whole thing and loved looking at all the stars at the end.



Maybe she does have that scientist gene in her. Maybe she will study science and become a paleontologist. Who can say? Maybe it's in the stars...