Just back from the Oregon Star Party – 6 nights in the high desert at Ochoco National Forest.  5 of those nights were good for astronomy (most of them very good).  And then there was Friday.  Folks from the Forest Service came by to warn us that a severe electrical storm was likely in the evening, which made people pretty nervous.  I don’t think we’ve ever had any injury or damage from lightning, but wind is a very common problem that has caused a lot of damage in the past, so most people secured their outdoor furniture and such, and some people even took down their telescopes.  The storm did happen, but it bypassed us, which meant that we got to watch the light show from a safe distance – without even getting wet.  We didn’t do any astronomy that night, but the evening sky was pretty dramatic:

If you look carefully you can see a number of tents and vehicles in the shadows.  This is a small portion of the observing field.  I didn’t get any pictures of lightning because my DSLR was attached to a telescope and covered up in anticipation of rain.

But all the other nights were clear or mostly clear, and except for Monday night, not terribly cold.  I didn’t actually spend a lot of time trying to capture astro-photos.  Since I was showing my “mobile gallery” every day, I went to bed no later than 2AM each night.  And I haven’t processed most of what I did capture, but here’s a quick version of a wide-field image of the southern Milky Way, done with the Canon 6D and an 85mm (focal length) lens:

I’m loving this camera.  It can’t do a lot of things that my QSI CCD camera can do (such as narrowband imaging), but it is so easy to capture full color images that it is just fun to use.  This image is a stack of 8 exposures, each just 30 seconds long.  And it’s actually overexposed!

The gallery was open every day from mid-morning (depending on when I woke up) to dinner time:

Both the number of visitors and the sales were much higher than last year, due in part to help from my daughter, Lia, and uber-salesman, Dan.  Thanks to everyone that stopped by!  The 8×10 backlit prints were particularly popular.  I had prepared 20 of them for the event and came back with just 4, one of which I couldn’t sell because I had dropped it and damaged the frame.  The new “Space Windows” were also a hit.  Everything was heavily discounted for OSP, which also helped, no doubt.  In fact, every category of product sold more than in past years, so once again, a big “Thank You!” to everyone who visited the gallery.

This week will be spent filling orders, catching up on chores, and preparing for PhotoFair this coming Saturday.  But I will be posting some more astro-photos from OSP as soon as possible.