Kitts Peak Observatory

Have you ever wanted to take a photo of a nebula? I stopped yesterday at the Kitts Peak Observatory and discovered that they allow photographers to rent their telescope for an entire night. www.noao.edu/outreach/aop/

You can take amazing photographs of many remote features of the universe: www.noao.edu/outreach/aop/mainimages.html

Rental is $525 for an entire night for two photographers plus “room and board’ for $75-90 more each, although you may not sleep. You can use their Santa Barbara Instruments ST-6303E CCD camera, but it is only 3072 x 2048 resolution. These 6MP CCD cameras normally need to take exposures using red, green, and blue filters then color and combine the monochrome results later to get color images. You can use your own digital camera, but film cameras can cature images in one exposure without the filters, so that might allow more efficient use of the telescope time: www.noao.edu/outreach/aop/filmprep.html

I wonder how any of those guidelines might change using the newest Canon and Nikon full frame DSLRs shooting at ISO 1600, 3200, or 6400.

One disadvantage is that it takes some time to calibrate the telescope to each DSLR, so it is may be best to use one DSLR for the night (or for two photographers to each take 1/2 of the night): www.noao.edu/outreach/aop/visprep.html

Jeff Sullivan

Jeff Sullivan leads landscape photography workshops in national parks and public lands throughout California and the American West.

Share
Published by
Jeff Sullivan

Recent Posts

Photographic Composition: Conception and Fine Tuning

This was one of those "stop the car" moments. Snowy Telescope Peak had nice side…

9 months ago

Geminid Meteor Shower 2023

The Geminids are the most active meteor shower of the year, and in recent years…

11 months ago

When Is The Best Time To Visit Bodie State Historic Park?

I was asked this question earlier today, and the more I thought of it, the…

1 year ago

Death Valley Wildflowers, Rainfall and Super Blooms

So called "super bloom" years make it easy to find wildflowers in Death Valley, but…

2 years ago

Night and Landscape Photography Workshops 2022-2023

We've reached a major milestone on our workshop program: we celebrated completing ten years of…

2 years ago

Death Valley “Adventure Series” Trip March/April 2022

Spring 2022 is shaping up to be a very busy year in Death Valley, like…

3 years ago

This website uses cookies.