A Night at the KOFA's
I decided since the weather was predicted to be clear for the New Moon weekend of February 2006 a trip to my favorite astro-site was in order. The KOFA mountains which stands for King OF Arizona mines ,is near the Colorado river by the town of Quartzite, Arizona. I invited several friends , but Al Stiewing was the only one to make it.
Here is a view of my setup all ready for a nights work of astro-imaging.
The image on the left is the Astro-Physics mount and my new camera set up, a SBIG STL11,000 camera
and a Canon EOS 200mm f2.8L lens, they say you can't have too much mount! On the right is the
Losmandy mount which holds either a Pentax 6x7 medium format camera or a custom built 4x5 all
sky camera seen in the background on the tripod. This mount uses an old ST-4 auto guider for
tracking the stars. 2 other tripods and a pair of Nikons , and the Canon 20D complete the arsenal.
Here is the view to the South at sunset .
This is the zodiacal light which is small particles reflecting sunlight in space, normally not visible
unless the air is very clear and it is a very dark location away from city lights. Note the Pleiades
cluster in the top middle of the image.
This is an image taken late at night with the Canon 20D and a 70-200L zoom @ 200mm, it is
Saturn and the Beehive or M44, a large open cluster of stars. The morning promised a view of
the thin crescent Moon and Venus rising over the mountains.
The view was well worth waiting for as the Moon slowly rose over the ridge.
Here is a wide angle view with Venus straight above the Moon, what a sight! The following night promised a
view of the ISS passing straight overhead plus a full night of all five cameras shooting the stars, but upon
waking there were some clouds and it got worse as the day passed, finally as evening approached
Al and myself decided it just was not to be and packed it up and headed home . Here is a view of the of
the mountains and the clouds as we departed, well one night is better than none!
