Dark Skies
Astrophotography Portfolio

This semester, our intimate class of nine students dove into the world of dark skies and astrophotography in AST220ap. We developed technical skills in nighttime observations and used DSLR cameras to take a variety of astro-photos, shown here on this very site! For each astro-photo style, represented by the different tabs on this site, we learned a different image processing technique. When we weren't busy editing images, we were discussing the importance of darkness at night. Reading The End of Night by Paul Bogard prompted questions like: "What do we lose when we don't have darkness at night?" and "What risks does artificial light at night pose to human health, nature, and society?"

Activities from our class included group observations with a variety of telescope/camera mounts, walks around campus to assess different types of outdoor lights, and a class field trip to a Massachusetts Wildlife Management Area in Cummington, MA.