Over Memorial Day, Em, Juliane, and I headed up to Nacogdoches to get Em and Juliane scuba certified. We had some free time in the evenings, so one night we went out to my old stomping grounds, the Stephen F. Austin State University Observatory. We got to use the 18-inch telescope (used by NASA to find landing spots on the moon during the Apollo program!) to look at Saturn and some deep sky objects. Very cool!
Saturn and the lights in the 18-inch telescope’s dome (I had it on a long exposure from the previous shot and didn’t realize it as I tried to take a picture of Saturn through the telescope eyepiece. Once I realized my mistake, I moved the camera away to change the exposure, making the curved lines and blurs in the picture. I think it makes a neat abstract image.)
Star trails and the 18-inch telescope dome. The bright one in the middle of the frame is Venus setting in the west. The top of the dome is lit from the full Moon rising behind us!
The limb of the Moon through an 8-inch telescope
Em and Juliane trained in the classroom and the pool at Diver’s Depot before heading down for some open water training at Blue Lagoon in Huntsville, Texas
We camped one night before diving more the next day. Thunderstorms down in northeast Houston lit up the sky
Two newly-certified divers and their divemaster (me!)
