Do you remember Colin Ake? He is a fellow astronomer and STS-120 launch viewer. And he did a superb job at taking launch pictures:
Even though I did not notice that when I was at the causeway, Colin must have been quite close to my own location. So how come he could take such an up-close picture? Did he use professional camera equipment? Not at all. Being an astronomer, Colin had a Celestron C8 telescope right at hand:
Taking photographs through a scope is challenging. Taking photographs through a hand-held scope is outstanding! I am deeply impressed by the quality of Colin’s pictures.
I got some comments from Colin when I mentioned him in my “up-close picture taking” post. We exchanged a few comments and I was pleased that Colin offered me to show his pictures. I have taken a few from his site and moved them to my own server because I always like to make sure the images I reference will exist as long as my post (being an old web hack, I’ve had to many problems with changing URLs). Unfortunately, it took me some time to do it – much more than I anticipated. I hope Colin doesn’t mind…
If you would like to have a look at the full set, please visit Colin’s picture gallery. I highly recommend that!
Below, I have reproduced some of the shots that I like most:
