For the Rocky Mountain Collegian, Christina photographs news, entertainment and sports. To view more photos from her work, please visit her portfolio.
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Feature: Astro Showcase
Chasing the Stars: An Astrophotography Experience
“Even so close to town at Horsetooth Reservoir, looking up at Jupiter with my bare eye gives me the chills. The simple fact that we can see a planet 588 million kilometers away is simply incredible.”
“It’s cold. It’s lonely. It’s spooky. I have no sense of direction and I’ve been walking nearly two miles through the desert in north-eastern Colorado. The wind is brushing up against my chest and I need to eat. Is this photo really worth it?”
“Even miles from the Wyoming-Colorado border, light pollution is still evident in the Wellington sky. With a 20 second exposure, which farther west turns out prominent Milky Way shots, the sky is still clouded and stars are light.”
“Hiking in the darkness, an adventure is upon me. With colleagues and friends, silence overcomes us. Looking west into the distant meadows, a pack of elk approach. I can hear them shuffle, but cannot see their bodies.”
“‘This is the most intense Milky Way exposure I have ever seen,’ I turn to Lawrence and say. There’s nothing better than a warm summer’s night in the Colorado mountains. While we hear echoes of wildlife surrounding Dowdy Lake in Red Feather, my friends and I come closer knowing the simple stars in the night sky are what connect us all in this moment.”
“The light pollution is extensive when viewed looking east from Long’s Peak. I turn my tripod and camera, careful not to drop my valuable lens, and expose the eastern sky for nearly 25 seconds.”
“My most prominent shots have been in the north-western Rockies. In Red Feather, I return to Dowdy Lake to shoot one last exposure before the Milky Way’s prominence succumbs to the season.”
“‘The winter constellations are different than the summer constellations,’ a wise man once told me. Nothing has been more true than this; although the Milky Way is not as prominent during the cold season, my favorite stars come out in the form of Pleiades and Orion.”
“All of the sudden, walking back through the cold desert, everything in my life had meaning. I was on the path to graduation, I had set myself up for an amazing career, and I had friends who meant the world to me. I knew that as the distant oil rig lights flashed in the background, everything was going to be okay.”
“Big city, bright lights. The flashing lights inspire me. They inspire me to work hard and put in effort toward my long-term goals. Standing atop Lookout Mountain, facing the polluted Denver sky, my opportunities are put into perspective in the form of fog. Although I can’t see into the future, the fog means there is more than meets the eye.”
“When I first looked back at the Earth, standing on the Moon, I cried.”
-Alan Shepard talking about his time on the lunar surface during the Apollo 14 mission in February 1971.