Planets

Holst’s The Planets is one of our favorites – especially Jupiter. The main tune in this movement is also the hymn tune Thaxted. We have already posted a version of this hymn early on in the project, but we have a new recording for you!

Last night, we went out to see if we could see stars. We have to drive about an hour to the West and a little South in order to get away from light pollution. Even in our favorite soybean field, we still see a lot of light from Chicago and Rockford. There is also a lot of air traffic! I’m continuing to work on my astrophotography skills, and this is the best way to see the stars where we live! I got a new star tracker for my birthday. It’s supposed to be used to get some really good deep space shots. Last night was the first time to set it up so we mostly played around. Here is a shot of the Milky Way. The brightest “star” is Jupiter.

The moon was pretty spectacular last night!

The star tracker I got for my birthday moves your camera to match the movement of the earth during a long exposure. You can also speed it up. This is a shot of a 2 minute exposure moving 6 times faster than the earth’s movements. This effect will be more interesting when I have mountains or some other kind of interesting focal point in the horizon.