margaret99•24d agoProlific Poster

PSA: I found my old hard drive from 2008 with my first astro photos

I was cleaning out a closet and found a box of old computer parts. In it was a hard drive from my first laptop. I plugged it in and found a folder called 'telescope stuff'. The photos were awful. I'm talking a blurry dot for Jupiter, and a shot of the moon that was just a white blob. I remember being so proud of them back then. I used a cheap webcam taped to my telescope eyepiece. The software was a free trial that kept crashing. I showed my friend and he said, 'Cool, is that a star?' Now I look at what people post here, these crisp shots of nebulas from their backyards, and it's wild. It makes me want to dust off my gear and try again, but with better tools. How many of you still have your first attempts saved somewhere?

2 comments

2 Comments

troystone24d ago

Dig up those old photos and frame them.

jessec3524d ago

Frame my old photos? I'd need to find them first, which means facing the chaos of my external hard drive from 2012. It's a digital graveyard of blurry party pics and terrible haircuts. Honestly, framing them might be a public service warning for future generations.