it’s full of stars – 2001:A Space Odyssey
Toronto. For most of photographic history, photos were taken from about one metre to out as far as the eye could see.
Double bellows extensions and other special accessories allowed photos of small objects to be easily taken with the camera lens able to focus from about 1 metre to 1:1 or life size. The early Nikon Coolpix digital cameras were just right for use with a microscope.
From early on, photography was also used to capture photos through microscopes and telescopes. As a kid, I remember looking at the night sky and seeing the milky way and the northern constellations. As urbanization grew, so did light pollution and we lost the ability to see many stars in the night sky.
Telescopes, like the Hubble, were shot up in space beyond the atmosphere and light pollution, recording the stars while circling earth.
Earth-bound telescopes were built high on remote mountain tops where the atmosphere was thin and the light pollution was small. The most recent huge earth-bound telescope opened this year in Chile – famous for its observatories a top mountains and far from light pollution.
Called the Vera C Rubin Observatory, the galaxy images it will capture are to be sent to many universities – including the University of Toronto here. And the streamed images are all courtesy of “the largest digital camera ever made”. Now-a-days, when we think of photography, we must think big – very very big!
Meantime back here on earth, drop in on our 2025 events and pick up something just right for your earth-bound collection. Our next event is the annual summer trunk sale next month (July 13th) come rain or shine!
NB. This post title is from an application called Distant Suns. I bought a copy decades ago to run on an Amiga. It is still available today – for modern smart phones at least.
