Grey-Bruce Boomers Fall 2023

y Doug Archer
Keith Mombourquette has an actual observatory
in his front yard, complete with retractable roof,
a high-powered telescope, star tracking computers,
and cameras that he uses to capture pictures of the
night sky.
THE BUCKET LIST
Keith Mombourquette
in his homemade
observatory.
These night-sky images are not just of the Big Dipper
or the full moon, either. The Saugeen Shores resident
has photographed quasars, nebulas, and even the
Andromeda Galaxy, located some 2.5 million light
years from Earth!
Keith specializes in astrophotography, which
uses cameras and telescopes – and even your own
observatory – to capture pictures of astronomical
objects or celestial events in space. It is a highly
technical, highly complex form of photography and
Keith came to it quite by accident.
He’s always loved photography. Buying his first
camera over 50 years ago, he has been capturing
images ever since. It wasn’t until a night in April
2022 that he turned the camera toward deep space.
“I was down at the Saugeen River, anticipating that
there might be a chance of seeing the Northern
Lights,” Keith explained. “Turned out, I was wrong.
But I did catch a glimpse of what is called the Orion
Nebula, the middle star in the sword of Orion the
Hunter. It was bright and visible that night so I set
up my camera and took some shots, not expecting
much.”
When he got home, however, he was astounded at
how wonderful the images looked.
“The colours of the nebula against the blackness of
the night sky were spectacular – something I’d never
expected to be able to capture in a photograph,” he
said.
The next night he was back at the Saugeen River on
a mission. He spent hours shooting pictures of the
Orion Nebula and, by daybreak, Keith was hooked
on astrophotography.
“I have always been intrigued by the physics of space,
of how things are formed in our galaxy and beyond,
so I think that finally getting into photographing
objects in deep space was a natural progression for
me.”
Of course, taking pictures of deep space is no easy
task.
“To properly capture, say, a distant galaxy requires
long exposures – you need to focus on it and take
images over a six- to eight-hour period,” Keith
explained. “That’s difficult to do, not only because
the galaxy is so far away, but because it is constantly
moving out of alignment with the camera due to the
Earth’s rotation. As one astrophotographer described
it, it’s a bit like trying to photograph a dime that is
floating eight kilometres away and moving at a rate
of 100 km an hour.”
To do that, Keith said, it takes specialized equipment.
FALL 2023 • 5