FORT SILL, Okla. (Feb. 6, 2015) -- Capt. Joe Spracklen, an Air Defense Artillery Captains Career Course student, sits in the dark waiting.
He has spent countless hours researching and preparing. He sets up his many pieces of equipment as he tracks the movement of his long-range target.
The stars.
Spracklen leaves the pollution of the city lights regularly to take aim at his hobby of astrophotography.
"My parents got me a telescope when I was really little. Kind of been hooked ever since," Spracklen said.
Recruited to play hockey at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, Spracklen said that is when he began looking into the art form.
"I spent a ton of time just researching and just figuring out how to do everything and figuring out what I was going to buy, so I was really prepared once I finally graduated," he said.
Five years later, Spracklen is still honing his skills.
"It's one of the most frustrating things I've ever done, especially because I didn't have anyone to teach me," he said. "I took all this stuff out probably 15 or 20 times, drove an hour away, set all this stuff up and then just completely failed."
Spracklen has since figured it out, and said a great spot for astrophotography locally is at Lake Lawtonka's campgrounds.
He sets up his equipment about an hour before sunset, and then waits until the North Star is visible before he focuses on a subject.
"You have to find everything yourself, so you learn a lot about where things are just by hunting through the constellations," Spracklen said.
His telescope and camera are fixed to a mount on top of a tripod. The mount is motorized and controlled by a program on his laptop that tracks the exact rate of the earth's movement.
As an extra measure, Spracklen uses a second telescope, called a guide scope, that detects if the mount isn't tracking perfectly so he can adjust accordingly.
"The process to take these pictures is extremely complicated; there are a hundred variables that need to be exactly right for me to get a good image.
"Being able to create a detailed and systematic process has helped me get consistent results and allowed me to quickly diagnose problems that arise during an imaging session," he said.
Each click of the camera's shutter is open for 10 minutes to gather as much light in the photo as possible. After 20 viable frames, he layers them in editing software on his computer.
Spracklen also takes several negative frames with the lens cap on that are later used to reduce noise in the composite photo.
"I have to do some pretty extensive work in Photoshop to bring out details ... probably six to eight hours per picture," he said.
Although it seems a hobby like this can only be taken on by someone inherently patient, Spracklen said his time on the ice has helped him focus in this medium.
"I attribute a lot of my personality and character to playing hockey and I think that the dedication it took to reach a high level of competition in the hockey world has served me well in all areas of my life, including my hobbies," he said.
Spracklen said he is often teased about astrophotography until he shares the results of his labors. He said he loves to capture images that most think are only possible using the Hubble Space Telescope.
"What's anyone get out of any hobby," Spracklen asked. "It just fascinates me. It's always fascinated me."
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