In 2003, during the month of September, the planet Mars was visible in the eastern sky. It appeared as a little red dot to the naked eye.
Physicists from Columbia University decided to set up telescopes on the beach at Coney Island to observe Mars when it was closest to Earth. They invited the public to come to the beach and peek at Mars.
How cool is that?
Above is a striking picture of the sun setting over Astroland. Astorland is gone now but it is being replaced this summer.
Getting back to the story; I sprang into action and grabbed my camera so that I could photograph the people checking out Mars. I thought it would also be a great opportunity to get some interesting shots of Coney Island as the sun went down. The astronomers were not going to set up till 9:00 pm.
These are the people from Columbia University. They were pretty friendly and I decided to shoot them without the flash. Very impressionistic.Lots more pictures from this batch, featuring many fascinating people, coming up in later posts.
'There are 8 million stories in the Naked City, and this has been one of them.'
No comments:
Post a Comment