Scientist's lifelong hobby combines science and art

Posted: Saturday, March 08, 2008

You might say Michael Covington has a universal mind.

On a recent weekday, the University of Georgia research scientist is in the midst of a typically busy week. He has a student waiting outside his office to see him, and a reporter probing him with questions about an exhibition of his photographs on display in the Hill Atrium at UGA's Center for Continuing Education.

The photos aren't at all related to his research in computational linguistics, he's careful to point out. But he receives countless e-mails and phone calls regarding them, he says.

These compelling visions of the heavens - literally, stars, planets, nebulae, comets and the like - are the product of a nearly life-long hobby that mingles his interest in science and art.

He's written four detailed books for amateur astronomers - two on astrophotography and two on telescopes, and he's well known in the field.

Covington was that smart kid in sixth grade who was bored; he read ahead in the textbook and landed on a chapter about astronomy, and things started looking up.

Granted, it was the early 1960s and space exploration was a big part of American culture's embracing of the future, he says.

But it wasn't so much the future that intrigued him when he considered the heavens. It was the past.

"It gave me a feeling of connection with past human beings all the way back to prehistoric times," he says of how people have always looked to the sky with questions, and more often than not, found answers.

"There tends to be the impression that people in ancient times were not intelligent, and that's not the case," he says. "There's a sort of chronological snobbery that they hadn't gotten as far as we have (in our understanding of the universe). But we haven't gotten as far as people in the future will get."

Regardless what the future holds, what started Covington pointing his camera lens upward straddles the worlds of art and science, and it's something he takes pleasure in.

In fact, it makes good sense, he says, citing C.P. Snow's "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution" that addresses how the split between science and the humanities creates a breakdown in solving problems.

"Technology," he says, "is generally put in the category of science, whereas Aristotle put it with art."

And so, while he enjoys the photos that result from his work, a bigger part of the intrigue is using available technology to acquire the best image possible.

"There are people who take much better pictures than I do," he says, "but solving the technical problems is what I want to share to advance the art."

For that reason, he receives a barrage of questions from amateur astronomers eager to capture the likes of asteroids and eclipses as well.

Covington says he uses "relatively low-cost equipment," so he's always maximizing the tools he has.

"If you spend five times the money, you wouldn't have five times better results," he says.

Some photos are taken through his telescope, but he most often uses a 35-mm camera or a digital SLR with a telephoto lens that "piggy-backs" his telescope.

He says when people are starting out, he suggests they hold a camera up to the eyepiece of a telescope and photograph the moon.

"Astrophotography is a lot like wildlife photography," he says. "It's very dependent on what is possible. The difference is that stars are a lot more predictable than animals. But the similarity is that most pictures start not with an artistic vision, but with an opportunity."

For the novice, there's much to learn about equipment, computerized telescopes and cameras - problems the scientific mind can work on solving for years.

For the artistic mind, though, a look at Covington's photographs is the thing that allows our naked eyes to take in things they could never see on their own.

And then, for Covington, there's the mix of both. "I often think that the photons I'm capturing are millions of years old, if they're filtering in from a distant galaxy. And if I don't get it just right, they'll just be grainy mush."

'Moon, Stars, and Galaxies'

Astrophotography by Michael Covington

When: Through March 27

Where: The University of Georgia Center for Continuing Education, 1197 S. Lumpkin St., in the Hill Atrium

More: Read more about Michael Covington and see more of his work at www.covingtoninnovations.com/astro/exhibit.html

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