Photographic Panorama of Primary Base Area

This panorama of Area 51 was submitted to ParaScope by Alfredo Garcia. (Click graphic for higher-resolution image showing greater detail.) Garcia constructed this panorama from photographs he took from Tikaboo Peak, some 25 miles away from the military's best known top-secret installation. Garcia explained how he achieved these results under such antagonistic conditions:

"There is an astrophotography technique known as eyepiece projection. Basically, you take your telescope and insert an eyepiece into it to get the desired magnification you want and then place your camera (with or without a lens in place) at the eyepiece, focus, and then shoot the astrophoto. The same technique can be used on terrestrial objects.

"For my photos, I took my 80mm, f/5 (= 400mm focal length) Orion Telescope Company ShortTube refractor telescope and attached an 18mm focal length eyepiece which yielded a magnification of 22.2X (400mm/18mm). I then simply placed my Olympus OM 88 SLR camera (with a 50mm lens set @ f/4 and focused to infinity) right at the eyepiece where my eye would go and took the photo. You can do this with any combination of eyepieces and or camera lenses and get a variety of results. My photos are one such result."

(c) Copyright 1996 Alfredo Garcia.