Urban Astronomer’s Survival Guide
Around the Moon in 28 Days
The Taurus Molecular Cloud
Not far from the Pleiades and Hyades star clusters along the northern Milky Way lies the coal-black fingers of the Taurus Molecular Cloud, the nearest star-forming region to Earth. Unlike the more famous Orion star factory, with the dazzling Orion Nebula and associated bright blue-white stars, the TMC is not well known to most stargazers. That’s because it doesn’t offer much to see, with no bright nebulae and just a dark and sooty network of tendrils that span more than 30o of sky. But the TMC is the nearest star-forming region to Earth, making it of considerable interest to astronomers. It’s also a rewarding target for astrophotographers who can capture its structure against the starry background in the constellations Taurus and Auriga [Read more…] about The Taurus Molecular Cloud
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Five Favorite Images from 2020
To call me an astrophotographer would be an overstatement. But that doesn’t stop me from bringing a camera along when stargazing on a clear night to complement some casual visual observations. No image can reproduce what it’s like to look through a telescope or binoculars, especially in dark sky when the eye beholds the scintillation of stars and silver-white nebulae and galaxies against the black matte of the background universe. But images have the advantage of permanence, to some degree at least, and of leaving a record of what we’ve seen and where we’ve been in the night sky over the months and years [Read more…] about Five Favorite Images from 2020
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