Cosmic Pursuits

Basic astronomy and night sky information

Astronomy Images and Video

Beautiful and interesting images and video of the night sky including stars, planets, the Milky Way, and deep-sky objects taken through a camera lens or through a telescope.

The Eta Carinae Nebula

by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Astronomy Images and Video, Deep Sky

The Eta Carinae Nebula, just above center, seen in this wide nightscape image of the southern Milky Way in 2023 from the Rio Hurtado region of northern Chile. Image credit: Brian Ventrudo

The Eta Carinae Nebula, the jewel of the southern-hemisphere constellation Carina, the Keel, is the most spectacular example of an active star factory in all the heavens. The nebula is about 260 light years across, some seven times larger than the Orion Nebula. And while 7,500 light years away, five times farther away than Orion, it’s still easily visible to the even the most casual stargazer as a large frosty patch three times as wide as the full Moon in the Milky Way west of the constellation Crux, the Southern Cross [Read more…] about The Eta Carinae Nebula

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Milky Way Photography on Medium-Format Film – A Q&A With James Cormier

by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Astronomy Images and Video, Deep Sky

The Pipe Nebula and Milky Way in Scorpius on Fujifilm Acros film shot with a Pentax 6×7 medium format camera. Image credit and copyright: James Cormier.

Before the days of sensitive, low-noise digital cameras, amateur and professional astronomers used chemical emulsions on cellulose film or glass plates to record photographic images. But film astrophotography was not for the faint of heart – it took time, patience, and more than a little skill to produce good images of deep-sky objects or the Milky Way. Modern digital cameras now make astrophotography so much easier, of course, so why would anyone use film anymore? [Read more…] about Milky Way Photography on Medium-Format Film – A Q&A With James Cormier

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The Pleasures of Ugly Astrophotography

by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Astronomy Images and Video

An untracked snapshot of the North America nebula taken with a ZWO ASI385MC camera and Nikon 28mm manual camera lens at f/2.8.

A recent thread on the astronomy forum Cloudy Nights explored the possibility of capturing quick ‘snapshot’ astrophotos with small but sensitive monochrome cameras and inexpensive, small-aperture lenses of less than 25mm (!) aperture. Even better, this approach used no astronomy mount or tracking at all, just a fixed camera tripod and a PC to capture and stack each image over the course of a minute or two. Lightweight, cheap, simple.

It seemed like a preposterous idea. So of course I had to try it!

[Read more…] about The Pleasures of Ugly Astrophotography

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Five Favorite Images from 2020

by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Astronomy Images and Video

Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) along with a faint summer display of aurora borealis over Calgary, Canada on July 13, 2020. Image credit and copyright: Amanda Ventrudo.

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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The Golden Light of a Winter Solstice

by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Astronomy Images and Video

“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.”
― John Steinbeck

On December 21, 2018 at 22:23 Universal Time, the Sun reaches the December solstice, its most southern point on the ecliptic. This marks the first day of winter in the northern hemisphere and the first day of summer in the southern hemisphere [Read more…] about The Golden Light of a Winter Solstice

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