While not a constellation itself, the Summer Triangle dominates the overhead sky in the northern summer and autumn months and guides stargazers to other stars, constellations, and deep-sky sights. The vertices of the triangle are marked by three bright stars Vega, Deneb, and Altair, each of which belong to true constellations Lyra, Cygnus, and Aquila, respectively. The image below shows the Summer Triangle rising as seen from mid-northern latitudes at 10 p.m. in mid July. The triangle is big: it spans about two full hand widths held at arm’s length. The triangle can be seen well south of the equator, too, above the northern horizon. Southern stargazers call it the “Northern Triangle” or the “Winter Triangle” [Read more…] about Touring the Summer Triangle
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Dark Sky at Last – A Trip Through the Summer Milky Way
It had been two years since I’d had a good look at the summer Milky Way. At my latitude, it doesn’t get dark enough for visual stargazing from late May to late July, and clouds, smoke, moonlight, and the vicissitudes of life disposed of the remaining late summer nights. But this week delivered what I’ve long awaited – a promising forecast of two nights with a crystal-clear atmosphere and no moon. The excuses were over – it was time to drive an hour west of town to my favorite dark-sky site with a telescope, a bag of eyepieces, and a star map in the back seat. If I was going to see the Milky Way before winter comes, it was now or never.
[Read more…] about Dark Sky at Last – A Trip Through the Summer Milky Way
Share This:The Outer Rim of the Milky Way
The outer rim of the Milky Way as seen in late summer towards the constellations Cassiopeia and Perseus.
“Peer at things up close and you may learn their true form
but guessed at from afar, they seem like something else.
Vastness such as this is beyond comprehension:
all I can do is sigh in endless wonder”. – Su Tung-P’o (1060 A.D.)
Cosmic Shipwreck
An abandoned sailboat in a grassy field in northern Virginia makes for a good, if unexpected, foreground for this image of the summer Milky Way. Mars is at lower left, while Saturn is below center, and just below the airplane trail. The silvery rectangle of stars above the plane trail is the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud (Messier 24). Many pink nebulae and silver-gray star clusters fleck the trail of the Milky Way. Look to the upper left of the image to see the little upside-down ‘Coat Hanger’ asterism known as Collinder 399.
Image taken on July 8, 2018 near Warrenton, VA, with a Nikon D750 and Tamron 15-30mm lens at f/2.8, a NiSi natural night filter, ISO 3200, 20 seconds.
Share This:Moving Stars
Like the drift of the continents or the erosion of great mountain ranges on Earth, the motion of the stars across the sky is almost imperceptibly small over the paltry span of a human lifetime. But in this quite astonishing video made with data from the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Gaia spacecraft, which compresses 5 million years of star motion into a few minutes, you can see more than 2 million stars move across the sky like grains of pollen floating in a breeze. It is mesmerizing (and unexpectedly calming) [Read more…] about Moving Stars
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