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milky way

The Outer Rim of the Milky Way

August 23, 2018 By Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Astronomy Images and Video

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.)

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Tagged With: cassiopeia, milky way, nightscape, perseus

Cosmic Shipwreck

July 15, 2018 By Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Astronomy Images and Video

The summer Milky Way and an abandoned sailboat in rural northern Virginia. Click to open in a new window. Image credit: Brian Ventrudo.

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.

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Tagged With: astrophotography, mars, milky way, nightscape

Moving Stars

May 21, 2018 By Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Science

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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Tagged With: deep sky, milky way, proper motion

The Winter Milky Way Over Cathedral Rock

February 24, 2018 By Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Astronomy Images and Video

The northern winter constellations over Cathedral Rock near Sedona, Arizona. Captured with a Nikon D750 DSLR camera set at ISO 3200 with a 15 second exposure using a Tamron 15-30 mm zoom lens at 15mm, f/2.8. Image credit: Brian Ventrudo.

If only capturing all nightscape images was this easy! In the international dark-sky community of Sedona, Arizona, where artificial lighting is strictly controlled, you can simply pull over by the side of the road on the outskirts of town on a clear night, set up your camera on a tripod, and release the shutter. Chances are you’ll capture something good.

This image of the winter stars over the red sandstone formation known as Cathedral Rock, taken in mid-February, required only slightly more planning. After a day hike up to a saddle point in this conglomeration of red sandstone, I noted the orientation of this famous landmark relative to the sky as seen from trailhead, waited for a clear night, and snapped away. Here you see the stream of the winter Milky Way at the upper left, and the winter constellations from Canis Major at lower left, through Monoceros and Orion at center, to Taurus at the upper right [Read more…] about The Winter Milky Way Over Cathedral Rock

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Tagged With: milky way, nightscape, orion, sedona

Touring the Heart of the Milky Way – Part 2

August 18, 2017 By Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Deep Sky

A look at the deep-sky objects in and around Sagittarius covered in this tour. Objects in white font are covered in this tour. Objects in blue font were covered in the last tour. Click to open in a new tab.

Last week, you began a tour of some of the finer sights in and around the Milky Way in the constellation Sagittarius. This week, let’s look slightly westward to see another handful of splendid sights along the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way. The tour follows the objects in the white font in the above image. Those in blue font were covered in last week’s tour.

The base of operations for this tour is the grand constellation Scorpius, the Scorpion. The long, winding constellation is one of the few that obviously resembles its namesake. The claws of the fearsome celestial arachnid face westward towards the relatively sparse star fields of the constellation Libra. At the heart of the scorpion lies the bright red-orange supergiant star Antares. And to the east lies the winding tail that passes through increasingly rich star fields towards the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy [Read more…] about Touring the Heart of the Milky Way – Part 2

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Tagged With: milky way, sagittarius, scorpius, sky tour

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