milky way

Dark Sky at Last – A Trip Through the Summer Milky Way

September 24, 2022 by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Deep Sky

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.

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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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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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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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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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