Starship Asterisk*

The brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere.
Copyright Prof. Greg Parker

Bright NLC
Canon 5dmark2+sigma 20 1.8 f11 iso200 20sec
Russia, Komi Republic, 10 miles from Syktyvkar Copyright: Smilyk Pavel

Gamma Cygni in HST palette

Gamma Cygni and surrounding nebulosities, in HST palette.

http://bastienfoucher.smugmug.com
Copyright: Bastien Foucher

This is the stack of 15 hours and 10 minutes from the city centre of Belo Horizonte. A pretty polluted sky for such a hard DSO.
Best regards,
Roberto

Copyright: Henry Palan (http://www.henrypalan.com/)
Caption: White Mountains near Bishop, CA on May 11, 2013.
This Radio Telescope is one of the 23 dishes that make up the CARMA array.
(Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy)
Primary science areas include: the formation, evolution, and dynamics of galaxies, the formation of stars and planetary systems around other stars, the composition of planetary atmospheres, comets and other small bodies in our Solar System, and the evolution of galaxy clusters and the Universe.
Tech info: Canon 6D, 24mm f1.4 stitched panorama.

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Credits: Max Planck Institute for Radio Atronomy / NASA / ESO / Y. Beletsky - http://www.eso.org/public/images/potw1119a/
Caption: Some targets for astronomical investigations are only visible from the Earth's southern hemisphere. This photo of the southern sky, taken at Cerro Paranal in the Chilean Atacama Desert, shows a total of three galaxies: stars and gas from the inner Milky Way and the two Magellanic Clouds. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies accompanying the Milky Way, are both targets of the first science flights of SOFIA starting from Christchurch, New Zealand.
Full story: http://www3.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/public/pr ... 13-en.html

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Copyright: Mike Taylor (http://miketaylorphoto.smugmug.com/Fine ... hotography)
Caption: I wanted to share some of my recent landscape astrophotography with you that have been featured on Space.com and a few other science websites and social media pages - they have gotten a tremendous response & traffic from the public. I've sent a few emails to APOD but never heard back from anyone. If any of these images interest you, please feel free to get back to me so I can give you all the EXIF data and other pertinent information. Thank you for your time.

Copyright: Rafael Defavari (http://www.500px.com/rafaeldefavari)
Caption: a close-up of Rho Ophiuchi region. Lots of gas and dust - all sorts of nebulas can be seen here and a globular cluster as a bonus. One of the most colorful and photogenic regions of the sky, for sure. This image was taken in the city of Gonçalves, Brazil with 3 hours of total exposure time. It was used a 5D mkII camera in a William Optics 90mm apochromatic refractor.

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Copyright: Stephan Gaumont-Guay (http://www.astrobin.com/users/AstroGG/)
Caption: In the first one (Photo1.jpg), we can see the slopes of Mauna Kea at the bottom right, Hulalai volcano at the bottom left-center, the zodiacal light, Venus (low on the horizon), the remaining light of the setting Sun and (if you look closely on the left near the horizon) air glow (or night glow) as a greenish diffuse light. At first, I tought that the green was a fluke of my DSLR but a few minutes later I took a picture of the Milky Way (Photo2.jpg) and you can clearly see the green air glow low on the horizon.
Both pictures were taken on the slopes of Mauna Kea at 2800 meters (near the Onizuka Center for International Astronomy Visitor Information Station) on July 9th 2013 with a Canon 60D and a wide angle lens. Both are 30 seconds exposures at ISO 3200.

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Copyright: Jeff Dai
Caption: In a dark starry night of tibetan plateau in western China ,The bright central bulge of the Milky Way shines over a tibetan house. This galactic nucleus, for the first time, was mistaken for the light pollution by us.

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Copyright: Ravi Murthy
[attachment=0]InSolitude_lr[1].jpg[/attachment]
http://www.ravindramurthy.com/images/ph ... ude_lr.jpg

Copyright: Martin Pugh
Caption: Here is the first object I have been able to target with my RCOS in Australia and my CDK in the US; and I am so pleased with the result.
Of course, being able to gather data from two telescopes means heaps of data has gone into this. I used the far superior conditions in California to get the luminance (mostly) and the my telescope in Australia for the colour (plus a few hours luminance).
Consequently, this HaLRGB image comprises 5:17:4:4:4 for a total 34 hours.

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Copyright: Peter Ridgway
Caption: It is a delightful southern skies object - The Butterfly Cluster (M6) in a generously rich area of sky. It has an uncertain but lengthy history of observation being attributed by some to Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD. This image taken with a Takahashi BabyQ with reducer at an effective focal length of 328mm in LRGB (60,45,45,45) with Astrodon 2C filters and an ATIK 4000LE CCD. This is a widefield presentation hopefully giving some context to the subject in a FOV of about 2.5 degrees square.

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Copyright: Boris Štromar
Caption: Well this is not an astrophoto but if the Cassini probe could zoom in on Croatia, here's how we would have looked while it was taking an astrophoto of us! It was great fun and an incredible feeling knowing WE are going to be in one lonely pixel somewhere in that picture...
We had some clouds but still managed to observe Venus, Saturn and the Moon. The little girls enjoyed it too - my daughter Una (5.5 years old) and my friends daughter Dora (6 years old) were having fun and managed to stay awake to wave at Saturn
Taken from Zagreb, the capital of Croatia

The NGC663 region in Cassiopeia.
Copyright Prof. Greg Parker 2013

[attachment=0]parker1.jpg[/attachment]
http://www.newforestobservatory.com/wor ... 63_nfo.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12801949@N02/9327467592/

Greg

Hello, here's an image of NGC6559 - M8 - M20

"Dark road linking the nebulae"

[attachment=0]astro1.jpg[/attachment]
http://i42.tinypic.com/2eusi2o.jpg


Details of equipment used and exposure:

Observation area: Benamahoma, (Cádiz) Spain
Photographic Telescope: Takahashi FSQ-106 f / 3.6
Telescope guide: EZG-60 Lunatic
Mount: Losmandy G-11 with Gemini v.4
Guided camera: CCD QHY5
CCD capture: 350 Modified Canon DSLR
Exposure time: 25 x 300 "ISO 400 RAW

To view it in larger size:
http://www.sky-astrophotography.com/plo ... 74-web.jpg


Thanks!
Best regards,
Jesús M. Vargas & Maritxu Poyal
CADIZ, ( SPAIN )

http://www.sky-astrophotography.com

Hello, here's an image of the Milky Way.

"Milky Way, the source of life"
http://i43.tinypic.com/dlot5j.jpg

Composition of two photographs, one of the Milky Way and other water stream. The Milky Way, where the origin of our life on the planet is thanks to the stars, water flows in the river that gives life to our planet.


Details of equipment used:
Canon EOS 350 DSLR on tripod
Observation area: mountains of Cádiz Spain


To view it in larger size:
http://i41.tinypic.com/rur2oo.jpg

In the web:
http://www.sky-astrophotography.com/ind ... ure&id=975


Thanks!
Best regards,
Jesús M. Vargas & Maritxu Poyal
CADIZ, ( SPAIN )

http://www.sky-astrophotography.com

Western Veil Nebula (new version)

Copyright: Francesco di Biase - Italy

Iridiscence in windy night Aldebaran, Moon (with halo), and Pleiades. and more iridescence

Clear southern sky as seen from the Las Campanas peak, the future 24-m Giant Magellan Telescope site located a few km away from twin 6.5-m Magellan telescopes.
Author: Igor Chilingarian (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics).
Equipment: Canon EOS6D, Zeiss 21/2.8, 24x1min exposures with tracking stacked in IDL then processed with GIMP.

Copyright: Jesús M. Vargas (Astrogades) & Maritxu Poyal (Maritxu) http://www.sky-astrophotography.com
Caption: IC443 - IC444 - Sh2-249
Tech details: Place: MayHill, New Mexico (USA) MPC H06 - 31 January 2012
Photographic telescope: Takahashi FSQ-106 - 530 mm f/5
Mount: Paramount PME
Capture CCD: SBIG STL-11000M
Exposure time: 28 x 240 14xSII 240 14xOIII 240 h-alpha
Copyright: Terry Hancock http://www.downunderobservatory.com/
Caption: Captured over 2 nights, the 14th and 15th July, I was oblivious to the fact that Comet Lemmon was visiting this neighborhood , when I processed this at first I thought I had captured aircraft lights.
So much happening in this barrage of a cosmic garden with the M52 Cluster (top center) The Bubble Nebula NGC7635 (left of center), the emission and reflection nebula NGC7538 (lower central area) and Sharpless 157 or otherwise known as The Lobster Claw Nebula (bottom left) and Comet Lemmon in the upper right.
Total Exposure time 8.5 hours
Tech details: Location: DownUnder Observatory, Fremont MI
Date of Shoot: July 14th, 15th 2013
H-Alpha 240 min 8 x 30 min H-Alpha 7.5nm bin 1x1
RGB 270 min 6 x 15 min ea RGB, bin 1x1
Camera: QHY11 monochrome CCD http://www.astrofactors.com
QHY Color Filter Wheel
Optics: TMB92SS F5.5 APO Refractor with TS 2.5" Field Flattener
Paramount GT-1100S German Equatorial Mount (with MKS 4000)
Image Aquisition software Maxim DL5
Registed, Calibrated and Stacked in CCD Stack
Post Processed with Photoshop CS5
Copyright: Damian Peach http://www.damianpeach.com/
Caption: Excellent seeing here last night allowed a fine view of Saturn to coincide with Cassini's much talked about Saturn/Earth portrait shot. This image was taken shortly before Cassini's photo run. Some faint diffuse spots can be seen on the disk but otherwise things look quiet.

just finished last night my cygnus wall image in ngc7000.

copyright: Andre van der Hoeven

More info and highres: http://www.astro-photo.nl/deepsky/nebul ... le-palette

it got humid/hot and the fireflies came alive again, so was out Thursday July-12-20123 night.
Via http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneDay.php

12 July 2013 Eastern Daylight Time

SUN
Begin civil twilight 5:35 a.m.
Sunrise 6:09 a.m.
Sun transit 1:41 p.m.
Sunset 9:13 p.m.
End civil twilight 9:47 p.m.

I started imaging at at 10:28pm, 75 minutes past sunset, and took images till 1:12am, about 2 1/2 hours worth.

Each image is 15mm, 20 sec, ISO800.

Image#1: Here is that rough composite of all 460 images, using StarStax.
I like the bright sky still showing star trails with so many fireflies.


Image#2: Then trying to get the sky darker used images from 10:42pm


Image#3: Then trying to get less clouds used images from 10:55pm


Image#4: and finally wanting just dark skies for clear star trails, used images from midnight


YouTube time lapse video Fireflies and Startrails 7-12-2013 , 2 hours of images in 14 seconds, with music
The skies were clearer Friday, so I was out againout again, trying to capture maximum fireflies and startrails w/o clouds.
Another hot and humid night July-13-2013 Saturday, so I captured star trails and fireflies from a different angle, our driveway end


YouTube video for this as well

Going frame-frame thru the images in this stacked photo taken July-13-2013, originally posted above


I noticed 4 meteorites - looks like 1 exploded?
(the meteorites differentiated from fireflies via the classic colored streak indicative of material heating up)

I'd like thoughts of others here before going "public" outside of this expert group.

#1, full image with what I think is an exploding meteorite.


#1 crop, looks like it skipped the atmosphere twice and then exploded brightly?


#2 full image


#2 crop


#3 and #4 smaller, shown only as crops
#3


#4

great field in Scorpion with two very beautiful nebula

https://plus.google.com/photos/10738640 ... 1271210368

PS: Why can't I do see my photos? This is under 400 k

astroligu wrote:great field in Scorpion with two very beautiful nebula

https://plus.google.com/photos/10738640 ... 1271210368

PS: Why can't I do see my photos? This is under 400 k

<img> tags require image urls not page urls

iridiscence

SuperMoon Fields July2013
Epernay, Champagne Ardenne - France
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vegastarca ... 336179613/
Copyright : VegaStarCarpentier http://www.flickr.com/photos/vegastarca ... 343212188/

Copyright: Paolo Pinciaroli

E-mail paolo.pinciaroli@tiscali.it
www.paolopinciaroli.com
http://the-boot-blog.blogspot.it/

Moonlight Crater Milky way
copyright: Robert Malinowski 2013
The Milky way as Imaged under the
night sky, from inside Maui's
Haleakala Crater with a
31% waxing moon..
http://www.flickr.com/photos/66085839@N02/9329973425/

Copyright: André van der Hoeven - www.astro-photo.nl

Full resolution

Barnard 344 is a dark nebula in the constellation of Cygnus. It’s located close to the star Sadr in the Gamma Cygni Nebula. Barnard 344 is located on the bottom of the image.

This region is very rich of dark and emission nebulae. On the image also VanDenBergh 130, a reflection nebula in this region, can be seen. LBN234 is an emission nebula glowing with hydrogen and sulphur.

The image shown here is very different from the ordinary images that you often see of nebulae because this image is fully taken in the deepred part of the spectrum. Images were made in Hydrogen-alpha (656nm), Sulfur (673nm) and Near-infrared (>807nm). They were combined in a Spitzer satellite like palet that is often used for infrared imagery.

Near infrared = red
Hydrogen alpha = green
SII (sulphur) = blue

Telescope: TEC-140
Camera: QSI-583
Mount: Skywatcher NEQ-6

H-alpha: 6 x 1800 s (3nm astrodon)
SII: 3 x 1800 s (3nm astrodon)
Near infrared: 4 x 300 s (Baader 807nm Ir-pass)

21st July 2013 - A moon halo forms over the north western coast of the island of Moorea in French Polynesia. Moon halos are formed when light refracts through high altitude tiny ice crystals. The crystals have to be oriented and positioned just so with respect to your eye, in order for the halo to appear.