Catalogued as 145 CMa, the Winter or Southern Albireo is a beautiful pair in Canis Mayor. It is well visible even with small telescopes. The primary is yellowish-orange and the companion is a pale bluish white. As increasing magnification the colours began to fade compare to the Albireo in Cygnus. This stars are not related and can be seen as a pair because the perspective towards the Earth.
Image with more resolution and image acquisition at
Orion from Down-Under
It’s a blend of several pictures taken between Nov-2012 and Feb-2013 with Canon 60Da and 50mm-f2.8 lens.
All stacked in PixInsight …
Higher res: http://westcoastpics23.blogspot.com.au/
My QSI683wsg camera is way too sensitive to take unfiltered images of the Moon, but on 8th February I noticed a beautiful crescent Moon rising just as I was closing the observatory in the early morning. I decided to try imaging the Moon through a NIR filter since this would be the band of least sensitivity for the camera, and fortunately I was able to grab this image using an exposure time of 1/20th second.
Since the image would be oversaturated through RGB filters I didn't manage to get any colour for this image using the QSI683wsg, but I then combined the luminance data with my earlier saturated Moon image from 2010: A Lunar Mineral Map
The libration differences made this somewhat difficult, but I was able to fit the colour data to the crescent with reasonable accuracy.
I then rotated the image 90 degrees clockwise and was immediately taken by the resulting mysterious appearence of the scene. Although this is our good old Moon, it looks more like being on approach to an alien planet or one of the moons of the outer Solar System, reminiscent of some of the Cassini images of Saturn's moons.
Image details:
Luminance (NIR): 8th February 2013, 16 x 1/20s @ -27C
RGB: 30th March 2010, 500 x 1/1000s
Telescope: 10" Serrurier Truss Newtonian f/5
Cameras: QSI 683wsg (Luminance), ToUCam Pro SC1 (RGB)
Filters: Astrodon NIR E-Series Gen 2
Taken from my observatory in Auckland, New Zealand
Sunset over the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory (CTIO), Chile http://observatoriodelpangue.blogspot.com/
Copyright: Eric Escalera [attachment=10]Sunset over the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory (CTIO), Chile.jpg[/attachment]
The Soul Nebula http://bf-astro.com
Copyright: Bob Franke [attachment=7]The Soul Nebula.jpg[/attachment]
W49B: Rare Explosion May Have Created Our Galaxy's Youngest Black Hole http://chandra.si.edu/
Copyright: X-ray: NASA/CXC/MIT/L.Lopez et al.; Infrared: Palomar; Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?t=30719 [attachment=1]W49B- Rare Explosion May Have Created Our Galaxy's Youngest Black Hole.jpg[/attachment]
M101 and Company http://fth.bounceme.net/
The Pinwheel is one of the more difficult galaxies to image at 21 million light years distance. Like the Milky Way M101 has several bright red hydrogen alpha rich areas similar to our own Lagoon Nebula. These collections of dust and gases are typically areas of new star formation and glow due to the radiation of the young stars within them.
If you look closely you can also spot at least twenty other small galaxies in the image including the edge on galaxy NGC5422 at 87 million light years distance (lower right) and the spiral galaxy NGC5474 (upper left).
It is a picture taken from San Antonio de Areco in Argentina.
Is the final result of 3 hours exposure of 5 minutes subs.
Telescipio Sky Watcher 200/100.
Canon 450 Foto Camera without IR filter.
Cooled by 2 ° C.
SW NEQ6 Mount
Animation 2012 DA14 Tracking the Asteroid http://www.astroava.org
Copyright: AVA - CAAT - Valencia Astronomy Association
Animation made by the Valencia Astronomy Association. It is a tracking the Asteroid of 120 seconds. Working to 0.63 resolution, with a field of only 8 °.
A hypothetical carbon planet orbits around a star which, itself, is located just beyond the outermost reaches of a globular cluster. This cluster rises over the horizon, like some kind of giant moon lighting the night sky, with its shine reflected on the surface of a ocean made of hydrocarbons and carbon derivatives.