Starship Asterisk*

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Please post your images here for October 1-4.

If you need instructions on posting images, please see this thread.

Thank you!
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<- Previous submissions


Jupiter and Ganymede
http://www.galacticimages.com
Copyright: John Chumack
Hexagon Rising
http://www.starryearth.com
Copyright: Juan Carlos Casado NGC 7635: The Bubble Nebula in Cassiopeia
http://www.robgendlerastropics.com/Bubble-BYU.html
Copyright: Image acquisition, Michael Joner and David Laney (BYU); image processing: Robert Gendler
<- Previous submissions

Title: God's Hand
Copyright: John Biondo Photography
http://www.myonlineart.com
Comment: Was taking photos of the sunset last night (30 Sept 2010) at Round island Park, Vero Beach Florida. I thought the title was appropriate for the shot.
[attachment=0]sunhand.jpg[/attachment][/i]
For full-sized image, please go here: http://www.myonlineart.com/godshand.jpg

photo title"Lightning night"
Copyright: hiroshi chang
this photo September 27 was taken in Taiwan Hehuan Mountain, elevation 3150M, time 20:40 PM
The moon was still behind the clouds, lightning light shine upon the front of the clouds.

Hi,

here are 2 new pictures.

The moon's western limb: Mare Orientale
http://www.skytrip.de
Copyright: Mario Weigand 100% version: http://www.skytrip.de/monvid279b.htm

- Offenbach / Gemany
- DMK41 USB camera with Baader R filter
- 14-inch SCT

An old one: NGC 6791
http://www.skytrip.de
Copyright: Mario Weigand This is a crop.
see the 100% version: http://www.skytrip.de/ngc6791-1c.htm

- Offenbach / Gemany
- DMK41 USB camera with Baader R filter
- 14-inch SCT


greets

Mario

That's a truly great picture, Mario Weigand! It's a fantastically rich star field, where all the stars are clean and sharp, and where the star colors are fantastic. You bring out the nature of NGC 6791 marvellously. The cluster is packed full of neutral-colored stars, probably of spectral class G, like the Sun. The brightest stars are the red giants, stars that have used up the hydrogen in their cores and have brightened, wherupon they will expel their atmopspheres and die.

NGC 6791 is an old cluster, as you said. I don't have the energy to google it right now, but my guess is that it is at least as old as the Sun, and possibly older. The fact that it still holds together after a minimum of four billion years (and it could be older than that) testifies to the great mass of the cluster. For an open cluster, this one is a whopper. When it was young, four billion years ago or more, it must have been truly, truly spectacular.

Well, as I said, it is a wonderful and wonderfully generous picture that invites anyone who is so inclined to spend a long time just identifying the stars here!

Ann

Dark Matters
http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/Emil.Le ... /ATCA.html
Copyright: Emil Lenc Comment: The following was inspired by the work of Alex Cherney who presented his image of "The Planet and the Radio Dish" on Astronomy Picture Of the Day using a stereographic projection. The image is composed of six fisheye images digitally stitched together and reprojected. The images were taken on an exceptionally dark night on the 29th of September 2010 during the CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science (CASS) Radio Astronomy School. In the image most objects appear as shadows, however, prominent in the image is the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) with the Milky Way "rainbow". Also prominent in the image are Jupiter and the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds.

Wow... the images God's Hand and Lightning Night are wonderfully atmospheric, and nearly look as though they had switched day and night; God's Hand is so dark, I'd have thought it an image of the moon rather than the sun, and Lightning Night is so light, were it not for the star trails, it looks as though it could have been taken during the day. How cool to have them one after the other!

The western limb of the moon is a great shot, concentrating as it does on a small slice of our nearest celestial neighbor, and NGC 6791 is like peering into a black velvet box of golden topaz and sapphire gems. The colors are fabuous!

What a fun shot Dark Matters is! I was glad for the explanation, and not at all surprised that Alex Cheney's image had been the inspiration for it. Looking at the image in its small size on the thread, the telescopes look like large trees to me (even with my glasses on ), which adds to the small-globédness (hah!) of the image.

My thanks and a warm welcome to Asterisk to John Biondo, Hiroshi Chang, Mario Weigand, and Emil Lenc!

Shadow of the Earth From TUG (TÜBİTAK National Observatory)
Copyright: M. Raşid Tuğral
TÜBİTAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) National Observatory is located in 2500m altitude in Antalya, Turkiye. There are three main telescopes which have diameters of 1,5 m (RTT-150), 1m (T-100), and 60cm (T-60) main mirrors. In this photo RTT-150 is on the left side, T-60 is on the front right side and T-100 is located at the far hill on the right. There is also a robotic telescope ROTSE IIID at the behind of T-60. ROTSE IIID (Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment) is a robotic telescope system and used for observing gamma ray bursts and x-ray bursts in visual wavelenght. There are 4 of them around the globe which can enable observing an event (like GRBs) during 24 hours without an interruption.
Here you can see where they are.
http://www.rotse.net/information/world/

elenc wrote:Dark Matters
http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/Emil.Le ... /ATCA.html
Copyright: Emil Lenc
http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/Emil.Le ... net.02.jpg

I'm curious as to what the glow is at the bottom of the "globe".

Jupiter in multi wavelength
http://astrophotography.fr/
Copyright: © JL Dauvergne / Elie Rousset / Philippe Tosi / S2P / IMCCE / Obs. Midi
Pyrénées

Sh2-171 in Hubble palette
http://www.astrographica.com/index.php? ... temId=9131
Copyright: John Ebersole

bystander wrote:I'm curious as to what the glow is at the bottom of the "globe".

I believe these are due to light pollution from the nearby town Narrabri (about 25 km / 15 miles away) and a refinery that is a bit closer in. Initially when I took the photos I was a bit disappointed by this (the astronomer in me was creeping in) but when I looked at the final stitched image I found it actually added to the mystique of the image (it reminded me of a total solar eclipse).

owlice wrote:Looking at the image in its small size on the thread, the telescopes look like large trees to me (even with my glasses on )

Yes the "planetary" features are a bit on the small side - I was more trying to highlight the beauty of the Universe surrounding it BTW, the image looks much nicer when it is viewed at about double this scale. BTW, thanks for the warm welcome.

Cheers,

Emil.

BTW, the image looks much nicer when it is viewed at about double this scale.

Agreed! I had a lot of fun on your website looking at the image and its various incarnations!

NGC281 & 103P/Hartley 2 Comet
http://www.astronomica.es
Copyright: Jaime Fernandez

What a lovely image, Jaime Fernandez. The colors are absolutely splendid!

And welcome to Starship Asterisk*!

Ann

Thanks Ann and hello all.

Hi folks

Following three pictures where taken during the last week in the Dolomite Alps in Italy.

Three peaks at night
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmkdmkdmk/5047039608/
Copyright: David Kaplan Sellajoch by night
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmkdmkdmk/5045404332/
Copyright: David Kaplan Shelter at night
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmkdmkdmk/5045404586/
Copyright: David Kaplan Any feedback is very welcome.

Best regards
David

M33 - The Triangulum Spiral
http://hwilson.zenfolio.com/galaxies/h2 ... #h296d19f4
Copyright: Hunter Wilson

Those are three lovely images, David Kaplan. I like them all, but my favorite is the last one. I love the poignancy of the little human-made shed seen against the towering mountains, the products of mighty geological processes on Earth, and the vastness of the cosmos out there. The tiny white cloud adds a touch of the ephemeral.

I love the intensely blue color of the sky, by the way (but that's me, I like everything that is blue). Tell me, why is the sky so bright behind the mountains in all three images?

Ann

Ann wrote:Those are three lovely images, David Kaplan. I like them all, but my favorite is the last one. I love the poignancy of the little human-made shed seen against the towering mountains, the products of mighty geological processes on Earth, and the vastness of the cosmos out there. The tiny white cloud adds a touch of the ephemeral.

I love the intensely blue color of the sky, by the way (but that's me, I like everything that is blue). Tell me, why is the sky so bright behind the mountains in all three images?

Ann

Hi Ann

Thank you for your feedback. I think the bright part behind the mountains comes by one part from the strong vignetting of the lens (light falloff at the edges) and by another part from the rising moon which wasn't visible but I know it was rising .

David

Thank you for sharing your wonderful camera views of the universe and Mother Earth with all of us homebound folks. What a pleasure it is to look at these images. Did you see the physist Dr. Michiro Kaku's 3 hour interview on tv last evening (Oct. 3, 2010)? What a fascinating life we have happening all around us.

Using the <- Previous submissions link in the first post makes it possible to page back through earlier submissions threads; each submissions thread has a link to the previous submissions thread in the first post. A lot of fabulous images are submitted to APOD; I don't know how the editors manage to select just one per day!

Taken on Oct 2nd 2010 in New Jersey at Cape May Point. Was not expecting anything other then the typical sunset and was pleasantly surprise to see the "Etruscan" sunset unfold. I choose this image as the "best" but did record the entire event. My hope was to see a green flash but it never appeared.

I'm in awe of the quality and variety of submissions to APOD!!! I have to admit to a wee bit of jealousy of all of your photographic skills.

As for Earth-bound photos, I was totally unaware that Italy had such vast open spaces - I also especially liked the last picture with the old barn in the foreground!!!!

http://www.astro-pics.com
Copyright: Wolfgang Promper