Starship Asterisk*

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Please post your images here for October 23-25.

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

Thank you!
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<- Previous submissions


M13 and Meteor
Copyright: Brian Kimball
[attachment=2]M13_meteor.jpg[/attachment][/i]

Discovery by the Dawn's Early Light
http://www.launchphotography.com/STS-13 ... nrise.html
Copyright: Ben Cooper
[attachment=1]DiscoveryDawn_Cooper.jpg[/attachment][/i]

Double Cluster and Comet Hartley 2
http://eder.csillagaszat.hu/en.htm
Copyright: Iván Éder
[attachment=0]C103PHartley_DoubleCluster_20101008_eder.jpg[/attachment][/i]

360° of Jupiter
http://www.jaicoa-observatory.com/
Copyright: Efrain Morales <- Previous submissions

I and globular clusters aren't highly compatible, but Brian Kimball, even I like your picture. It is fun to see the meteor whizzing by the cluster, except that the meteor is located in the Earth's atmosphere and the globular is thousands of light-years away. It is fun to contemplate the apparent juxtaposition of two objects that are so incredibly widely separated. As for separation, you've got galaxy NGC 6207 in your picture too, and the galaxy is millions of light-years away.

There are more rungs in the distance ladder here. At the upper left of the globular is blue-white star HD 150679, a typical example of all those A stars that appear to be so common in our skies because they are relatively bright. HD 150679 is fourteen times brighter than the Sun in yellow-green light and shines at faint seventh magnitude from its distance of 385 light-years. But the brightest yellow-orange star to the right of the cluster is a lot more impressive, even if it looks just a bit brighter than HD 150679 in our skies. The yellow-orange star is HD 150998, a K2 giant that may be as much as 2,000 light-years away from us, and it may be anything between 150 and almost 800 times brighter than the Sun.

It is fascinating to contemplate how objects at such incredibly different distances can be seen apparently right next to each other in the sky. Good catch with that meteor, Brian Kimball!

Ann

And that's a lovely triplet, Iván Éder. NGC 869, NGC 884 and Comet Hartley 2! Beautiful colors, too.

And I love the colors of your Jupiter portraits, too, Efrain Morales! Tell me, is that perhaps Io peeking out at the western(?) limb of Jupiter?

Ann

Southern sky with right orientation, Thanks Ann
http://www.astrofotografia.com.pl/
Copyright: Piotrek Sadowski 3000x1668 http://www.astrofotografia.com.pl/photo ... y_3000.htm
8000x4448 http://www.astrofotografia.com.pl/photo ... y_8000.htm

Ann wrote:And that's a lovely triplet, Iván Éder. NGC 869, NGC 884 and Comet Hartley 2! Beautiful colors, too.

And I love the colors of your Jupiter portraits, too, Efrain Morales! Tell me, is that perhaps Io peeking out at the western(?) limb of Jupiter?

Ann

Hi Ann, It's the moon Ganymede transiting behind the jovian disc, Conditions were optimum on that session and made a sequence as it came into the fov. And on the colors thanks I try to keep it as natural as possible with a slight of vibrance.

http://www.stardoctor.org/Comet-Hartley ... er2010.wmv
Copyright: Ruben Kier

For this sequence, I took 60 individual exposures of 100 seconds, and created a video of 5 frames per second, condensing 2 hours of time into 12 seconds of video.

I was wondering what conditions should be met to have the "darkest" sky ...

Well, obviously there should be no Moon light. The Milky Way and zodiacal
light should not be visible neither, and the image should be taken at a
place with no light pollution. If these are correct criteriae, the following
picture must be very close to what the "darkest" sky could be.

The following fisheye image was taken at new Moon (No Moon light), middle of
the night (minimum zodiacal light effect), in the Atacama desert close to
Paranal observatory (no light pollution). The chosen place for this picture
has the particularity to be located at a latitude which value is close to
the declination of the galactic southern pole. The picture was therefore
also taken when the galactic pole passes at zenith, ensuring that there is
no Milky Way up in the sky. When all these conditions are met, the very
faint Gegenschein becomes visible.

"The darkest sky ?"
"Milky Way all around the horizon line"
The "by product" of this image is that the Milky Way plane lies all around
the horizon as visible in the following 360 degrees panoramic view. Annotated version : If you want to see the very large zoomable images with annotations you should go there :
http://www.astrosurf.com/sguisard/Pagim ... t_sky.html

Stephane

PS: The first version this kind of image with the Milky Way all around the horizon line was taken a few years ago :
http://www.astrosurf.com/sguisard/Anim- ... 0x600.html

Hunter's Moon - 2010
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zamb0ni/
Copyright: Fred Locklear

Hunter's Moon 10/23/10 3:00UT by zAmb0ni, on Flickr

Caught the Hunter's moon on the night of 10/23 at around 3:00UT. This is a stack of 50 images stacked in Registax, and post processed with AstraImage and Photoshop. I forgot to take out my light pollution filter in my camera so it gives the moon some interesting color

Full size version can be found here

50 x 1/1250s @ ISO200
Canon XSi modified + MPCC + IDAS LPS-P2 filter
Celestron C6-N (750mm f/5 Newtonian)

Don't worry about the color of your Moon image, Fred Locklear. As far as I can see, you have produced a portait of the Moon in enhanced color, which is certainly not a bad thing!

Ann

I am an avid APOD reader/viewer. I just witnessed what I would call a
lunar halo for the first time ever in Knoxville, TN. I took some photos, not positive
that you take just any Joe Schmoe's images but it is worth a shot to
me. :] Very hard to capure! It was an amazing sight. Thank you for
your time.

-Casey Carlton
carltonphoto.com

[attachment=2]lunar1.jpg[/attachment][/i]
http://adjourn.org/images/lunar1.jpg

[attachment=1]lunar2.jpg[/attachment][/i]
http://adjourn.org/images/lunar2.jpg

[attachment=0]lunar3.jpg[/attachment][/i]
http://adjourn.org/images/lunar3.jpg

NGC1333, vdB 12-13, vdB16-17, B1-2, B202-206; Perseus-Aries
http://www.tvdavisastropics.com/astroim ... 0000d2.htm
Copyright: Tom Davis
[attachment=0]NGC1333-region.jpg[/attachment][/i]

The Other Face of the Full Moon
http://www.astrosurf.com/astroarte/Cris ... it-net.jpg
Copyright: Miguel Claro
[attachment=0]moon.jpg[/attachment][/i]

NGC 7000 (North America Nebula), LDN 935, IC5067/5070 (Pelican Nebula) in Cygnus

ProLine FLI 16803, FSQ 106 EDXIII, AP Mach1GTO
Ha, SII, OIII 12,25h (240:180:300) (RGB used for stars)
Belecin, Poland:

[attachment=0]IC5070_Bogdan.jpg[/attachment][/i]
http://starrysite.com/pliki/galeria/duz ... rysite.jpg


LDN 935 Dark Nebula (Fragment) in Cygnus (crop)

[attachment=1]LDN935_Bogdan.jpg[/attachment][/i]
http://starrysite.com/pliki/galeria/duz ... rysite.jpg

Bogdan Jarzyna
http://www.starrysite.com
jarzynabogdan@o2.pl

Hi all! This is my first post here so I hope I do this correctly. I just finished a rough time processing a really faint object, Sharpless 202 which is in Cassiopeia just to the left of IC1848. It is so faint that in shots of IC1848 that include parts of Sh2-202, you see zero nebulosity from Sh2-202. That said, a focused effort on it will bring it forward. Here is what I managed:

[attachment=0]Sh2-202_HaRGB_web.jpg[/attachment][/i]
http://www.astrofoto.ca/stuartheggie/cc ... GB_web.jpg

More can be found on my webpage at: http://www.astrofoto.ca/stuartheggie/cc ... _U16M.html

I hope you like it.

Stuart Heggie
Rural Ontario Canada

Sorry, the server that was hosting the image of my post above failed. I made a mirror copy to a different server, I re-post my original message here but with new links for the images :
***************************************************************************************
I was wondering what conditions should be met to have the "darkest" sky ...

Well, obviously there should be no Moon light. The Milky Way and zodiacal
light should not be visible neither, and the image should be taken at a
place with no light pollution. If these are correct criteriae, the following
picture must be very close to what the "darkest" sky could be.

The following fisheye image was taken at new Moon (No Moon light), middle of
the night (minimum zodiacal light effect), in the Atacama desert close to
Paranal observatory (no light pollution). The chosen place for this picture
has the particularity to be located at a latitude which value is close to
the declination of the galactic southern pole. The picture was therefore
also taken when the galactic pole passes at zenith, ensuring that there is
no Milky Way up in the sky. When all these conditions are met, the very
faint Gegenschein becomes visible.

"The darkest sky ?"

"Milky Way all around the horizon line"
The "by product" of this image is that the Milky Way plane lies all around
the horizon as visible in the following 360 degrees panoramic view.

Annotated version :

If you want to see the very large zoomable images with annotations you should go there :
http://www.eso.org/~sguisard/Pagim/darkest_sky.html

Stephane

PS: The first version this kind of image with the Milky Way all around the horizon line was taken a few years ago :
http://www.astrosurf.com/sguisard/Anim- ... 0x600.html

Hi Stuart! Yes, I like your Sharpless 202. You are right that this nebula must be faint, because my astronomy software directs me to a certain place in the sky when I ask for it, but it shows no "nebula contours". On a scale from 1 to 6, where 1 is the brightest and 6 is the faintest, this nebula has a brightness level of... 6. You guessed it. But there is one almost shockingly red ridge to the upper left.

What are the ionizing stars responsible for the nebula? Actually, there are several stars in it capable of doing some ionizing. There is a small cluster to the left which contains a B2.5 IV-V star in it, which might be capable of some ionizing (but not much, and perhaps nothing at all). To the left of this cluster is an elongated patch which is a double star consisting of a B0.5 and a B1 star, and they can ionize things. Both are highly reddened, interestingly enough. And to the upper left of this pair is a brightish, lonely-looking star, CC Cas, which is of spectral class O9IV, according to my software. It may be the principal ionizing source here.

A thing I really, really like about your image is that it includes the pretty blue reflection nebulae around magnificent blue supergiants CE Cam on the bottom right and CS Cam on the bottom left! All in all, this is a very nice portrait of some very faint nebulosity in the sky and this nebulosity's brighter neighbours!

Ann

And Stepane, I'm totally impressed with your dedication to find the very darkest sky, where you went so far as to find a place where even the Milky Way would not provide any light pollution!!! Amazing!

I think it is totally fascinating to see an image of the sky where the Milky Way is encircling the horizon. Talk about having the Mily Way at your feet! Thanks for your great images!

Ann

The images of Stephane are absolutely stunning! Congratulations!