Clouds are reflecting lights, so light pollution is annoying for astronomers in cities, like Paris. The sky is almost orange in Paris, all the time. In 1667, when the Observatory of Paris was built, it was in the countryside, but the city of Paris has expanded, thus now the Observatory belongs to the inner city.
On the roof of the Observatory, people who visit the Arago dome for the European Researchers’ Night, on September 24th, 2010, listen to an astronomer who describes various problems due to light pollution, although it is still possible to make some observations.
At the University Complutense of Madrid, street lamps are focused to the ground, instead of spreading rays in all directions. A sort of hat covers the top of each street lamp, in order to focus the light on people on the ground. Many projects are thought to reduce light pollution, to avoid to waste energy and... to enable us to better explore the darkness of the cosmos!!
Storm Front in Australia
Copyright: Gordon Marshall
Click to view larger image
Click to view larger image
Recently (Jan 29 th 2011) a rather large storm battered the small town of York in Western Australia (approximately 90 kms east of Perth).
It managed to do extensive damage to about 70 buildings losing roofs or being completely destroyed and one unfortunate lady lost her life. The storm also did widespread damage over an area of about 7,000km2. Luckily most of this area is farmland and the damage was that many large trees and fences were blown down.
The feeling at the time of taking the pictures was strangely not of apprehension but one of amazement.
The small hill to the left in the pic (above) is approximately 900ft from its base to its top to give you an idea of the size of the gust front that was over 100kms wide.
Quasar J1148+5251 is likely to be the most distant quasar imaged using an amateur telescope. Light from this galaxy takes 12.8 billion years to reach Earth. The image consists of 16 hours of image stacking - This is possible by using a red enhanced FLI camera as the quasar is so extremely red-shifted that it is only visible from 890 nm. Surprisingly the quasar already becomes visible after about 2 hours of image stacking.
The last glowing ember of this periodic comet can be seen in the very center of this image. Now at 11th magnitude in the dense star fields of Monoceros, the formerly stunning emerald comet has now faded to a dull tawny glow, with very little tail seen here. This was a long exposure, the scope panned 30 degrees across the sky for this image, and the comet moved against the starry background. Here, this image is tracked on the comets nucleus with the countless multi hued stars whizzing by. Good bye old friend - see you next time!
Lens: 12.5" f/5 Home bult Newtonian
Platform: Astrophysics AP1200
Exposure: 2h RGB
Location: Payson, Arizona
Elevation: 5150 ft.
I want to thank Vicent Peris (OAUV), Jack Harvey (SSRO) and Juan Conejero (PixInsight) for their splendid and gorgeous portrait of the NGC 6914 region. Apart from the marvellous interplay between blue reflection nebulosity and red emission nebulosity (and some dust-orangish nebulosity), the picture shows wonderfully intricate details in the dust structure. Apart from "bubbles" and "walls", there is the sort of "combed hair" structure that is so obvious in the Pleiades nebulosity, and which shows the effect of magnetism on the dust.
The picture of the airplane cutting the Moon in half is very striking. But the Lady in the Moon keeps smiling!
Nuclearcat, your MiIlky Way and Venus picture is very beautiful! I particularly enjoy the vivid star colors, which make it easier to identify the stars and the constellations.
Céline, you really show us the problem with light pollution in a city like Paris. But your images of Paris softly illuminated by orangish light have a dreamy quality, like impressionist paintings.
paolo pinciaroli, I like both your images, particularly the NGC 7129 one. It is full of fascinating details about star formation.
Jaime Fernández, I can't quite make head or tail of your NGC 410 image. Is it a narrowband image or an RGB? It looks like a narrowband image, but the stars are nicely multicolored, and many of them are really blue, the way they would only be in an RGB image. Many of the details in the nebulosity show up so well that it may take a narrowband image to make them look like that. It's certainly a very nice "combination" of a narrowband and an RGB image (if that is what it is).
Fred Herrmann, I'm fascinated by your three galaxies and their incredibly different colors! But you have a point there, certainly! M74 is an unusually blue galaxy, with a color index of around 0.5. It is a gorgeous face-on symmetrical spiral with a lot of star formation. NGC 891, on the other hand, has a color index of close to 0.9, which is quite red for a spiral galaxy. But that has a lot to do with the fact that NGC 891 is one of the few galaxies that we see exactly edge on, so that it is strongly reddened by its prominent dust lane. NGC 2683 is a relatively reddish galaxy too, with a color index similar to that of NGC 891, but in the case of NGC 2683 we see its elegant "saucer-shaped" yellow bulge without any thick dust in front of it.
