The last major mechanical component of George Mason University's new 32-inch telescope gently touches down on its new mount. Using a huge crane the telescope pedestal, fork mount andtelescope tube - all weighing over two tons - were individually hoisted 10 stories above the street and moved to the interior of the dome. Final fitting of these components will be accomplished in the next few weeks. ~ Greg Redfern
ISS-Endeavour Transit
Copyright: Maximilian Teodorescu
Click to view larger image
Click to view larger image
Roll Clouds over Merignac (Gironde, France) http://www.cidehom.com/
Copyright: Patrick Babayou [attachment=2]apod-roll clouds - p.babayou.jpg[/attachment]
In the grasp of the International Space Station's Canadarm2, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 (AMS) is transferred from space shuttle Endeavour's payload bay for installation on the station's starboard truss.
Every night has been the same thing. Tornados and lightning that I have never seen at such strong strength. Been unable to open the observatory so decided to point to the skys anyway. Using a DSLR and tripod I took this with a one second exposure looking west from north of Van Buren, AR. I am located about 90 miles as the crow flys south of Joplin, MO. This storm was taking place at about 0900 local 05/23/2011. Now I know what the bird must feel like in a turkey shoot
Mike Holloway
Holloway Comet Observatory
Van Buren, AR
I get a kick out of the roll cloud image, because the lamp posts and the clouds line up so nicely; it looks as though the lamp posts are supporting each cloud!
Re: Recent Submissions
Posted: Wed May 25, 2011 7:45 pm
by Efrain Morales
Saturn with its NED (Serpent Storm) is still quite active churning up materials from down under the surface.
Two Rocks is small town on the coast of Western Australia. One of the two rocks, a limestone outcrop, is shone as the focal point for this timelapse. The timelapse itself runs from shortly after sunset for about three hours.
The camera was set with a fixed exposure, using what I could remember from the original Two Rocks shoot last year. The camera was triggered to take a photo every 21s and each exposure was 20s long. So you can get an idea how many photographs you can take in 3 hours while doing a timelapse!
Each frame was then colour balanced, cropped and compiled into the video you see here. The constellation Orion is visible as it crosses the frame. For the second half of the video the photographs have been stacked to show the expanding star trails.
Cheers,
David
Re: Recent Submissions
Posted: Thu May 26, 2011 10:54 am
by owlice
M31, Andromeda Galaxy, and Cepheid M31_V1 http://www.robgendlerastropics.com/M31-BYU.html
Credit and copyright: Michael Joner and David Laney (BYU), image acquisition; image processing: Robert Gendler
Lenticular Cloud over Clayton, CA
Copyright: Stan Mrowka [attachment=0]110417_Clayton,CA_USA_Lenticular_Cloud.jpg[/attachment]
Re: Recent Submissions
Posted: Thu May 26, 2011 7:10 pm
by JohnD
David, Two Rocks,
Very original! LIked it a lot.
IMHO better to continue the timelapse without star trails.
What illuminates the rock?
JOhn
Re: Recent Submissions
Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 1:28 am
by dParlevliet
Hi John,
I must admit I was milking the images for all they were worth - for the star trail section it is actually 'resetting' to about an hour after sunset. Orion jumps back up the sky a fair way.
The beach itself was fairly dark but within about 400m of the town. It is a very small town so there really isn't much light. But the few sodium vapour lamps around the harbour were more than enough to light up the rock.
The photograph was taken at the site of the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) in the Khomas Highlands of Namibia. The silhouette of one of the four Cherenkov telescopes that make up H.E.S.S. guides the eye towards the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Superimposed on the photograph is a view of our galaxy in a completely different energy range: H.E.S.S. detects photons with energies more than 100 billion times higher than those making up the light perceptible to the human eye. To detect these energetic photons, H.E.S.S. employs cameras with very sensitive photodetectors to look for the ultra-short flashes of light that are emitted when they interact with Earth's atmosphere.
Many of the sources seen at these extreme energies are linked to the violent processes at the end of the life cycle of stars. Some of them are also remarkably large: The diameters of the most extended sources seen in this picture are more than twice that of the full moon. ~ Henning Gast
Re: Recent Submissions
Posted: Fri May 27, 2011 10:22 am
by owlice
Plaque and Prominences http://www.galacticimages.com
Copyright: John Chumack [attachment=0]sun052511wideProm-diskChumackLRweb.jpg[/attachment]