APOD: Milky Way above La Palma Observatory (2023 Jul 18)

[APOD Robot]

Milky Way above La Palma Observatory

Explanation: What's happening in the night sky? To help find out, telescopes all over the globe will be pointing into deep space. Investigations will include trying to understand the early universe, finding and tracking Earth-menacing asteroids, searching for planets that might contain extra-terrestrial life, and monitoring stars to help better understand our Sun. The featured composite includes foreground and background images taken in April from a mountaintop on La Palma island in the Canary Islands of Spain. Pictured, several telescopes from the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory are shown in front of a dark night sky. Telescopes in the foreground include, left to right, Magic 1, Galileo, Magic 2, Gran Canarian, and LST. Sky highlights in the background include the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy, the constellations of Sagittarius, Ophiuchus and Scorpius, the red-glowing Eagle and Lagoon Nebulas, and the stars Alrami and Antares. Due to observatories like this, humanity has understood more about our night sky in the past 100 years than ever before in all of human history.

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[Ann]

This APOD is nice in many ways. I like the inclusion of the telescopes, particularly the one that is under construction at far right. The Milky Way sky certainly looks impressive, and i applaud the annotations.

However, some famous deep sky objects hardly show up in the APOD, while a few nebulas that are really faint show up prominently!

Milky Way above La Palma Observatory. Image Credit & Copyright: Marcin Rosadziński

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Missing objects and names for prominent-looking nebulas

For comparison, let's look at Akira Fuji's portrait of the Teapot region in Sagittarius.

Constellation Sagittarius. Credit: NASA/ESA/Akira Fuji

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Akira Fuji used no hydrogen alpha filter for his image, and lo and behold, only three objects in his picture look pink: Large bright Lagoon Nebula, tiny Trifid Nebula and M17, at the very top of the image. Note star cluster M7 in the lower right corner.

Different pictures of the same deep-sky objects may look very different when you photograph them with different equipment and filters and exposure times and what not!

Ann

[johnnydeep]

To help find out, telescopes all over the globe will be pointing into deep space. Investigations will include

I don't understand the use of future tense here. The composite is over and done with! Just an odd use of grammar IMO.

[hypatia]

As of three days ago, they have been evacuated because of the wildfires. Here's hoping the fire brigade gets the fires under control.

https://www.canarianweekly.com/posts/Th ... f-the-fire

[orin stepanek]

very nice!

[VictorBorun]

Different pictures of the same deep-sky objects may look very different when you photograph them with different equipment and filters and exposure times and what not!

Makes sense to me to switch back and forth to IR version to see clearly where exactly the spherical core is:

1.2 microns to blue, 1.6 microns to green, and 2.2 microns to red

Somehow what is left of the dust in near IR is still brown.
Like the dust clouds are dark against the backlight from the stellar population of the galactic disk and the core and the spectrum of the dust is monotonically brighter at longer wavelenghths no matter whether we look in the optical or near infrared range