Dots in the Sky

The Milky Way rising above Marlboro Canyon, Utah AZ. And yes, for those of us old enough to remember, it is the same canyon they filmed the Marlboro cigarette commercials from around the 1960s. The canyon at this point is a few kilometers wide and stretches off to the far right for perhaps a hundred kilometers. At least that is as far as we could see during daylight, and I am sure it goes much, much further than that. Quite an impressive sight indeed. But of course, all you can see in this shot is the darn Milky Way at night :-| I added a second photo of the same thing noting two prominent planets that were photo-bombing the event.

It's been a while... So I thought I would post one of my Utah images. I am slowly learning to use Photoshop and to utilize both this and PixInsight in my processing routine for some of my images. This is the Milky Way setting over the "Organ" which is a rock structure in Arches National Canyon (in Utah). This was around 3:00 AM in early June 2019. For photo buffs... Canon 6D with a 16MM wide angle zoom at 3,200 ISO, f3.2, 16 - 20 second shots stacked and processed.

The planet Mercury transiting the sun. Awfully cold for this shot... -25 Celsius or there about with wind chill. Ouch! Not as good as the experts, but it was all I was willing to do without getting out my laptop and taking video with a webcam. I opted for single shots with my Canon 6D. You practically need a magnifying glass to see it in the picture, but it was neat to see it live as it inched its way across the face of the sun.

Finally starting to learn Photoshop and all it can do. Among other things, it can showcase my hobby of imaging the night sky. Here are multiple shots merged together in a way to show the apparent movement of stars across the sky (which is created by the Earth turning). This photo is of the Wardlaw's cabin near Fairmont Hot Springs, BC. The point in the middle, where the stars don't seem to move, is the star the Earth's North Pole points to. It is called Polaris, or not surprisingly, the North Star!

Gamma Cygni Nebula, or the Sadr Region, or IC 1318, is an emission nebula that can be seen around the bright star Sadr which happens to be the middle star in the constellation of Cygnus the Swan, also known as the Northern Cross. Even though Sadr looks buried in the gas cloud, the cloud is around 3,100 light years further away, which is about 2.5 times the distance. For the real geeks out there: 660 MM long X 127 MM wide f5.2 Tele Veu telescope CGEM equatorial mount... 20 X 2 minute images combined with 8 X 20 second images for a total exposure length of 42.67 minutes if my math is right Tracked using PHD Guiding Canon 6D ISO - 1600 Processed using PixInsight See more