Sunday, August 22, 2010

More Milky Way Pix

Here is another image from my stargazing session the other week. The yellow star towards the upper right is Antares in the constellation Scorpius. This colorful area is worthy of a close-up shot some day. Yes, Sandra, I really need that 200mm lens. :)
There is a dark lane in the Milky Way that runs horizontally a little below the middle of the picture. If you look closely, you can see some red emission nebulae in the dark lane. I'm pleased that they are visible at all, because my stock camera is not sensitive to the almost infrared wavelength of these emissions. There is a thriving cottage industry that has grown up around modifying Canon cameras to make them more sensitive to the hydrogen-alpha emission wavelength.
In the second photo, I've drawn in the lines showing the Scorpion figure of Scorpius, as well as the Teapot figure often associated with Sagittarius.


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