We went to a special night sky program the night of the Perseid meteor shower. We didn't see a whole lot of shooting stars (mainly because we were tired and went to bed relatively early), but I did take the opportunity to dabble in photographing the night sky. I have a ways to go, but it's a fun diversion while waiting for a turn to look through the telescope! In the above photo, can you find the Big Dipper? Desert Boy can identify that asterism easily now.
Do you know what you're seeing in the next photo?
For those of you who know astronomy, there are lots of right answers (and please leave some in the comments!). For those of us who just dabble in astronomy, I'm looking at the big picture: the Milky Way galaxy. That cloudy-looking river of stars that flows across the top of the black roof above us is present nearly every night. We are lucky to live in a place with so little light pollution we can see so far out beyond our planet.
Sometimes we can even see some extra things in the night sky:
Like a UFO! Okay, I don't really think it's a UFO. Do you know what it is?
My first guess would be vaporizing meteor and note that one end of the mark is blunt and the other end is tapered.
ReplyDeleteGuess number two would be airplane anticollision lights in a long exposure.
Third guess would be a satellite "flare" if the photo was taken within about an hour after sunset..
One of these days I'm going to attempt photography of the night sky!
ReplyDeleteI'm just a dabbler so I saw the Milky Way as well :)
One of the most fun things we have ever done was to attend a Star Party at MacDonald Observatory in west Texas. Looking through those powerful telescopes and seeing things you normallly only see in photos - the rings of Saturn, the Andromeda Galaxy, etc. So very cool!