Earthshine

This is a shot where you can see earthshine. There is a the bright crescent moon, but the rest of the moon is visible, not entirely black. This is actually light from the sun which has reflected off the earth and is lighting up the moon!

Its a Small World After All!

Here is one which is a little bit different. This one is from atop the building which houses the telescope at UVic - The Bob Wright Centere - and is a polar projection of a panorama. Just to the right of the dome in the foreground is actually a dome in the background which houses the old 20 inch telescope. This was taken at about 5:30am. I call it the Tiny Planet Projection.

Ahhh...

The sun coming over the shoulder of Mt Baker just after six one morning not so long ago. A flock of birds flying through the picture and the mountains shadows on the clouds complete this image for me.

A Different Sort of Glob

Here is a globular cluster. We have already seen M13 a few times, but this one is M2. It is somewhat more faint than M13, but it is just as spectacular. This cluster is about 37,000 light years away and is almost 200 light years across. There are nearly 150,000 stars in the cluster.

This second picture is the result of playing with the levels in the picture to get a more accurate representation of the colors. I have yet to figure out how to do it without completely blowing out the center.

A Dome in Action

I posted a panorama of the dome earlier, but this one is sort of an action shot. Here the telescope is pointing at Jupiter in the early morning sky.

Whirlpool Having a Snack

This is my very first and very grainy picture of M51 - the Whirlpool Galaxy. As you can see there are actually two galaxies here, one large face on spiral, and another small one with no real shape. The small one is in fact being subjected to galactic cannibalism, the larger spiral is eating it. Another cool thing about this is that you can see some of the dark dust lanes in the spiral arms of the galaxy.

I am actually writing this on the 18th, I am way ahead, so if I take a better picture in the meantime I will leave this one here, and add the new one to this post.

Dark Sky

There is nothing special in this picture, it is just a shot of the night sky taken at Goldstream park. The sky is a lot darker there than in the rest of the city.

Sisters in the Sky

While not the most spectacular of photos, this is a picture of the stars in the Pleiades. You can see the main stars form a sort of miniature dipper. At least I think they do. If you do it right you can get some really cool pictures of the Pleiades with all sorts of nebulosity, and I am going to give that a try a little later in the year once they start coming up a bit earlier.

I thoght that picture was a bit dull, so here is another. The Pleiades are just down from the top of the picture on the right. You can see a little bit of the blue reflection nebulosity going on in that one! Also in this picture are Jupiter, the moon, and Venus going down the line there.

Ring Number Two

I posted a picture of the Ring Nebula or M57 a while ago, but it was not nearly as nice as I think this one is. Here you can see the different colors of the planetary nebula and even the white dwarf lying at the center. This planetary nebula was created when a red giant star expelled its outer layers of gas in its dying days, forming a shell of gas expanding away from the star.

The Great Hunter

Although it is blurry and grainy and all, one can clearly see that this is the ever wonderful Orion Nebula. Sitting in the middle of the nebula is the group of stars called the Trapezium. These super bright young stars are in the center of the star forming region.

I took this just a few days ago, and it was already getting light out and it was right down on the horizon so it is not nearly as good as it could be, but I will try again later when it is nice and high in the sky.

The Great Crescent

You can guess what this is a picture of I am sure. I don't think I really need to write anything about this one. I love the moon...

Trails from the Point

I have been waiting for a while to post this one. Here are some fancy startrails from Cattle Point. I took these images during the meteor shower last week, and although they are hard to see, There actually are a couple in this picture.

The most easily seen is in the bottom right. There are two bright startrails, and just a little above the higher one in the center is a little line going a different direction than the rest. That is a meteor.

There are a couple others that I found, but to see them involves a lot of zooming in. Also arcing right across this picture is a nice satellite trail.

I quite like startrails, and I think this is my favourite one yet!