astrophotography Archives

June 29, 2013December 23, 2015 by Jason Major

Zodiacal Light Over ESO’s La Silla Observatory

Moonlight and zodiacal light lights up the skies over ESO's La Silla observatory. (Credit: Alan Fitzsimmons/ESO)

We don’t put much stock in astrology or horoscopes here at Universe Today, but there’s one thing related to the zodiac that’s all science and no superstition: zodiacal light, captured here in a gorgeous photo by astronomer Alan Fitzsimmons above ESO’s La Silla Observatory.

Created by sunlight reflected off fine particles of dust concentrated inside the plane of the Solar System, zodiacal light appears as a diffuse, hazy band of light visible in dark skies stretching away from a recently-set Sun (or before the Sun is about to rise).

The Moon is located just outside the frame of this picture, bathing the observatory in an eerie light that is reflected off the clouds below.

The La Silla Observatory is located at the outskirts of the Chilean Atacama Desert at an altitude of 2400 meters (7,900 feet). Like other observatories in this area, La Silla is located far from sources of light pollution and, like ESO’s Paranal Observatory, it has some of the darkest night skies on the Earth.

The dome in the foreground, just to the right, is the Swiss 1.2-metre Leonhard Euler Telescope named in honor of the famous Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707–83).

Image credit: A. Fitzsimmons/ESO

June 19, 2013April 26, 2016 by Nancy Atkinson

“Horizons” — Gorgeous New Views from Dakotalapse

Three-image panorama of the Milky Way arching of the Badlands of South Dakota. Credit and copyright: Randy Halverson/Dakotalapse

We’ve oohed and ahhed many times over the handiwork of Randy Halverson and his Dakotalapse timelapse videos and imagery of the night sky. He may have outdone himself with his latest timelapse, called “Horizons.” Randy shot the footage from April – October 2012, mostly in South Dakota, but also some at Devils Tower in Wyoming.

“Growing up in South Dakota the landscape itself can be beautiful at times,” Randy says, “but that doesn’t compare to what the sky can do, especially at night.” Not only is the imagery absolutely breathtaking, but the accompanying music is an original called “I Forever” by Bear McCreary (The Walking Dead, Defiance, Battlestar Galactica, etc) his brother Brendan McCreary and his band Young Beautiful in a Hurry.

There’s a four-minute version below, but also available on Vimeo On Demand is a full 30-minute feature . Enjoy!!

The lead image and this one below are recent images from Randy that he has posted on Flickr.

Mirrored Aurora - Aurora mirrors off a small lake in central South Dakota on June 6, 2013. Credit and copyright: Randy Halverson/Dakotalapse. — Mirrored Aurora – Aurora mirrors off a small lake in central South Dakota on June 6, 2013. Credit and copyright: Randy Halverson/Dakotalapse.

Horizons from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.

May 28, 2013December 23, 2015 by David Dickinson

An Amazing Deep-Field View of Centaurus A

The Centaurus A Extreme Deep Field. (Image Courtesy of Astrophotography byRolf Oslen. Used with Permision).

Sometimes, you just have to say “Wow!”

The view you’re looking at above is of Centaurus A (NGC 5128), a galaxy about 10-16 million light years distant in the southern hemisphere sky. It’s a favorite of astrophotographers and professional observatories alike.

But what makes this image so special is that it was taken by an amateur astrophotographer.

To construct this amazing image, New Zealand-based astrophotographer Rolf Wahl Olsen exposed the field of view for 120 hours over 43 nights spanning February to May of this year.

Rolf recently shared his motivation to construct this image;

“Over the past few months I have been on a mission to achieve a long time dream of mine: taking a deep sky image with more than 100 hours of exposure.”

Rolf also noted that the stars in the frame are visible down to magnitude +25.45, which “appears to go deeper than the recent ESO release” and believes that it may well be “the deepest view ever obtained of Centaurus A,” As well as “the deepest image ever taken with amateur equipment.”

Not only is the beauty and splendor of the galaxy revealed in this stunning mosaic, but you can see the variations in the populations of stars in the massive regions undergoing an outburst of star formation.

One can also see the numerous globular clusters flocking around the galaxy, as well as the optical counterparts to the radio lobes and the faint trace of the relativistic jets. The extended halo of the outer shell of stars is also visible, along with numerous foreground stars visible in the star rich region of Centaurus.

Finally, we see the dusty lane bisecting the core of this massive galaxy as seen from our Earthly vantage point.

To our knowledge, many of these features have never been captured visually by backyard observers before, much less imaged. Congrats to Rolf Wahl Olsen on a spectacular capture and sharing his view of the universe with us!

Read more on the Centaurus A deep field on Google+.

-Check out the comparison images of the Centaurus A deep field showing the relativistic jet (!) background galaxies and clusters.

-Explore more of Rolf’s outstanding work at his website.

January 7, 2013December 23, 2015 by Jason Major

Catching Sunlight: A TEDx Talk by DIY Solar Photographer Alan Friedman

Video poster frame shows Alan Friedman’s 90mm hydrogen alpha telescope setup — nicknamed “Little Big Man” — on an Astro-Physics 900 equatorial mount.

We’ve featured several beautiful images of the Sun here on Universe Today, captured by the talented Alan Friedman from his backyard telescope in Buffalo, NY. While photos of the Sun in and of themselves are nothing new in astronomy, Alan’s images always seem to bring out the best in our home star. Maybe it’s the magical nature of hydrogen alpha photography, maybe it’s Alan’s fancy new Grasshopper CCD camera, maybe the Sun’s photosphere was looking particularly nice on those days… but most likely Alan just has an innate skill for solar photography (as well as one for picking out great hats!)

In the video above, Alan talks to an audience at a TEDx event in Buffalo on October 9, sharing some of his photos and explaining why he does what he does, and why he feels do-it-yourself astrophotography is such a valuable thing to share with others. It’s a great bit of insight from a talented artist (and you just might recognize the names he drops at 13:55!)

I was happy to share one of Alan’s images on my own website back in 2010, which Phil Plait (the “Bad Astronomer,” who was then with Discover Magazine) picked up on and soon enough the whole thing got Alan quite a bit of attention. Which, when you’re an astrophotographer and graphic artist (he also sells art prints of his work as well as runs a greeting card studio) is never a bad thing.

Image of the Sun in hydrogen alpha. ©2010 Alan Friedman. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

You can see more of Alan’s work on his Averted Imagination blog and website and, on occasion, here on Universe Today!

December 28, 2012April 26, 2016 by Jason Major

Amazing Video of a Lunar Occultation

Captured on camera by astrophotographer Rafael Defavari from his location in São Bernardo do Campo, Brazil, this video shows the Moon passing in front of Jupiter during an occultation event on December 25, 2012. Nice work!

The video plays at 5x actual speed.

Although Jupiter appeared to be “right next to” the Moon on Christmas night from our viewpoint here on Earth, in reality the two worlds were 388 million miles (625 million km) apart. The Moon blocked the view of the giant planet for a full hour and ten minutes.

‘Tis the season for lunar occultations, too… the last one occurred on November 28, and the next will be on January 22, 2013.

See more photos of the Dec. 25 event from viewers in Brazil here.

Video credit: Rafael Defavari

December 18, 2012December 23, 2015 by Jason Major

One of the Largest Astronomical Images Ever Made

The northern portion of the Cygnus Loop, as seen in an enormous new panorama from the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) and WIYN partners

Looking for a stunning new desktop image to wrap up the year? Try this: it’s an amazing panorama of the Cygnus Loop, a supernova remnant located 1,500 light-years away in the constellation (you guessed it) Cygnus. The full-size image, acquired with the wide-field Mosaic camera on the WIYN 0.9-meter telescope at Kitt Peak, Arizona, is a staggering 600 million pixels in size — over 1.68 gigabytes — making it one of the largest astronomical images ever made!

See the full image (and links to download larger versions) below:

2000-pixel-wide version of the full Cygnus Loop panorama

The entire structure of the Cygnus Loop, the gaseous remains of a supernova that occurred 5,000 – 10,000 years ago, covers an area nearly 45 times the size of the full Moon in the sky.

In the image, hydrogen alpha, sulphur, and oxygen ions correspond to the red, green, and blue color values, respectively.

“Images like this are amazing because they can remind you of the big picture and beauty that surrounds us.”

– Dr. Richard Cool, MMT Observatory

From the NOAO press release:

Astronomers estimate the supernova explosion that produced the nebula occurred between 5,000 to 10,000 years ago. First noted in 1784 by William Herschel, it is so large that its many parts have been catalogued as separate objects, including NGC 6992, NGC 6995 and IC 1340 along the eastern (left) side of the image, NGC 6974 and NGC 6979 near the top-center, and the Veil Nebula (NGC 6960) and Pickering’s Triangle along the western (right) edge. The bright star near the western edge of the image, known as 52 Cygnus, is not associated with the supernova.

“Often, astronomical research reduces images to dry tables of numerical information that we analyze in order to more deeply understand our universe,” said Dr. Richard Cool, astronomer at the MMT Observatory in Arizona, who originally obtained the images in 2003 while still a graduate student. “Images like this are amazing because they can remind you of the big picture and beauty that surrounds us.”

This incredible image demonstrates that even relatively small telescopes are capable of producing cutting-edge research, when equipped with modern cameras.

Got bandwidth to spare? Download the full-size 1686.5 MB TIFF image here, or find other versions on the NOAO page here.

Image Credit: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage), Richard Cool (University of Arizona) and WIYN/NOAO/AURA/NSF. Inset image: original dome of the Kitt Peak 0.9-meter telescope. (NOAO/AURA/NSF)

November 27, 2012December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

The Man Who Shoots Space: Interview with Thierry Legault

Thierry Legault with the equipment he uses for satellite images. Images courtesy of Thierry Legault.

We’ve written many articles to share the incredible astrophotography of Thierry Legault, and have also interviewed him extensively about his work. If you’ve enjoyed his imagery and stories, you’ll appreciate this new video interview from VICE which shows Legault at work, and allows him to tell his story in his own words.

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If you aren’t familiar with the work of Legault, he has taken images such as the space shuttle and space station as they transited across the Sun, the first-ever ground-based image of astronaut in spacewalk, and images of spy satellites in orbit. He lives in the suburbs of Paris, but will easily travel 3,000 and 4,000 kilometers — and sometimes to another continent — to capture a specific image.

And usually, the events he captures last only about a half-second and he never sees them live with his own eyes.

“For transits I have to calculate the place, and considering the width of the visibility path is usually between 5-10 kilometers, but I have to be close to the center of this path,” Legault explained in a previous interview with UT, “because if I am at the edge, it is just like a solar eclipse where the transit is shorter and shorter. And the edge of visibility line of the transit lasts very short. So the precision of where I have to be is within one kilometer.”

Legault studies maps, and has a radio synchronized watch to know very accurately when the transit event will happen.

“My camera has a continuous shuttering for 4 seconds, so I begin the sequence 2 seconds before the calculated time,” he said. “I don’t look through the camera – I never see the space station when it appears, I am just looking at my watch!”

For a transit event, he gets get a total of 16 images – 4 images every second, and only after he enlarges the images will he know if he succeeded or not.

“There is a kind of feeling that is short and intense — an adrenaline rush!” Legault said.

Enjoy the new video interview, and see Legault’s imagery at his website.

November 24, 2012December 23, 2015 by Jason Major

A Branching “Tree” of Solar Plasma

Hydrogen-alpha photo of the Sun by Alan Friedman

An enormous tree-shaped prominence spreads its “branches” tens of thousands of miles above the Sun’s photosphere in this image, a section of a photo acquired in hydrogen alpha (Ha) by Alan Friedman last week from his backyard in Buffalo, NY.

Writes Alan on his blog, “gotta love a sunny day in November!”

Check out the full image — along with an idea of just how big this “tree” is — after the jump:

Taken through a special solar telescope and a Grasshopper CCD camera, Alan’s gorgeous solar photos show the Sun in a wavelength absorbed by atomic hydrogen — most present in the photosphere and chromosphere — thus revealing the complex and dynamic activity of the Sun’s “surface”.

Here’s the full image:

The dark circle at upper left (added by me) shows approximately the scale size of Earth (12,756 km, or about 7,926 miles diameter.) As you can see, that particular prominence is easily six times that in altitude, and spreads out many more times wider… and this isn’t even a particularly large prominence! As far as solar activity goes, this is a non-event. (Not like what was seen by SDO on Nov. 16!)

Regardless, it makes for an impressive backyard photo.

Check out more of Alan’s photos on his blog and on his website, AvertedImagination.com. Many of his photos, some of which have been shown at galleries across the U.S., are available as limited-edition prints. (Alan also runs a greeting card print studio.) I’ve found that he usually shares at least a couple of fantastic solar shots every month, if not more.

September 13, 2012December 23, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

The Moon from Earth As You’ve Never Seen it Before

The Morteus region on the Moon, taken from the suburbs of Paris, France. Credit: Thierry Legault. Used by permission.

Think this is an orbital view of the Moon? Guess again. Astrophotographer Thierry Legault took this image from his backyard in the suburbs of Paris, France! He’s taken a series of images of the Moon the past few nights that will blow your mind when you consider they were taken from Earth, within the confines of the metropolis of Paris (largest city in France, 5th largest in the EU, 20th largest in the world). Thierry used a Celestron C14 EdgeHD (356mm) and Skynyx2.2 camera. You definitely want to click on these images for the larger versions on Thierry’s website, and he suggests using a full-HD screen in subdued surroundings.

Additionally, Thierry also recently took images of Mercury and Uranus that include incredible detail.

Plato, Mons Pico and Montes Teneriffe as seen on Sept 8th, 2010, from the suburbs of Paris, France. Credit: Thierry Legault. Used by permission.

The clarity and detail are just tremendous. See all of Thierry’s recent lunar images at this link. He has a collection of twelve different images of various regions on the Moon and all are stunning.

Below are his images of Mercury and Uranus. In the image of Mercury, surface details are visible, and the cloud belts are even visible on the images of Uranus:

Incredibly detailed view of Mercury on August 23, 2012, as seen from Blancourt, France. Credit: Thierry Legault. Used by permission.

Uranus, as seen on September 9, 2012 from Blancourt, France. Credit: Thierry Legault. Used by permission.

Thanks, as always, to Thierry Legault for sharing his images and allowing us to post them. Check out his website: http://legault.perso.sfr.fr/ for more wonderful images and information about how he does his amazing astrophotography.

September 11, 2012December 23, 2015 by Jason Major

Watch Jupiter Get Hit in the Original HD Video

Caught on webcam by amateur astronomer George Hall in Dallas, Texas, the impact on Jupiter that occurred yesterday at 6:35 a.m. CT can be clearly seen in the brief video above as a bright flash along the giant planet’s left side.

According to Hall on his website the video was captured with a 12″ LX200GPS, 3x Televue Barlow, and Point Grey Flea 3 camera using Astro IIDC software.

Great catch, George! Currently this is the only video footage we’ve seen of this particular event. Also, tonight at 10 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. PT the SLOOH Space Camera site will broadcast a live viewing of Jupiter to search for any remaining evidence of an impact. Tune in here.