Lightning strikes during a test of a new laser guide star at the Allgäu Public Observatory in Ottobeuren, Germany. Credit: Martin Kornmesser, ESO
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Yikes! This science-fiction-like scene was captured by Martin Kornmesser, a visual artist for the European Southern Observatory. Just as the ESO was testing a new laser guide star unit at the Allgäu Public Observatory in Ottobeuren, Germany, a thunderstorm erupted, throwing down bolts of lightning. The folks at ESO say this is a “very visual demonstration of why ESO’s telescopes are in Chile, and not in Germany.” Although the storm was still far from the observatory, the lightning appears to clash with the laser beam in the sky.
Laser guide stars are one type of adaptive optics astronomers use to correct for the blurring effect of the atmosphere in astronomical observations. The laser creates an artificial guide star 90 kilometers up in the Earth’s atmosphere. The laser in this photograph is a powerful one, with a 20-watt beam, but the power in a bolt of lightning peaks at a trillion watts — although it lasts for just a fraction of a second. Shortly after this picture was taken the storm reached the observatory, forcing operations to close for the night.
Comet Garradd passing by M71. Credit: Brian McGaffney
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We asked for ’em and you sent ’em in. Here are your photos of Comet Garradd, the best-looking comet in the sky right now, as it is brightening and moving faster as it gets closer to us and the Sun. This comet will reach perihelion on December 23, 2011. We start with Brian McGaffney who captured this photo of the Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd when it crossed star cluster M71. The image was taken from the Nutwood Observatory in Bancroft, Ontario on August 26th, 2011 at 11PM. Brian took the photo using an Apoggee U16M and a 14 inch astrograph and an ME mount.
But wait — there’s more!
Garradd and M71. Credit: Rich Richins. Click image to see larger version on Richard's website, Enchanted Skies.
Richard Richins sends us this image from his location in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Check out his website, Enchanted Skies.
Comet Garradd passing by the open cluster M71 on August 27, 2011. Credit: Efrain Morales Rivera. Click to view on Flickr
This image was taken on August 27, 2011 in Victoria, Aguadilla, Puerto Rico by Efrain Morales Rivera from the Jaicoa Observatory. “Comet Garradd’s tail is brushing along the core of cluster M71,” Effrain noted, adding the equipment he used was LX200ACF 12 inch. OTA, F6.3, CGE mount, ST2000xm Ccd, AO8, CFW9, Astronomik LRGB filterset.
Comet 2009 P1 Garradd+M71 Mercer. Credit: Leonard Ellul Mercer.
Leonard Ellul Mercer sent in this nice view from Malta in the Mediterranean Sea.
A set of 78 - 30 second exposures of Comet Garradd taken on August 4, 2011 by Suraky on Flickr.
Suraky on Flickr from British Columbia, Canada shares his first astrophotos shot from his new and improved darker backyard. This is a set of 78 – 30 second exposures taken between 1:16am and 2:40am GMT-7 on August 4, showing the motion of the comet across the sky during that time. Comet is magnitude 8.7, and 1.5AU from Earth. Two satellite traces also shown. Suraky used DeepSky Stacker, set to Maximum, “so it’s very noisy but it shows more of the comet tail.” There is also an inverted view available on Flickr. Equipment: Newtonian 190mm F5.3. LXD75 Mount. Canon T1i DSLR, ISO800
A collection of images of Comet Garradd from August 20, 2011 by Flickr user 37 Hz.
Flickr user 37Hz put together this collection of images from Saturday, August 20, 2011, taken from “Light polluted Zeist,” the Netherlands. 37Hz said, “Wouldn’t have found this comet without the “precise GOTO” function of my NexStar and the exact coordinates of the comet according to Carinasoft Voyager software.” Equipment: Celestron NexStar 5SE. Meade DSI II pro ccd camera, with about 10 seconds for each frame.
Comet Garradd on August 19, 2011 by jamieball833
jamieball833 submitted this image to Universe Today’s Flickr Group, saying “Now that the comet is at a distance of 1.394 AU from Earth and at magnitude 8.3 it is starting to get a little brighter!
Info:44 x 45 seconds, iso 1600 f/6.25
Right Ascension : 20h 25.8m
Declination : +17′ 34′
Comet Garradd C/2009 P1 passing M71 Cluster. Credit John Chumack.
Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group, post in our Forum or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.
Northwestern Europe at night, as seen from the International Space Station on August 10, 2011. Credit: NASA
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Astronauts always say the view of Earth is the best part of being in space. Here’s a beautiful shot of northwestern Europe at night. The landscape is dotted with clusters of lights from individual urban areas; visible are London, Paris, Brussels, Milan and Amsterdam, which stand out due to their large light “footprints,” while the English Channel is completely dark.
This photograph was taken by one of the Expedition 28 crewmembers on the International Space Station (ISS) and was taken with a short camera lens, providing the wide field of view. To give a sense of scale, the centers of the London and Paris metropolitan areas are approximately 340 kilometers (210 miles) from each other.
A stunning look at Jupiter in the night sky, from under a canopy of trees. “I took that exposure in Woodbury, CT on August 12, 2011 around 1:00 a,m.,” said photographer Matt Childs. “It is a combination of a couple different shots that I stacked together much like an HDR process. The camera I used was a Canon Rebel Xsi along with a 50mm lens. My observing locations are heavy with trees so its not uncommon for me to find ‘windows’ between branches or leaves that enable me to take a peek into the cosmos.”
Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.
A halo around the Sun, as see on the island of Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. Credit: 'Astrohans'
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A beautiful and colorful halo — a 22 degree ring — as seen on the island of Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, taken by ‘Astrohans” (a.k.a. Hans Schremmer) on Flickr. Hans posted that circumhorizontal arc is also visible, and that the photo was taken on May 8, 2010 in Playa Blanca, using a Canon EOS 400D Digital.
Halos form when light from the Sun or Moon is refracted by ice crystals associated with thin, high-level clouds (like cirrostratus clouds). A 22 degree halo is a ring of light 22 degrees from the Sun (or Moon) and is the most common type of halo observed.
Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.
Moon Occults Triple star Pi Sagitarii. Credit: Efrain Morales Rivera, Jaicoa Observatory
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On August 10, the Moon passed in front of the triple star system, Pi Sagitaurii star system. The even was captured by Efrain Morales Rivera from the Jaicoa Observatory in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. “An interesting event, capturing this triple star system being occulted by the Moon and 1 hour and 26 minutes later re-appearing on the bright side of the moon,” Rivera wrote to tell us.
He even created an animation of the stars “winking out,” as seen below.
Closeup animation of Moon occulting the Pi Sagitaurii star system, Credit: Efrain Morales Rivera, Jaicoa Observatory
Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.
Yippee! This is the way I feel whenever I see the International Space Station passing overhead! Astrophotographer Pete Glastonbury from the UK posted this picture on my Facebook page when I mentioned what a great ISS pass I had just seen. In describing the image, Pete said, “My daughter Sammy suggested we use the trampoline to create the photo as a way to illustrate our desire to get into space.”
Lovely!
Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Universe Today Flickr group; we select photographs from this group and post them every day. If you don’t want to join Flickr, you can send your images in by email. If you do contribute to the group, or send us photos by email, you’re giving us permission to post them here on Universe Today. To help us out, please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, and/or a little story about it — that would enable us to write a better article about your picture! Make sure you tell us your name, and give us a place we can link to if people want to see more of your work.
Beam me up! This amazing image of a solar pillar was sent to us by Rick Stankiewicz of Peterborough, Ontario, Canada.
This image launches our new astrophoto of the day feature, where we will feature images taken by amateur and professional photographers, the best images from space missions and much more.
“The evening of June 10th, 2011, I was traveling west across northern Ontario on Highway #11, near the community of Hearst and it was like any other, until the Sun set and then what unfolded was like a scene from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” Rick wrote, telling us about this photo. “It was both eerie and beautiful. Of course it was only a harmless solar pillar, but one of the most striking and colourful that I have ever seen. The contrast with the black clouds over the western horizon added greatly to the special effect. The solar pillar was redder than I have normally seen. Usually they tend to be a yellow, orange or pink. Clearly the longer wavelengths of the spectrum were showing themselves this evening.”
Rick provided the specs of the equipment he used: Camera: Canon 400D; Lense: Canon 18-200mm @ 24 & 90mm; ISO: 200; f/5.6; 1/60-1/80
Rick is President of the Peterborough Astronomical Association
We often feature images from amateur photographers on Universe Today, and we’d like to do that more often — in fact we’d like to do it every day! To facilitate that, we’ve started a Flickr group for Universe Today, to allow people to submit their astronomy and space-related photos for us to use. If you aren’t on Flickr, you can send images to us via email. By submitting them on Flickr or sending them to us, you are giving us permission to post them here on Universe Today. When we do use an image, of course we will give the photographer full credit and link back to your Flickr page or whatever you’d like. Just let us know!
To help us out, if you could tell us a little about it – exactly what it is, when you took it, the equipment you used, and/or a little story about it — that would enable us to write a better article about your picture! (meaning, hopefully it will go viral and then you’ll be famous for your photography!)
A Perseid through the sky. Credit: Nahum Mendez Chazarra, Rojales, Spain. Click to see this image and more on Flickr
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We made a wish that our readers would send in their images of the Perseid Meteor Shower, and it came true! Despite a full Moon and clouds scattered around the world, we heard from many of you that you saw — and successfully imaged — the 2011 Perseids. Many of you took advantage of Universe Today’s new Flickr group, an easy way to have readers share their astrophotos with us. Above is a colorful image of a Perseid streaking through the sky by Nahum Mendez Chazarra, in Rojales, Spain.
Below, see an image take from up above the world so high: astronaut Ron Garan on board the International Space Station captured his view looking down at a Perseid streaking through sky!
'What a shooting star looks like from space," wrote ISS astronaut Ron Garan on Twitter. Click for larger versionFaint meteor. Credit: Andrei Juravle, Timisoara, Romania. Click for larger version on Flickr
This is another Flickr submission, from Andrei Juravle, Timisoara, Romania. Click to see this image and more from Andrei.
A Chicago meteor! Taken near downtown Chicago under a nearly full moon on August 12th 2011. Credit: Janet Branson. Click through for Flickr version.
Impressive! This image was taken in the light-filled skies of Chicago, Illinois by Janet Branson.
Paul Miller from San Diego, California took the following two very nice images from Mt. Laguna:
Bright Perseid. Credit: Paul MIller, San Diego, California. A Perseid meteor and much more! Credit: Paul MIller, San Diego, CaliforniaA Perseid meteor is caught on camera by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope's mounted low-light Cloudcam before dawn on the morning of August 12, 2011. Still frame cropped and edited by J. Major
Here’s one from our own Jason Major — kind of! He found the Perseid streaking through the sky on footage from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope’s mounted low-light Cloudcam, and created this image.
First meteor! Credit: Leonard Ellul Mercer, Malta, EU
How’s this for beginniner luck?! “Last night I captured my first ever Perseid image with Andromeda on its upper left,” said Leonard Ellul Mercer from Malta. “This is the first time I tried imaging meteors. Was just lucky even though there was a bright full moon overhead.”
Keep imaging, Leonard — nice shot!
Meteor, or something else? Credit: Michaela Knott.
“I took this on August 12, 2011 I’m not sure what it is,” wrote in Michaela Knott, “but I know it’s not a plane (which is what most of what shows up in my time lapse ends up being). This year I think I only saw 2 dozen or so meteors over two nights I went out looking.”
Shot with a Nikon D60, 28mm lens f2.8 10 sec exposure at the Frosty Drew Observatory in Charlestown RI, USA. “It was taken @ 9:42 EST, still pretty early in the evening,” Michaela said.
Timelapse, Perseids and stars on August 12, 2011.Credit: David Parmet. Click to see this image and more on Flickr.
This weekend should be the peak of the 2011 Perseid meteor shower. If you have any luck taking images of the event, we’d love to see them and share them with the world! To enable this, Universe Today has started a Flickr Group, where people can upload their astrophotos, which will make it easier for us to share everyone’s photos. If we use your image, we will give you full credit and link back to your Flickr account. Or if you’d rather submit your images via email, send them to Nancy, along with a little info about it (where/when/equipment/etc.)
We hope to soon begin a new ‘Amateur Astrophoto of the Day’ feature where we will use pictures people have sent us via Flickr as well, so look for more info on that soon.
In the meantime, get out and enjoy the Perseids, and remember you can share the experience with others via Twitter with MeteorWatch, led by UT’s Adrian West! Follow the #Meteorwatch hashtag, and Adrian’s @VirtualAstro Twitter feed.
