The night sky over Horseshoe Bend, near Page Arizona. Credit and copyright: Jack Fusco.
As the Milky Way now begins to set earlier in the evening here in the northern hemisphere, that doesn’t mean the photos of our night sky are any less stunning. This lovely shot for #TerrestrialTuesday by photographer Jack Fusco was taken this week at Horseshoe Bend in Arizona, a horseshoe-shaped meander of the Colorado River.
“During the day, the walk to Horseshoe Bend was full of tourists from all over the world,” Jack explained on Flickr. “At night, we sat alone and stared up at a brilliant star filled sky and only heard coyotes in the distance. It was an absolutely incredible location during the day and at night. This was shot with no Moon at the sky, so the area was at it’s absolute darkest. I was a little nervous setting up my gear for this shot as my tripod was just a few inches from a 1000ft drop down to the river. It was certainly an experience I’ll never forget.”
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'Fu?nfla?nderblick Milchstrasse,' the Milky Way over a dark country sky in Switzerland. Credit and copyright: Christian Kamber.
Hey, it’s #MilkyWayMonday! This gorgeous photo of the Milky Way was taken by astrophotographer Christian Kamber near Fu?nfla?nderblick, Switzerland (you can see the region on a map here). This is a stack of 20 shots, made with Deep Sky Stacker and Photoshop.
Lovely!
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The Milky Way above the International Space Station's solar panels. Credit: NASA/NASA Crew Earth Observations
Have you ever sat outside on a starry night and just watched the stars move slowly above you? Here’s a video that shows what it is like to sit back on a spaceship and gaze at the ever-changing sky above.
This timelapse was compiled from recent images taken from the International Space Station. Hugh Carrick-Allan, a 3D Animator/VFX artist living in Sydney Australia used a sequence of 52 images posted on the NASA Crew Earth Observation website. The video also features the Aurora Australis and and some random satellites.
He also created the beautiful image below by combining all 52 the images.
“I used DeepSkyStacker to stack the images, I used PixInsight for some heavy noise reduction on the foreground, and then I combined and tweaked everything in Photoshop,” Carrick-Allan wrote on his website.
Is Earth going at warp speed in this image? This is a composite of two photographs, one for the foreground and one for the sky. The photographer zoomed in on the image of the Milky Way for the last 10 seconds of the exposure to give it a 'warp speed' look. Credit and copyright: Mike Taylor/Mike Taylor Photography.
Whoa! Having just returned from the science and science fiction mashup that is Dragon Con, my mind is still combining the two. Then I saw this image from Mike Taylor, which is one of the most unique Milky Way images I’ve ever seen. Perfect!
Mike said he combined two images, one for the foreground and one for the night sky image of the Milky Way. “I zoomed in on the Milky Way for the last 10 seconds of the exposure to give it the “warp speed” look,” he said.
He calls the image “Somniloquy” which is a term that describes the act of talking while asleep. Yep. I’m pretty sure that happened at Dragon Con, too….
Check out another awesome Milky Way image by Mike, below.
This is a 7 image vertical panorama of the night sky in Maine where the late Summer Milky Way makes a dramatic background for a small shack and tree. Credit and copyright: Mike Taylor/Mike Taylor Photography.
Mike noted this image was taken right next to a cell tower that emits a red light over the landscape throughout the night. “Normally I would change the color balance but I decided to leave the red color in the foreground (although I toned it down quite a bit) to add to the overall feeling of the image,” he said. Mike stitched the images together via PTGui and processed through Lightroom 5 & Photoshop CS5.
Nikon D600 & 14-24 @ 14mm
f/2.8 – 7 x 30 secs – ISO 4000
08/28/14 – 10:20PM
Milky Way image taken with a Nikon D600 & 14-24mm at 24mm, f/2.8 – 30 seconds at ISO 4000 on 05/30/14 at 1:38 AM at Goblin Valley State Park, Utah.
Foreground image also taken with the same camera at f/5.6 – 1/60 seconds at ISO 100 on 05/25/14 at 6:28 PM, on Potash Rd near Moab, Utah.
Mike offers photography classes, and you can find out more about when/where here.
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A northern hemisphere summertime view of the Milky Way in Sagittarius. Credit and copyright: Greg Redfern.
What a gorgeous view of the dusty cloud of the Milky Way arch hovering over clouds low on the horizon here on Earth! Fellow NASA Solar System Ambassador Greg Redfern took this image of our galactic center in the constellation Sagittarius.
“If you have dark skies look to the south to see this grand spectacle,” Greg said via email. “It stretches across the entire sky.”
Greg shot the image during the Almost Heaven Star Party, an annual astronomy event sponsored by the Northern Virginia Astronomy Club. The star party is held in Spruce Knob, West Virginia, which boasts the darkest skies in the mid-Atlantic region of the US.
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The rise of the Milky Way and a spectacular lightning display in Mersing, Malaysia on June 28, 2014. Credit and copyright: Justin Ng.
Here’s another beautiful astrophoto, courtesy of photographer Justin Ng from Singapore. He’s currently on a photography trip to Malaysia and by chance captured this absolutely stunning view.
“Knowing that the sky would clear after sunset, I led a group of photographers to this location to film a time-lapse of the rising Milky Way above a lonely boat,” Justin explained via email, “but what happened soon after we started shooting was amazing. We were treated to a spectacular lightning display for about an hour from 9:30pm onwards before the clouds caught up with the rising Milky Way and dominated the skies eventually.”
The image is a result of stacking 12 photos (11 shots of lightnings and 1 shot for everything else) from his time-lapse sequence.
We’re looking forward to seeing the timelapse!
See more images from his current trip here, and you can see more of Justin’s fantastic astrophotography at his website, on G+, Facebook and Twitter.
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There’s a strange place in the sky where everything is attracted. And unfortunately, it’s on the other side of the Milky Way, so we can’t see it. What could be doing all this attracting?
Just where the heck are we going? We’re snuggled in our little Solar System, hurtling through the cosmos at a blindingly fast of 2.2 million kilometers per hour. We’re always orbiting this, and drifting through that, and it’s somewhere out in the region that’s not as horrifically terrifying as what some of our celestial neighbors go through. But where are we going? Just around in a great big circle? Or an ellipse? Which is going around in another circle… and it’s great big circles all the way up?
Not exactly… Our galaxy and other nearby galaxies are being pulled toward a specific region of space. It’s about 150 million light years away, and here is the best part. We’re not exactly sure what it is. We call it the Great Attractor.
Part of the reason the Great Attractor is so mysterious is that it happens to lie in a direction of the sky known as the “Zone of Avoidance”. This is in the general direction of the center of our galaxy, where there is so much gas and dust that we can’t see very far in the visible spectrum. We can see how our galaxy and other nearby galaxies are moving toward the great attractor, so something must be causing things to go in that direction. That means either there must be something massive over there, or it’s due to something even more strange and fantastic.
When evidence of the Great Attractor was first discovered in the 1970s, we had no way to see through the Zone of Avoidance. But while that region blocks much of the visible light from beyond, the gas and dust doesn’t block as much infrared and x-ray light. As x-ray astronomy became more powerful, we could start to see objects within that region. What we found was a large supercluster of galaxies in the area of the Great Attractor, known as the Norma Cluster. It has a mass of about 1,000 trillion Suns. That’s thousands of galaxies.
A March 2013 picture of the Shapley Supercluster from the European Space Agency’s Planck observatory. ESA describes it as “the largest cosmic structure in the local Universe.” Credit: ESA & Planck Collaboration / Rosat/ Digitised Sky Survey
While the Norma Cluster is massive, and local galaxies are moving toward it, it doesn’t explain the full motion of local galaxies. The mass of the Great Attractor isn’t large enough to account for the pull. When we look at an even larger region of galaxies, we find that the local galaxies and the Great Attractor are moving toward something even larger. It’s known as the Shapley Supercluster. It contains more than 8000 galaxies and has a mass of more than ten million billion Suns. The Shapley Supercluster is, in fact, the most massive galaxy cluster within a billion light years, and we and every galaxy in our corner of the Universe are moving toward it.
So as we hurtle through the cosmos, gravity shapes the path we travel. We’re pulled towards the Great Attractor, and despite its glorious title, it appears, in fact to be a perfectly normal collection of galaxies, which just happens to be hidden.
What do you think? What are you hoping we’ll discover over in the region of space we’re drifting towards?
And if you like what you see, come check out our Patreon page and find out how you can get these videos early while helping us bring you more great content!
This simulation shows the possible behavior of a gas cloud that has been observed approaching the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Graphic by ESO/MPE/Marc Schartmann.
Wondering about the latest news on the intriguing object called ‘G2’ that is making its closest approach to the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy? You might be able to get the latest update on this object in real time during a rare live-streamed observing run from the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Watch live above.
The two 10-meter Keck Observatory telescopes on the summit of Mauna Kea will be steered by astronomer Andrea Ghez and her team of observers from the UCLA Galactic Center Group for two nights to study our galaxy’s supermassive black hole, with an attempt to focus in on the enigmatic G2 to see if it is still intact. They’ll also be setting up a test for Einstein’s General Relativity and gathering more data on what they describe as The Paradox of Youth: young objects paradoxically developing around the black hole.
Here’s the time for the livestream in various timezones:
July 3, 2014 @ 9 pm – 10 pm Hawaii
July 4, 2014 @ Midnight – 1 am Pacific
July 4, 2014 @ 3 am – 4 am Eastern
The most previous observations by the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, according to an Astronomer’s Telegram from May 2, 2014 show that the gas cloud called ‘G2’ was surprisingly still intact, even during its closest approach to the supermassive black hole. This means G2 is not just a gas cloud, but likely has a star inside.
“We conclude that G2, which is currently experiencing its closest approach, is still intact, in contrast to predictions for a simple gas cloud hypothesis and therefore most likely hosts a central star,” said the May 2 Telegram. “Keck LGSAO observations of G2 will continue in the coming months to monitor how this unusual object evolves as it emerges from periapse passage.”
For additional info, see our two previous articles about G2:
A 10 panel panorama of the Milkyway, as seen from the top of the Amphitheatre mountain range in the Drakensberg, South Africa. Credit and copyright: Tanja Sund.
During the summer months, many of us hit the trails and do a little camping. But how often do you get a view like this?
Wow! Click on the image above to see larger versions on Flickr.
Astrophotographer Tanja Sund and a companion pitched their tent in the Drakensberg Mountains of South Africa, a 200-kilometer-long mountainous range in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, with the tent sitting just 10 meters from a 1 kilometer-high vertical drop. “This is the home of the Tugela Waterfall, second highest waterfall in the world,” Tanja wrote on Flickr.
“The hike up to the top of the Amphitheatre took about 3 hours from the Sentinel car park, using the chain ladders to reach the summit,” Tanja said. “This is the only day hiking trail which leads to the top of the Drakensberg escarpment. We overnighted next to the Tugela falls to catch the Milkyway, which rises to the east over the local settlements.”
The image was taken on June 29, 2014.
According to the website about Drakensberg, the Zulu people named it ‘Ukhahlamba’ and the Dutch Voortrekkers ‘The Dragon Mountain.’ The Drakensberg Mountains are known for the hiking trails, areas for rock or ice-climbing, abseiling, white water rafting or helicopter rides to view the “awe-inspiring basalt cliffs, snowcapped in winter, that tower over riverine bush, lush yellowwood forests and cascading waterfalls.” At the top of Sani Pass is the highest pub in Africa, at 3,000 meters above sea level. Something for everyone!
Here’s the specs:
Canon 5D Mark III
24-70mm LII f/2.8
Shot at 24mm, F/3.2
20sec single exposures
10x image panorama
Processed in LightRoom & Photoshop.
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An Iridium Flare flashes over western Maine in this beautiful night sky image from June 2014. Credit and copyright: Mike Taylor/Taylor Photography.
Ever seen a flash in the night sky and wondered if you were seeing things? Iridium flares are often mistaken for meteors because of their notable bright flashes of light in the night sky but they are actually caused by a specific group of satellites that orbit our planet. The Iridium communication satellites are just in the right orbit that when sunlight reflects on their antennas, a flash — or flare — is visible down on Earth. There are currently about 66 Iridium satellites in orbit, so flares are a rather common occurrence.
This image from photographer Mike Taylor is one frame from a timelapse of the Milky Way and other features of the night sky in motion against a silhouetted foreground. “Photographed from western Maine, this shot includes quite a bit of light pollution and some fast moving cloud cover,” Mike told Universe Today via email. “Most of the light pollution in this image is coming from Farmington, Maine which is about 35 miles from this location.”
Mike added the footage from this timelapse will be featured in his upcoming short film “Shot In The Dark.”
He also provided this info about Iridium flares:
Iridium satellites are in near-polar orbits at an altitude of 485 miles. Their orbital period is approximately 100 minutes with a velocity of 16,800 miles per hour. The uniqueness of Iridium flares is that the spacecraft emits ‘flashes’ of very bright reflected light that sweep in narrow focused paths across the surface of the Earth. An Iridium communication satellite’s Main Mission Antenna is a silver-coated Teflon antenna array that mimics near-perfect mirrors and are angled at 40-degrees away from the axis of the body of the satellites. This can provide a specular reflection of the Sun’s disk, periodically causing a dazzling glint of reflected sunlight. At the Earth’s surface, the specular reflection is probably less than 50 miles wide, so each flare can only be viewed from a fairly small area. The flare duration can last from anywhere between 5 to 20 seconds and can easily be seen by the naked eye.
If you want to try and see an Iridum flare for yourself, check out Heavens Above for your location.
For this image Mike used:
Nikon D600 & 14-24 @ 14mm
f/2.8 – 30 secs – ISO 3200 – WB Kelvin 3570
06/23/14 – 11:07PM
Processed via Lightroom 5 & Photoshop CS5
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