Australia

55 Million Solar Masses

 in Blog  tagged Australia / Centaurus A / NGC5128

My latest image from Australia is Centaurus A (NGC5128), a large, unusual galaxy.  The photo looks like a thick dust lane with a very bright star behind it, but all that glowing in the center is actually from the core of the galaxy, which includes a supermassive black hole, estimated to be 55 million times the mass of our Sun (which is itself far beyond the size of objects in normal human experience). If my camera could pick up x-ray and/or radio signals we would see enormous jets radiating from the center, perpendicular to the disk.  The inner portions of […]

NEAF Report – And More Images from Down Under

 in Blog  tagged Australia / NEAF / NGC3293 / NGC3324 / NGC6188

NEAF (Northeast Astronomy Forum) was great fun, as I imagine it is every year.  As you can see from this photo, I was mainly showing my backlit film prints, and they attracted a lot of attention.  At the rate orders are coming in now I’m going to be pretty busy for a while. I also showed my “Mister T” adapter and the PerfectStar B focus control system.  This picture was taken fairly early in the show, and I was using MaxIm DL to show how focus control works.  But my booth was right next to Main Sequence Software, who have […]

From Australia to New York

 in Blog  tagged Australia / M16 / NEAF / Photo contest

It has been far too long since I last posted here – I apologize for that and hope you haven’t been missing it terribly!  In truth, not a lot has happened in the last 6 weeks, as is typical for this time of year.  But I do have a few bits of news: First, I am now getting images from a remote observatory in Australia!  The first image above is, unfortunately, a familiar target that I have photographed from here in the northern hemisphere, M16, the Eagle Nebula.  In the not-too-distant future I hope to be showing you some images of […]