big dipper


Canyon & Dipper, Part 2

In an earlier post I shared a picture taken at the top of a canyon wall, showing the canyon below and the the Big Dipper above (through some interesting clouds).  When I went down into the canyon (not actually the same one) I thought I’d try the same thing from this different perspective.  It would have been great to shoot this looking up the canyon wall, just as the previous shot was looking down such a wall, but since the Big Dipper was pretty low in the northern sky, that was not going to work.  Indeed, I had to walk […]


The Canyon & The Dipper

I mentioned in an earlier post that there were some interesting scenes captured with a DSLR while waiting for much longer exposures on the telescope.  Here is an example; a shot of a deep canyon with the Big Dipper overhead.  At first glance, this looks like a fairly ordinary daytime photograph – that somehow has stars showing!  In fact, this was shot late at night, after the Moon had set.  Except for a small area on the right edge of the rim, there is nothing but starlight (and a bit of light from distant cities) illuminating the scene.  That bright […]


Splitting Hairs (and Stars)

When we talk about the distance between stars there are 2 very different measures that might apply.  The actual distance between any two stars (typically measured in light-years, or astronomical units [the distance between Earth and our Sun] if they are very close) is generally not apparent by simple observation, whether aided by a telescope or not.  But we might also be concerned with the angular separation between stars.  Frankly, this information is most useful in measuring the quality of various optical elements, including human eyes. Many stars are actually “binary stars” that are relatively close to each other in […]