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Saturn Visits the Edge of the Milky Way

Another photo from last weekend’s star party: You might recognize the area in the lower right corner from earlier photos I’ve posted.  The large yellow/red blob is the star Antares (bloated by its extreme brightness), to its right is the globular cluster M4, and above that, surrounded by blue dust, is the Rho Ophiuchi complex.  But this very wide field image (more than 25 degrees across) shows how this area resides at the edge of the Milky Way.  The dense stars and dust of the Milky Way appear as glowing red and black on the left edge, gradually fading to […]


A New Camera

I do most of my astro-imaging with a monochrome CCD camera that lets me use a variety of filters.  This provides the best image quality and flexibility, but there are 2 significant drawbacks:  First, because of the expense of these specialty cameras, I can only afford one with a fairly small sensor (the same size as digital cameras using the “four thirds” format, which is smaller than the typical APS-sized DSLR).  Second, capturing a color image takes much longer because you have to take separate red, green, and blue exposures (and sometimes luminance exposures as well).  Processing these separate exposures […]