The telescopes, cameras, and software available to amateurs these days, allow us to take astropics with a quality exceeding that of the worlds biggest telescopes and best professional equipment of as little as a decade ago. And even better, the cost and difficulty has gone way down, and the choice and quality of equipment have gone way up. All of these pictures were taken with an off the shelf Canon digital camera on commonly available scopes.
It is amazing when you look up at the night sky, then take a picture through a
scope, and the stuff below shows up. You look back up and just say "Wow!". What's even more amazing
to me is that all the stars, galaxies, and nebulae that we see and
photograph are only a fraction of what is actually out there. In much the same
way that the nighttime lights of towns from the window of a cross country
jet only hint at the whole planet below, so everything we see and photograph turns
out to be less than half of one percent of what's actually there. To perceive
as much as we can,
astronomers use a multitude of instruments to look at the
spectrum from
radio waves to light rays, to gamma rays
(click link to see our galaxy, the Milky Way, in most of them) to gravity waves.
What's New? updated 11-16-11
C63 (Caldwell 38), the Helix Nebula. In 4-5 billion years this is what our sun may look like.
What's New? updated 11-2-11
C50 (Caldwell 50), the Rosette Nebula. 10,000 newborn stars and the 'rosy' womb of their birthplace.
Only February can go without a full moon. That will occur when both January and March have a "blue", (second full) moon
Jupiter's Great Red Spot 1:00am to 2:45am (CST), 3-14-2005.
