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 has 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 there. In much the same
way that the nighttime lights of towns, roads, and cities below, from the window of a
nighttime cross country jet only hint at all the planet below, so everything we
can see and photograph is less than 0.1% of what's actually all there. To perceive
as much beyond the visible as we can, astronomers use a multitude of
instruments to see in a wide range of wavelengths from
radio waves to light rays, to gamma rays
(click link to see our galaxy, the Milky Way, as it appears in
many of them) to gravity waves.
What's New? updated 7-20-2020
M27, Dumbbell Nebula. A summer time favorite in the Milky way, detectable with binoculars, but best seen with a 10" or larger telescope. A classic example of a star like our sun, about 5-6 billion years from now
What's New? updated 1-16-2020
M31_V1 (V0619 at AAVSO), The Most Famous Cepheid Variable of All Time
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.
