The great globular cluster (of stars) in the constellation Hercules, a.k.a. Messier 13, is high in the night sky right now. If you have good eyes, said Edmond Halley in 1714, “it shows itself to the naked eye when the sky is serene and the Moon absent.” It is 25,100 light years away and has [...]
A previous post showed Space Shuttle Atlantis being readied for its final mission to the International Space Station. Photographer Thierry Lagault caught Atlantis 50 minutes before docking as it passed across the face of the sun. By now, Atlantis has returned safely, but you sure wouldn’t know it from the headlines. Here’s an [...]
all over again, as someone (Yogi Berra?) once famously said. Once again I find myself struggling up a steep learning curve, advancing an inch and sliding back a foot, trying to produce an acceptable color image of a deep space object, like a galaxy or planetary nebula. The further I get into the process, the [...]
Atlantis, Orbital Vehicle-104, is scheduled to lift off on May 14 on the STS-132 mission to the International Space Station. This will represent the final mission for Atlantis, whose maiden voyage was in October, 1985. The wide-angle image above was taken by Ben Cooper as Atlantis was being lifted off the floor of the [...]
This is the Dumb-Bell nebula known to astronomers as Messier 27. Not visible to the naked eye, it was first discovered by Charles Messier on July 12, 1764, anticipating my viewing by some 236 years and a whole gob of technology that has appeared since then. His equipment was a simple refracting telescope. Mine [...]
Here is a portion of the 1st Qtr Moon as it appeared over the province of New Brunswick last night shortly after sunset. I wanted to show the whole Moon, but my limited skills with the My Telescope online telescope controls just wouldn’t let me do it, try as I might.
Look at those [...]
Here is my first clumsy effort at a color image of the Whirlpool Galaxy. I’m like a journeyman carpenter using his brand new box of tools for the first time. (Which end of the hammer do I grab? Why are the studs crooked? What do I do next?)
The next time I can catch [...]
I walk the neighborhood almost every day, and around about April Fools day the flora started to wake up from a long winter’s nap. Yesterday it was a bright, sunny, day, and I could stand it no longer and took my camera along and returned with 44 perfectly composed and exposed digital images.
I lie. I [...]
It’s time to wind down this series of posts. (Probably past time.) For some reason the Tower of Babel keeps coming to mind as I read how physicists and astronomers are struggling to understand what immediately followed the Big Bang. Martin Rees, author of Before the Beginning, arbitrarily but helpfully, divides cosmic history into three [...]
One outcome of viewing the Learning Company Understanding the Universe DVDs was a renewed interest in astronomy. In my earlier years I would have responded by purchasing a telescope and never learning to use it properly. Now, older yes and wiser maybe, I looked to the Internet to provide an armchair solution. I discovered [...]
