Last night I went out into the northern boondocks with a friend and got far away from the city lights in order to check out the cosmos with his telescope. We headed about an hour north of the city and found a little cul-de-sac surrounded by cows and a whole lot of nothing. It was perfectly clear, and with the moon being almost opposite to full, there was nothing obstructing a crisp view of the streak of the milky way. Using Dan's telescope we looked at Mars, the rings of Saturn, the nebula in Orion's belt, the Pleiades, and numerous other deep space star clusters. I also learned a thing or two about long exposure astrophotography.

Orion from the southern hemisphere.

The Southern Cross is near the top of the picture in the middle.

A composite of 15 images taken 1 minute apart.
Fun times. It makes me want to own a telescope.
Did you see the "reverse constellation" emu? It's a black spot in the milky way, that looks like a giant emu - I don't think ew can see it here, and at least in the city's it's too hard to get the milky way bright enough for it to really shine through.
ReplyDeleteNo, I didn't know to look for that. We did see a dark nebula elsewhere in the milky way that blocked out some stuff, but it was very small. We may have been looking at a small part of the giant emu - I'm not sure. I'll ask Dan about that next time I talk to him.
ReplyDeleteIt's big - very big. But it does look like an emu. And it's cool way to think of star constellations.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.atnf.csiro.au/research/AboriginalAstronomy/Examples/emu.htm
Or, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Aboriginal_astronomy
Although neither picture really does it justice.