This beautiful photo of the Aurora Borealis was captured by my friend Yvonne Wong in Alaska recently. The aurorae are more frequent around the two equinox periods each year because the N-S component of the Earth’s magnetic field is reduced and less able to fend off the solar wind. Hello, Spring Stargazers! Here are your…
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This image of Messier 35, also nick-named the Shoe-Buckle Cluster, was captured by Fred Espenak on March 29, 2011 from his home in Arizona. He affixed his Canon EOS 550D camera to a Takahashi 180mm Astrograph telescope. The photo spans about a thumb’s width top to bottom. Messier 35 is about 2800 light-years away from…
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This long exposure image by Steve Cannistra covers 4 degrees (8 full moon diameters) left-right. It shows the rich nebulae that lurk in the centre of Auriga’s ring of bright stars, especially the Flaming Star Nebula (top left). This image was APOD for Feb 24, 2012. More of Steve’s images can be viewed at http://www.starrywonders.com/…
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The Witchhead Nebula in Orion is very large, but dim. It’s best seen in long exposure astrophotos – like this image taken by Jeff Signorelli in the NASA APOD for October 30, 2015. The name is a misnomer. The blue colour is produced when light from the bright star at centre left reflects off nearby…
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Hello, Late Summer Stargazers! Here are your Astronomy Skylights for the week of September 1st, 2019 by Chris Vaughan. Feel free to pass this along to your friends and send me your comments, questions, and suggested topics. I repost these emails with photos at http://astrogeoguy.tumblr.com/ where all the old editions are archived. You can also…
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