southern sky – The Amazing Sky

January 22, 2018

The Beauty of the Milky Way

I present a new 4-minute music video (in 4K resolution) featuring time-lapses of the Milky Way.

One of the most amazing sights is the Milky Way slowly moving across the sky. From Canada we see the brightest part of the Milky Way, its core region in Sagittarius and Scorpius moving across the souther horizon in summer.

But from the southern hemisphere, the galactic core rises dramatically and climbs directly overhead, providing a jaw-dropping view of our edge-on Galaxy stretching across the sky. It is a sight all stargazers should see.

I shot the time-lapses from Alberta, Canada and from Australia, mostly in 2016 and 2017.

I include a still-image mosaic of the Milky Way from Aquila to Crux shot in Chile in 2011.

Do watch in 4K if you can! And in Full-Screen mode.

Locations include Writing-on-Stone and Police Outpost Provincial Parks, and Banff and Jasper National Parks in Alberta.

In Australia I shot from the Victoria coast and from inland in New South Wales near Coonabarabran, with some scenes from the annual OzSky Star Safari held each April.

I used a SYRP Genie Mini and a Star Adventurer Mini for the panning sequences, and a TimeLapse+ View intervalometer for the day-to-night sequences.

I processed all sequences (some 7500 frames in total) through the software LRTimelapse to smooth transitions and flickering.

Music is by Audiomachine.

Enjoy!

April 3, 2017April 3, 2017

Hello, Austral Autumn Sky

Southern Autumn Sky Panorama (Spherical)

The sky looks very different from down under. This is the entire sky of early evening as autumn begins in the southern hemisphere.

My last post showed Orion and the winter sky disappearing into the west, from home in Alberta.

This post shows that same area of sky (here at top) also setting into the west. But that’s the only area of sky familiar to northern hemisphere stargazers.

Everything below Orion and Sirius is new celestial territory for the northern astronomer. Welcome to the fabulous southern hemisphere sky.

And to the autumn sky – From home it is spring. From here in the southern hemisphere summer is giving way to cool nights of autumn.

Straight up, at centre, is the faint Milky Way area containing the constellations of Puppis and Vela, formerly in the constellation of Argo Navis.

Below, the Milky Way brightens in Carina and Crux, the Southern Cross, where dark lanes divide the Milky Way.

At right, the two patches of light are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, satellite galaxies of our Milky Way.

The bright object at left is Jupiter rising over the Tasman Sea.

I shot this 360° panorama on March 31, 2017 from Cape Conran on the Gippsland Coast of Victoria, Australia, at a latitude of 37° South.

I’ve turned the panorama so Orion appears as we’re used to seeing him, head up and feet below. But here in the southern hemisphere the image below despicts what he looks like, as he dives headfirst into the west in the evening twilight.

The bright object here is the waxing crescent Moon, here in Taurus. Taurus is below Orion, while Sirius (the bright star at top) and the stars of Canis Major are above Orion.

This view above takes in more of Canis Major. Note the Pleiades to the right of the Moon.

Visiting the southern hemisphere is a wonderful experience for any stargazer. The sky is disorienting, but filled with new wonders to see and old sights turned quite literally on their heads!

April 29, 2014

Splendid Southern Star Clusters

The southern Milky Way is populated by the sky’s best clusters of stars.

Here are three of the southern sky’s best star clusters, in portraits I took earlier this month from Australia.

At top, my main image takes in a great contrasting pair of star clusters. Both lie in the constellation of Puppis, once part of the ship Argo Navis.

At left is the stunningly rich NGC 2477, so packed with stars it almost ranks as a globular cluster, not one of the sparser open clusters. At least that’s the impression it gives in the eyepiece. But instead of containing hundreds of thousands of stars, as do globulars, NGC 2477 “only” has 300 stellar members. They are just very tightly packed in one of the richest open star clusters in the sky. If it had been farther north NGC 2477 would certainly rate as one of the top 100 sky sights, and carry some memorable name after a fanciful resemblance to who knows what! Instead, it carries but a catalog number.

Next to it, at right, is NGC 2451, more typical of open clusters. It has a central bright star, this one naked eye, surrounded by 40 or so lesser stars of contrasting colour and brightness. The two clusters make a great side-by-side comparison in any low-power telescope.

Much farther along the southern Milky Way is this rich open cluster (above), NGC 6067, in Norma, itself embedded in one of the richest star clouds of the southern Milky Way, the Norma Star Cloud. Here you are gazing for 6800 light years toward the cluster which shines suspended against the background of the even more distant inner arms of our spiral galaxy.

So NGC 6067 looks a little like an island of blue stars amid the dust-reddened background of more distant stars in the Milky Way — an island in a sea of stars.

April 27, 2014April 27, 2014

The Night Sky’s Two Brightest Stars

The two brightest stars in the night sky shine in the southern sky.

Here are Sirius (at right) and Canopus (at bottom left), the brightest and second brightest stars in the night sky, together near the southern Milky Way.

My image also captures the huge loops of the Gum Nebula, thought to be the remains of a supernova that blew up a million years ago. It’s utterly invisible to the naked eye, but Sirius and Canopus stand out as brilliant stars even from light polluted sites.

Sirius can be seen from northern latitudes but Canopus is below the horizon for any location north of 37° North or so. I shot this image from Australia where these stars pass overhead.

Sirius is a hot blue-white star 8.6 light years away. Canopus appears slightly dimmer but only because it lies much farther away, at some 310 light years. In reality it is a supergiant yellow-white star that shines with a luminosity 15,000 times that of our Sun.

This image takes in Canopus at bottom right, next to the Large Magellanic Cloud, and with the southern Milky Way sweeping across the top, with the Carina Nebula and its attendant star clusters at top left and parts of the Gum Nebula at right.

Here are a few cocktail party facts about Canopus:

• In 480,000 years its motion around the Galaxy will bring Canopus close enough to Earth that it will become the brightest star in our night sky, outranking Sirius.

• The origin of its name is a mystery. One idea is that the star is named for the pilot of the ship that took Menelaus to Troy on the quest to re-capture Helen.

• Canopus, the star, was used in ancient times as a key navigation star for those sailing to southern seas, as it would have risen above the southern horizon from latitudes below 35° North back around 2000 BCE.

• Today, Canopus is charted as the brightest star in the constellation of Carina the Keel, part of the ancient constellation of Argo Navis, named for the ship sailed by Jason and the Argonauts.

April 23, 2014

Stellar Graveyard in Vela

This is what’s left of a star that exploded in ancient times.

This is the Vela Supernova Remnant, an object in the southern sky in the constellation of Vela the Sail. The wispy tendrils of magenta and cyan are all that’s left of the outer layers of giant star that exploded about 12,000 years ago.

Cluttering the field at left are amorphous patches of star-forming nebulosity that are part of the much larger Gum Nebula complex.

The supernova was only about 800 light years away so it would have been a brilliant sight in the sky to neolithic observers, far outshining any other stars. But no record exists of anyone seeing it.

The star didn’t destroy itself completely – its core collapsed to form a pulsar, an ultra-dense ball of neutrons, in this case spinning about 11 times a second. The pulsar is in this field but it’s much too faint to show up in visible light.

I shot this earlier this month from Australia where Vela sails directly overhead. The field is about 6° by 4°, the amount of sky framed by high power binoculars. The brighter parts of the Vela Remnant can be picked out in large amateur telescopes – I’ve seen bits of it in my 10-inch telescope – but this is certainly a challenging object to see, even with aided eyes.

April 4, 2014

The Milky Way of the Deep South

The Milky Way of the southern hemisphere contains some astonishing deep-sky sights.

The lead image above shows the section of the Milky Way that extends farthest south, and so is visible only from tropical latitudes in the north and, of course, from the southern hemisphere. I shot these images this past week in Australia.

The wide-angle image above takes in the southern Milky Way from Vela, at right, to Centaurus, at left. In the middle is the Southern Cross (left of centre), the Carina Nebula complex and surrounding clusters, and the False Cross at right of frame. The close-ups below zoom into selected regions of this area of the Milky Way. All are spectacular sights in binoculars or any telescope.

This image frames the left side of Crux, the Southern Cross. The bright stars are Becrux (top) and Acrux (bottom). Just below Becrux is the compact and brilliant Jewel Box cluster, aka NGC 4755. Below it are the dark clouds of the Coal Sack, which in photos breaks up into discrete segments and patches.

This region is a favourite of mine for images and for visual scanning in any telescope. The large nebula is the Lambda Centauri complex, also labelled the Running Chicken Nebula. Can you see its outline? Above it is the beautiful Pearl Cluster, aka NGC 3766.

This is the standout object in the deep south – the Carina Nebula complex. I’ve shot this many times before but this is my best take on it. At upper left is the Football Cluster, NGC 3532, while at upper right is the Gem Cluster, NGC 3293.

Seeing this area in person is worth the trip to the southern hemisphere. There are now many photographers up north who have shot marvellous images of Carina but using robotic telescopes. They have never actually seen the object for themselves. They print the images upside down or sideways, a sign of their detachment from the real sky.

You have to stand under the southern stars to really appreciate the magnificence of the Milky Way. All else is just data taking.

– Alan, April 5, 2014 / © Alan Dyer

March 28, 2014April 1, 2014

The Milky Way on an Australian Morning

The Milky Way arches across the pre-dawn sky on a morning in Australia.

This was the view this morning, Saturday, March 29, at about 4:00 a.m. from my observing site near Coonabarabran, Australia. What a sight! The Milky Way extends from Aquila, in our northern sky at left, all the way across the heavens to Crux and Carina, in the southern sky at right. Just left of centre high in the south lies the bright centre of the Galaxy, in Sagittarius and Scorpius.

My ultrawide-angle image frames the “Dark Emu,” made of dark lanes and dust clouds in the Milky Way and prominent in aboriginal sky lore in Australia. His head is the Coal Sack at upper right, his neck the curving dust lane from Alpha Centauri to Scorpius right of centre, and his tail and feet are in the dust lanes left of the galactic centre on the left side of the image. He extends all the way across the sky.

Venus is just coming over the gum trees at lower left. The glow of zodiacal light – sunlight reflected off comet dust in the inner solar system – extends up from Venus to the Milky Way.

After three days of rain – cheered by the residents here! – the skies have cleared and the big telescopes have all arrived for our star party this week. It should be a superb week of stargazing, off to a great start with this view in the Australian dawn.

March 23, 2014

A Dreamy Carina Nebula

The Carina Nebula glows among the colourful southern stars.

I’ve shot this field many times over the years in visits to the southern hemisphere but never with a result quite like this. Last night the sky was hazy with high cloud but I shot anyway. The result is a “dreamy” rendition of the Carina Nebula and its surrounding clusters of stars. At upper left is the Football Cluster, NGC 3532, while at upper right is the Gem Cluster, NGC 3293.

As with my previous post, the haze brings out the star colours, filling the field with pastel shades. It is one of the finest fields in the sky, worth the trip down under.

Alas, skies have clouded up tonight with only a few bright stars and Mars shining through. And the forecast is for rain for the next few days. So I may get lots of writing done at my Aussie retreat.

As a technical note: I shot this with the little 77mm Borg Astrograph, essentially a 300mm f/4 telephoto lens that is tack sharp across a full frame camera, like the Canon 5D MkII I used here. It was riding on my Astro-Physics 400 mount and guided flawlessly with the Santa Barbara SG4 auto-guider. The image is a stack of four 8-minute exposures. All the gear, much of it stored here in Australia between my visits, is working perfectly.

March 22, 2014

The Southern Cross and Carina Nebula

Two icons of the southern hemisphere sky shine side by side in the Milky Way.

Last night was a hazy one at my site in Australia, with high clouds drifting through all evening. I made the best of it and shot some constellations, including the most famous in the southern sky, the Southern Cross, or Crux. It stands at left in the frame, with its distinctive four main stars, three of the blue and the top star of the cross, Gacrux, a very orange tint.

To the left of and below Crux the Milky Way is marred by a dark cloud of interstellar dust, the Coal Sack.

To the right of the frame you can see the pink “flower” of the Carina Nebula, one of the largest star forming regions in the sky. It is flanked by several star clusters, notably the very blue Southern Pleiades, or IC 2602, shining below the Carina Nebula.

The natural haze in the sky added glows around the stars, accentuating their colours.

In all, this is one of the richest and most colourful areas of the sky. It’s a highlight of any southern sky tour.

December 28, 2012December 28, 2012

Zooming into Canis Major – #1

My last post featured a wide view of Canis Major. Here, we zoom in closer to one of the most interesting regions in that constellation, filled with nebulas and clusters.

The prominent red arc is the Seagull Nebula, aka IC 2177. Above and to the right of the Seagull is a clump of stars called Messier 50, which lies over the border in the constellation of Monoceros the Unicorn.

At the lower left edge of the frame sits a pair of dissimilar star clusters, Messier 46 (the left one) and Messier 47 (the right one). M46 is a dense rich cluster of stars while M47 is brighter but looser and more scattered.

Several other non-Messier clusters punctuate the field. This is a great area of sky to explore with binoculars.

Just below centre you might see a small green-blue patch. That’s the nebula called Thor’s Helmet, or NGC 2359, a fine telescopic object.

If you get a clear night this season when the Moon is out of the way and you can head to a dark sky, Canis Major, the Hunting Dog, is a great hunting ground for deep-sky fans.

As the data at left shows, I shot this with a 135mm telephoto lens, giving a field of view similar to what binoculars would show.

December 11, 2012December 11, 2012

Southern Milky Way in the Blue of Dawn

At the end of a nearly perfect night of southern stargazing, I shot this wide-angle portrait of the southern Milky Way embedded in the deep blue of morning twilight.

In December at dawn, the southern Milky Way extends from Orion (at the extreme right) down through Canis Major, Puppis and Vela (where you can see a large faint red bubble-shaped nebula high in the south) then continues east (left) into Carina and Crux. The red Carina Nebula sits in the Milky Way and the Southern Cross is at left, rising before the two Pointer Stars, Alpha and Beta Centauri. The Magellanic Clouds sits above the cottage I’m using as my southern hemisphere home for stargazing while I am in Australia.

December 11, 2012December 11, 2012

Southern Spectacular in Carina

The Carina Nebula ranks as one of the most spectacular sights in the southern sky.

I shot this last night under perfect conditions. I’ve shot this nebula many times before but had to have a go at it again – I think this version is the best yet of many I’ve taken over the years of coming to the southern hemisphere to shoot the sky. I shot this through my 4-inch apo refractor with a filter-modified Canon 5D MkII camera. It’s a stack of five 12-minute exposures at ISO 400.

This massive nebula is the site of loads of star formation, and home to one massive young star, Eta Carinae, that is a prime candidate for a supernova explosion sometime soon. That will certainly stir things up in Carina. This object sits over 6,000 light years away in the next spiral arm in from ours, the Carina-Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way.

Through the telescope it fills the field with intricate shades of grey — the colours show up only in photos – with one bright yellow star at the centre, Eta Carinae itself shrouded in the golden-hued nebula it cast off during its last explosive outburst in the 1840s.

Like the Large Magellanic Cloud, this is one object worth the trip to southern skies just to see for yourself.

December 9, 2012December 9, 2012

Australian Sky Panorama

This is the southern hemisphere sky in a 360° panorama.

From left to right in the sky, you can see:

– in the South: the two Magellanic Clouds, satellite galaxies of the Milky Way

– in the West: the diagonal glow of Zodiacal Light

– in the North: Orion, Jupiter and the Pleiades above the outline of Timor Rock

– in the East: the southern Milky Way just rising

I shot this last night in the early evening, Sunday, December 9, from my observing site in Australia, Timor Cottage at Coonabarabran, NSW. It’s a panorama of 8 images, each a 1 minute untracked exposure with the 10-22mm lens at 10mm. I’m amazed at how well the sections join together, considering the stars are moving from one frame to the next and about 16 minutes separates the beginning and end frames.

December 5, 2012December 5, 2012

Cottage Under the Southern Stars

Here’s what heaven on Earth looks like to an amateur astronomer.

It’s a cottage all to myself under some of the darkest skies on Earth, and in the southern hemisphere where all the best stuff is in the sky. This is Timor Cottage near Coonabarabran, NSW, Australia, the self-proclaimed Astronomy Capital of Australia. Near Coona sits Siding Spring Observatory, home to Australia’s largest collection of optical research telescopes. I’m staying nearby, at this cottage under the stars doing my own southern sky explorations.

I was here in December 2010 but had to contend with torrential rains and floods two years ago. As you can see, the weather is much better in 2012!

This is a one minute exposure looking south, toward the most prominent objects in the southern evening sky at this time of year: the two Magellanic Clouds. They look like detached parts of the Milky Way but are separate dwarf galaxies orbiting our Galaxy and in the process of being ripped apart by our Galaxy’s tidal forces.

The red light at left is my other camera taking a shot of the Clouds through a telescope, the subject of my next blog.

It’s a perfect night when the only clouds in the sky are the Magellanic Clouds!