Cazzie
January 5th, 2010, 15:46
Humming Don McLean's song about Vincent Van Gogh.
The past few nights have been frigid, but the sky has been just terrific. I have taken my scope out three nights in succession and have a few edited shots I'd like to share.
The first is Betelgeuse (Bet-al-jews, which means the armpit of the mighty one, truth), a red giant in the constellation of Orion (oh-RYE-un, the hunter). Betelgeuse is so immense, if it were our sun there would be no Earth. In fact, there would be no Mars. Although its size in volume is huge, it is a cold dying star. One day, not in our lifetime, it will become a supernova and then dwindle to a small invisible to the naked eye pulsar. It lies 520 light years from out solar system, the largest red giant within 1000 light years of our system.
This is really trick photography or make that trick astrophotography. I take two shots of the same image. Because Betelgeuse is so bright at the 80X magnification I used, it does not show its predominate red color. I achieve that through old astronomer's tricks, but racking the focus slightly out until I am shown a smal eclipsed star with a color corona. A duplicate shot is then taken. The second shot is taken into Photoshop and the black eclipsed center filled. This photo is cropped to only show the reworked Betelgeuse and any background star visible (which would also have been out of focus) was painted out. The first all in focus first image was brought up in Photoshop and Betelgeuse was marked with guide lines and painted out. The second image was copied and pasted and moved to the guide line crosshairs. The resulting image was flatten and saved for the web.
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y168/cazmodel/Stargazing/betelgeuse.jpg
Cor Caroli (kor-CARE-oh-lie, it means the heart of Charles), but it is also commonly called "the Cat's Eyes", is a double-star, each of equal brightness), in the constellation Canes Venatici (KAY-neez vee-NAT-ih-sigh, the hunting dogs). They lie 120 light years from our solar system. and are separated by only 20-seconds of arc, thus requireing high power (200X) to separate them like this. Like Betelgeuse, this image was done with the same technique, only I did two saved cropped images of the reworked doubles. They very hot new stars, smaller than our sun, but much hotter. They are in the blue - white spectrum (O-B) of stars. Stars are ranked in brightness by the letters O-B-A-F-G-K-M, with M stars being the coolest and O stars being the hottest. Our sun is a G star in heat. I always used this little line to remember the ranking of stars, "Oh Be A Fine Girl, Kiss Me". Whatever works. :icon_lol:
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y168/cazmodel/Stargazing/corcaroli.jpg
Lastly is M13, the finest globular cluster in the Northern Hemisphere. Think of Globular Clusters as little parasite galaxies, that hang on to the fringe of our galaxy by what little gravitational pull they get. They are little galaxies in their own right, consisting of hundreds of thousands of stars all moving about a central core. that is what separates a Globular Cluster from an Open Cluster, which is a large grouping of stars in the same region of our galaxy, but not gravitationally bound to each other and are much nearer to our solar system than Globular Clusters.
M13 lies 21,000 light years distant, far by most standards, but very close a galaxy standard, therefore, when viewed at high power (200X), it looks like a little jewel box. Even this photo cannot reveal the brilliant twinkling that the so many stars in the cluster put out, I wish all of you could have suffered the cold of 2:00 AM, when two mornings ago, this and Cor Caroli were shot high overhead. I was wrapped tight and warm and my eye just would not come off this shining jewel box, until I had to try and take a photo. The photo was not exposed but for 5-seconds, because I did not want too many background stars to blot out the cluster. That is one reason the cluster's stars do not appear to twinkle.
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y168/cazmodel/Stargazing/m13.jpg
The past few nights have been frigid, but the sky has been just terrific. I have taken my scope out three nights in succession and have a few edited shots I'd like to share.
The first is Betelgeuse (Bet-al-jews, which means the armpit of the mighty one, truth), a red giant in the constellation of Orion (oh-RYE-un, the hunter). Betelgeuse is so immense, if it were our sun there would be no Earth. In fact, there would be no Mars. Although its size in volume is huge, it is a cold dying star. One day, not in our lifetime, it will become a supernova and then dwindle to a small invisible to the naked eye pulsar. It lies 520 light years from out solar system, the largest red giant within 1000 light years of our system.
This is really trick photography or make that trick astrophotography. I take two shots of the same image. Because Betelgeuse is so bright at the 80X magnification I used, it does not show its predominate red color. I achieve that through old astronomer's tricks, but racking the focus slightly out until I am shown a smal eclipsed star with a color corona. A duplicate shot is then taken. The second shot is taken into Photoshop and the black eclipsed center filled. This photo is cropped to only show the reworked Betelgeuse and any background star visible (which would also have been out of focus) was painted out. The first all in focus first image was brought up in Photoshop and Betelgeuse was marked with guide lines and painted out. The second image was copied and pasted and moved to the guide line crosshairs. The resulting image was flatten and saved for the web.
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y168/cazmodel/Stargazing/betelgeuse.jpg
Cor Caroli (kor-CARE-oh-lie, it means the heart of Charles), but it is also commonly called "the Cat's Eyes", is a double-star, each of equal brightness), in the constellation Canes Venatici (KAY-neez vee-NAT-ih-sigh, the hunting dogs). They lie 120 light years from our solar system. and are separated by only 20-seconds of arc, thus requireing high power (200X) to separate them like this. Like Betelgeuse, this image was done with the same technique, only I did two saved cropped images of the reworked doubles. They very hot new stars, smaller than our sun, but much hotter. They are in the blue - white spectrum (O-B) of stars. Stars are ranked in brightness by the letters O-B-A-F-G-K-M, with M stars being the coolest and O stars being the hottest. Our sun is a G star in heat. I always used this little line to remember the ranking of stars, "Oh Be A Fine Girl, Kiss Me". Whatever works. :icon_lol:
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y168/cazmodel/Stargazing/corcaroli.jpg
Lastly is M13, the finest globular cluster in the Northern Hemisphere. Think of Globular Clusters as little parasite galaxies, that hang on to the fringe of our galaxy by what little gravitational pull they get. They are little galaxies in their own right, consisting of hundreds of thousands of stars all moving about a central core. that is what separates a Globular Cluster from an Open Cluster, which is a large grouping of stars in the same region of our galaxy, but not gravitationally bound to each other and are much nearer to our solar system than Globular Clusters.
M13 lies 21,000 light years distant, far by most standards, but very close a galaxy standard, therefore, when viewed at high power (200X), it looks like a little jewel box. Even this photo cannot reveal the brilliant twinkling that the so many stars in the cluster put out, I wish all of you could have suffered the cold of 2:00 AM, when two mornings ago, this and Cor Caroli were shot high overhead. I was wrapped tight and warm and my eye just would not come off this shining jewel box, until I had to try and take a photo. The photo was not exposed but for 5-seconds, because I did not want too many background stars to blot out the cluster. That is one reason the cluster's stars do not appear to twinkle.
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y168/cazmodel/Stargazing/m13.jpg