View allAll Photos Tagged SmallMagellanicCloud
Nikon d5100
Tokina 11-16mm @ 11mm
10 seconds
ISO 3200
f2.8
Slightly different angle in this one and also employed some different post processing techniques.
This is one of a pair of photographs that I took of the stars around the South Celestial Pole. The web links (URL's) for the pair are given below. This was a "point star" photograph with an 8 second exposure, whilst the other was a "star trail" photograph with a 34 minute exposure.
As far as the motivation for taking these photographs was concerned, it was almost a case of "because I could". But really, its always both more complicated and simpler than that! The results delight me, disappoint me, surprise me, astonish me, educate me, calm me, ... all at once. I even enjoy the act the taking the photographs - a consequence of the heft and the mechanical controls of my Hasselblad 500C/M camera - born well before the digital era but engineered in such a way that a modern digital back can be used in place of film.
I took a similar pair of photographs at this time of the morning from this location 3 months ago (URL's below). In this timeframe, the stars have appeared to rotate clockwise by 90 degrees. The notable features in the scene are but few when compared with the North Celestial Pole. The brightest star, towards the upper right corner, is Achernar. The smudge one third out from the centre towards 4 o'clock is the Small Magellanic Cloud, whilst the smudge on the other side of the centre towards 10 o'clock is the Large Magellanic Cloud. Both of these are galaxies, composed of dozens of nebulae and star clusters. The building is our apartment block.
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URL's for this pair of point star and star trail photographs (September 2016)...
Point star image on Flickr ...
www.flickr.com/photos/momentsforzen/29592098970/
Star trail image on Flickr ...
www.flickr.com/photos/momentsforzen/29886074935/
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URL's for a previous pair of point star and star trail photographs (June 2016) ...
Point star image on Flickr ...
www.flickr.com/photos/momentsforzen/27092362483/
Star trail image on Flickr ...
www.flickr.com/photos/momentsforzen/27424551430/
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[ Location - Barton, Australian Capital Territory, Australia ]
Photography notes ...
The photograph was taken using the following hardware configuration ...
(Year of manufacture indicated in braces where known.)
- Hasselblad 500C/M body (1994).
- Hasselblad CFV-50c Digital Back for Hasselblad V mount camera.
- Hasselblad Focusing Screen for the CFV-50c digital back, with focusing prism and crop markings.
- Hasselblad 45 Degree Viewfinder PME-45 42297 (2001).
- Hasselblad Carl Zeiss lens - Distagon 40mm f/4 CF T* FLE (1996).
- Hasselblad 93mm 1x HZ-0 Filter.
- Hasselblad 093/40 Hood/Filter holder for 40mm CF, CFE, CFi, CFE IF lenses.
I acquired the photograph (8272 x 6200 pixels) with an ISO of 1600, exposure time of 8 seconds, and aperture of f/4.0
Post-processing ...
Finder - Removed the CF card from the camera digital back and placed it in a Lexar 25-in-1 USB card reader. Then used Finder on my MacBook Air to download the raw image file (3FR extension) from the card.
Lightroom - Imported the 3FR image.
Lightroom - Used the Map module to add the location details to the EXIF header.
Lightroom - Applied various basic lighting and color adjustments in the Develop module. The general processing objectives / strategy that I use with photographs of the night sky is as follows ...
- Adjust the geometry (e.g., perspective, straighten, crop).
- Adjust the White Balance.
- Increase the definition of features.
- Prevent the whites from becoming overexposed.
Lightroom - Specifically ...
Lightroom - In the Develop module, I applied Preset 20160923-003 that represented the settings used to process the companion star trail photograph.
Lightroom - Made various small adjustments to obtain a better lighting and color match to the companion star trail photograph.
Lightroom - Saved the Develop module settings as preset 20160923-012.
Lightroom - Output the image as a JPEG image using the "Maximum" quality option (8272 x 6200 pixels).
PhotoSync - Copied the JPEG file to my iPad Mini for any final processing, review, enjoyment, and posting to social media.
@MomentsForZen #MomentsForZen #MFZ #Hasselblad #500CM #CFV50c #Lightroom #Sky #Night #BlueHour #Stars #SouthCelestialPole #MagellanicCloud #MagellanicClouds #LargeMagellanicCloud #SmallMagellanicCloud #LMC #SMC #Achernar
This is our version, via our artificial intelligence model, of the image weic2425c (is a detail of the previous image, with a different angle to better show the central part of the image) provided by Esa Webb about NGC 602, a young bright open cluster of stars, located in the SMC (Small Magellanic Cloud). Through Webb, possible new candidates were found for the first young brown dwarfs outside the Milky Way. This image is mainly obtained, in the near infrared, by the NIRCam, although, for the 10 μm infrared, mid-infrared data from the MIRI instrument were used. The image was made public on October 23, 2024 at 17:00 UTC.
The file is available at 181.68 million pixels for download at a resolution of 15000x12112 pixels.
Map of colours in the image from Webb:
blue for 1.15 μm, 1.4 μm, 1.5 μm (NIRCam, near infrared);
light blue for 2.1 μm (methane - NIRCam, near infrared);
green for 2.77 μm (NIRCam, near infrared);
yellow for 3.35 μm (PAH - NIRCam, near infrared);
orange for 3.56 μm (NIRCam, near infrared);
red for 4.8 μm (NIRCam, near infrared) and 10 μm (Silicate - MIRI, mid-infrared);
Constellation: Hydrus.
Distance: 200000 light-years.
Object Description: Open Cluster.
Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, P. Zeidler, E. Sabbi, A. Nota, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb). Magnification and reconstruction via AI by PipploIMP.
Our Facebook page: bit.ly/PipploFB
Our YouTube channel: bit.ly/PipploYT
30 sec, ISO 4000 | Nikon D3 + 24mm f/1.4G
Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), East of La Serena, Chile, 13 April 2011
© 2011 José Francisco Salgado, PhD
Explore #301 on 22 May 2011
With the full Moon illuminating the evening sky early in October 2017, there was just a small window of opportunity to take a wide-angle photograph of a darker sky early in the morning. This was the result when looking south on a frosty morning around 06:00 am (Summer Time).
The bright smudge along the upper right edge is the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The bright (binary) star close to the horizon on the right edge is Peacock in the constellation of Pavo (Latin for “peacock”). The end of the Great Rift can just be seen on the Milky Way along the horizon. Next, there are the Pointers (Alpha and Beta Centaurus). Then the Coalsack Dark Nebula, the Southern Cross (Crux), and on to the constellation of Carina. The South Celestial Pole is just to the right of the centre of the photograph.
The prominent objects in Carina from bottom to top include the Wishing Well Cluster C91 (NGC 3532), the Eta Carinae Nebula C92 (NGC 3293), the Theta Car Cluster C102 (IC 2602), and the open cluster NGC 3114.
(C = Caldwell, NGC = New General Catalogue, IC = Index Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars)
-———
[ Location - Corowa, New South Wales, Australia ]
Photography notes ...
The photograph was taken using the following hardware configuration ...
(Year of manufacture indicated in braces where known.)
- Hasselblad 501CM Body (Chrome) - S/N 10SH26953 (2002).
- Hasselblad CFV-50c Digital Back for Hasselblad V mount camera (2016).
- Hasselblad Focusing Screen for the CFV-50c digital back, with focusing prism and crop markings.
- Hasselblad 45 Degree Viewfinder PME-45 42297 (2001).
- Hasselblad Carl Zeiss fisheye lens - F-Distagon 3.5/30 CF T* (1996).
- Really Right Stuff (RRS) TFC-14 Series 1 Carbon Fiber Tripod - MFR # 13996.
- Really Right Stuff (RRS) BH-30 Ball Head with Mini Screw-Knob Clamp - MFR # BH-30 PRO.
- Hasselblad HATQCH (3043326) Tripod Quick Coupling.
- Arca-Swiss ARUCP38 Universal Camera Plate 3/8”.
- Nikon AR-3 Shutter Release Cable.
- Artisan & Artist ACAM-302 Silk Cord for Hassleblad Cameras (Black).
I acquired this photograph (8272 x 6200 pixels) with an ISO of 1600, exposure time of 8 seconds, and aperture of f/3.5
Post-processing ...
Finder - Removed the CF card from the camera digital back and placed it in a Lexar 25-in-1 USB card reader. Then used Finder on my MacBook Air to download the raw image file (3FR extension) from the card.
Lightroom - Imported the 3FR image. Applied a standard metadata preset (20161110 Import 001) during the import process.
Lightroom - Used the Map module to add the location details to the EXIF header.
Lightroom - Made various lighting and color adjustments to the image.
Lightroom - Saved the Develop module settings as a preset.
Lightroom - Output the image as a JPEG image using the “Maximum” quality option (8272 x 6200 pixels).
PhotoSync - Copied the JPEG file to my iPad Mini for any final processing, review, enjoyment, and posting to social media.
@MomentsForZen #MomentsForZen #MFZ #Hasselblad #501CM #CFV50c #Lightroom #Night #NightSky #LongExposure #Sky #FisheyeLens #WideAngleLens #Backyard #Stars #MilkyWay #SmallMagellanicCloud #SMC #Pointers #SouthernPointers #SouthernCross #Crux #AlphaCentauri #BetaCentauri #Hadar #Coalsack #CoalsackNebula #JewelBox #WishingWellCluster #EtaCarinaeNebula #ThetaCarCluster #Peacock #GreatRift #Centaurus #SouthCelestialPole
Comet Lemmon (C/2012 F6) pasing close to 47 Tucanae globular cluster and the Small Magellanic Cloud
galaxy in the southern hemisphere.
Single exposure, ISO 800, 60secs with Olympus 75mm f/1.8 lens at f/1.8 on an Olympus E-M5 camera
Image cropped ~50% and minor tonal processing
Each of the thousands of spots in this new image represents a distant star, and the glittering blue holes reveal glimpses of our neighbouring galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Although this image looks as if it was made on a large scale telescope it was in fact captured from ESO’s La Silla Observatory using a portable setup consisting of a SBIG STL-11000M CCD camera and a Canon prime lens. It was presented in a scientific paper alongside state-of-the art simulations, in an exciting example of how a small camera, a fast lens, a long exposure time and one of the world’s best astronomical sites can reveal huge faint features better than even a big telescope.
More information: www.eso.org/public/images/potw1630a/
Credit:
Y. Beletsky (LCO), D. Martinez-Delgado/ESO
Thee-image panorama. The Small and Large Magellanic Clouds are to the right of SALT. South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO), Sutherland, South Africa, 20 Mar 2010.
© 2010 José Francisco Salgado, PhD
This time lapse was shot with the camera mounted on a Vixen Polarie Star Tracker, which eliminated the stars' movement over the entire duration of the session. It was very windy that night.
This is our version, via our artificial intelligence model, of the image weic2425a provided by Esa Webb about NGC 602, a young bright open cluster of stars, located in the SMC (Small Magellanic Cloud). Through Webb, possible new candidates were found for the first young brown dwarfs outside the Milky Way. This image is mainly obtained, in the near infrared, by the NIRCam, although, for the 10 μm infrared, mid-infrared data from the MIRI instrument were used. The image was made public on October 23, 2024 at 17:00 UTC.
The file is available at 147.165 million pixels for download at a resolution of 15000x9811 pixels.
Map of colours in the image from Webb:
blue for 1.15 μm, 1.4 μm, 1.5 μm (NIRCam, near infrared);
light blue for 2.1 μm (methane - NIRCam, near infrared);
green for 2.77 μm (NIRCam, near infrared);
yellow for 3.35 μm (PAH - NIRCam, near infrared);
orange for 3.56 μm (NIRCam, near infrared);
red for 4.8 μm (NIRCam, near infrared) and 10 μm (Silicate - MIRI, mid-infrared).
Constellation: Hydrus.
Distance: 200000 light-years.
Object Description: Open Cluster.
Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, P. Zeidler, E. Sabbi, A. Nota, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb). Magnification and reconstruction via AI by PipploIMP.
Our Facebook page: bit.ly/PipploFB
Our YouTube channel: bit.ly/PipploYT
[ This relatively short exposure image has a companion long exposure star trail image - see www.flickr.com/photos/momentsforzen/27424551430/ ]
This image was taken just 2 minutes after the completion of the star trail image. It was acquired with an ISO of 1600, an exposure length of 15 seconds, and an aperture of f/4. With this exposure time, the stars have still retained point-source form. I also acquired an image using an exposure time of 30 seconds and the stars in this image were clearly beginning to appear as short star trails. It is notable that there are 3 light trails associated with satellites in the image. Also noteworthy is that relative to the image with 30 minute exposure and an ISO of 100, this image has significant background colored sensor speckle noise.
In this field of view, the brightest star, with a Brightness Magnitude of 0.5, was Achernar, in the top left of the image. After that, there was Peacock (Brightness 1.91) in the top right of the image, and Atria (Brightness 1.92) towards the lower right corner of the image, just to the left of the corner of the building facade.
The two smudges on the left hand side of the image are real astronomic objects, not just moisture clouds in the sky here on Earth! They are in fact the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two galaxies that are amongst the closest galaxies to our Milky Way Galaxy. The elongate, diffuse light cloud near the center left edge of the image, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), is in the region of the open cluster, the Tarantula Nebula (Caldwell Catalogue object C103). The nebula itself is too dim to be readily visible because it's Brightness Magnitude is 8.2. The other light cloud, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), that is offset towards the upper left from the center of the image, is adjacent to two unnamed globular clusters - Caldwell Catalogue objects C104 (unnamed) and C106 (47 Tucanae).
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Magellanic_Cloud
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Magellanic_Cloud
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caldwell_catalogue
Barton, Australian Capital Territory, Australia.
Photography notes ...
The photograph was taken using the following hardware configuration ...
(Year of manufacture indicated in braces where known.)
- Hasselblad 500C/M body (1994).
- Hasselblad CFV-50c Digital Back for Hasselblad V mount camera.
- Hasselblad Focusing Screen for the CFV-50c digital back, with focussing prism and crop markings.
- Hasselblad 45 Degree Viewfinder PME-45 42297 (2001).
- Hasselblad Carl Zeiss lens - Distagon 40mm f4 CF T* FLE - Nr 7952446 - (1996).
- Hasselblad 93mm 1x HZ-0 Filter.
- Hasselblad 093/40 Hood/Filter holder for 40mm CF, CFE, CFi, CFE IF lenses.
I acquired the photograph (8272 x 6200 pixels) with an ISO of 1600, exposure time of 15 seconds, and aperture of f/4.
Post-processing ...
Finder - Removed the CF card from the camera digital back and placed it in a Lexar 25-in-1 USB card reader. Then used Finder on my MacBook Air to download the raw image file (3FR extension) from the card.
Lightroom - Imported the 3FR image. Used the Map module to add the location details to the EXIF header. Then applied various adjustments in the Develop module, the essence of which is as follows (largely "borrowed" from my Develop Module Preset 20160522-001) ...
- White Balance (Temperature and Tint).
- Tone (Exposure, Contrast - Increased, Highlights and Shadows - Increased, Whites - Increased, Blacks - Decreased).
- Presence (Clarity - Increased, Vibrance - Increased, Saturation - Decreased).
- [HSL adjustments as required for selective color adjustments.]
- [Sharpening and Noise Reduction - Default values.]
- [Lens Corrections as required.] I used a lens profile for one of the Zeiss Distagon lenses to partially compensate for the dark vignette that was present around the margins of the image.
- Dehaze - Increased.
- [Graduated and Radial filters as required for local adjustments.]
I then exported the image as a JPG file with 8272 x 6200 pixels from the Library module. The Develop Module settings were saved as Preset 20160613-003.
PhotoSync - Copied the JPEG file to my iPad Mini for viewing, enjoyment and posting to social media!
While the two largest satellite galaxies of the Milky Way — the Magellanic Clouds — shine upon the Chilean Desert, two Auxiliary Telescopes that feed light into ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) point up to the sky, unravelling the mysteries of the cosmos. In today’s Picture of the Week, French photographer Julien Looten wanted to capture the interplay of cosmic and technological pairs.
The Magellanic Clouds are two dwarf galaxies that accompany our Milky Way through the cosmos. Indigenous cultures in the southern hemisphere often named them after water wells. At the same time the Auxiliary Telescopes are somewhat companions of the larger VLT’s Unit Telescopes, exploring the vastness of the universe. In the background we see the extremely faint but colourful airglow of Earth's atmosphere.
All together this image shows the “immensity of the cosmos”, as Looten explains, in contrast to the human silhouette on the right side of the picture. It reminds us of how small we are as humans compared to the sizes of cosmic objects and the telescopes we observe them with. While we have the ability to study the greatness of the universe, our passage on Earth is fleeting — sometimes all we can or should do is watch and admire.
Credit: J. Looten/ESO
Gaze up at the night sky from ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile, and you will be greeted with a stunning view like this one. Flecks of blue, orange, red; each a different star, galaxy, nebula, or more, together forming a sparkling sky overhead. Astronomers peer at this beautiful backdrop, trying to unravel the mysteries of the Universe.
More information: www.eso.org/public/images/potw1401a/
Credit:
ESO/Y. Beletsky
Looking at today’s date, I see that November is now just over a week away, bringing longer and hotter days to us southern hemisphere folk. In coastal areas, like where I live, those longer, hotter days mean more chance of cloudy nights. If the weather can do the right thing for me once this month’s full moon passes, I should have one more opportunity to get some Milky Way core photos for the year. After that, I’ll be looking for southern summer sky objects to photograph.
The Magellanic Clouds, the two large, fuzzy and misty blobs in the sky in my photo, are usually high on the list of summer nightscape targets. For most of where Australia’s population lives the Magellanic Clouds are visible all year round but don’t get as much photographic fame as the Milky Way’s core does. I photographed these two dwarf galaxies in early September as they seemingly hung in the air over the Norfolk Island pine trees at Tuross Head, Australia. I also captured some satellite trails at the right-hand edge of the shot, as well as a meteor trail flashing between two of the pine trees.
I created this image from two slightly overlapping single photos, which I shot with my trusty Canon EOS 6D Mk II camera, through a Rokinon 24mm lens @ f/2.4, using a 15-second exposure @ ISO 3200.
Description: E0102-72 is a supernova remnant in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. Located in the constellation Tucana, this galaxy is 190,000 light years from Earth. The remnant is approximately a thousand years old. Stretching across forty light years of space, the expanding multimillion degree shell of gas resembles a flaming cosmic wheel.
Creator/Photographer: Chandra X-ray Observatory
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, which was launched and deployed by Space Shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999, is the most sophisticated X-ray observatory built to date. The mirrors on Chandra are the largest, most precisely shaped and aligned, and smoothest mirrors ever constructed. Chandra is helping scientists better understand the hot, turbulent regions of space and answer fundamental questions about origin, evolution, and destiny of the Universe. The images Chandra makes are twenty-five times sharper than the best previous X-ray telescope. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra science and flight operations from the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Medium: Chandra telescope x-ray
Date: 1999
Repository: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
Gift line: NASA/CXC/SAO
Accession number: e0102
Edited United States Navy image of the Milky Way, Large and Small Magellanic Cloud galaxies (along with a bright planet - either Jupiter or Mars) while in the Red Sea. Seen from the deck of the USS Jason Dunham. Color/processing variant.
Original caption: RED SEA (Aug. 1, 2018) The guided-missile destroyer USS Jason Dunham (DDG 109) transits the Red Sea at night during exercise Eagle Salute 18. Eagle Salute 18 is a surface exercise with the Egyptian Naval Force (ENF) conducted to enhance interoperability and war-fighting readiness, fortify military-to-military relationships and advance operational capabilities of all participating units. Jason Dunham is deployed to the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations in support of naval operations to ensure maritime stability and security in the Central region, connecting the Mediterranean and the Pacific through the western Indian Ocean and three strategic choke points. (U.S. Navy photo by Senior Chief Intelligence Specialist Matt Bodenner/Released) 180801-N-PY230-4224
It may be famous for hosting spectacular sights such as the Tucana Dwarf Galaxy and 47 Tucanae, the second brightest globular cluster in the night sky, but the southern constellation of Tucana (the Toucan) also possesses a variety of unsung cosmic beauties.
One such beauty is NGC 299, an open star cluster located within the Small Magellanic Cloud, just under 200,000 light-years away. Open clusters such as this are collections of stars weakly bound by the shackles of gravity, all of which formed from the same massive molecular cloud of gas and dust. Because of this, all the stars have the same age and composition, but vary in their mass because they formed at different positions within the cloud.
This unique property not only ensures a spectacular sight when viewed through a sophisticated instrument attached to a telescope (such as Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys), but gives astronomers a cosmic laboratory in which to study the formation and evolution of stars — a process that is thought to depend strongly on a star’s mass.
For more information, visit: www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1642a/
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
The Milky Way night sky filled with stars over the rural countryside in Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
A small step is being taken up the stairs to one of the BlackGEM telescopes in this Picture of the Week, but this facility represents a giant leap in gravitational wave studies at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. BlackGEM — which was developed by Radboud University, the Netherlands Research School for Astronomy, and the KU Leuven and officially inaugurated in January 2024 — is a mostly robotic array of optical telescopes designed to scan the southern sky.
Each telescope in the array is aimed at different parts of the clear sky above La Silla, ever ready to detect the visible light afterglow of gravitational wave sources — cataclysmic events such as merging neutron stars or black holes. BlackGEM will pinpoint where these sources are and provide astronomers with a target for follow-up observations with other, larger telescopes to learn more about them.
From the southern hemisphere, astronomers also have a pristine view of the Milky Way and our neighbour galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds, seen here in their characteristic wispy and cloud-like shape. In the Mapuche culture of south-central Chile, these clouds are known as lafken, labken or künchalabken (“the lagoons”) as well as rünanko (“the water wells”).
Credit: ESO/A. Ghizzi Panizza (www.albertoghizzipanizza.com)
Taken with a modified Canon 20D and 14 mm lens.
LINK
Mono Version: www.flickr.com/photos/jbrimacombe/51916881819/
30 sec, ISO 4000 | Nikon D3s + 14-24mm f/2.8G
1-m Yale Telescope | Lunar Scintillometer | Curtis-Schmidt Telescope
Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, Chile, 13 April 2011
© 2011 José Francisco Salgado, PhD
Zodiacal light is a faint, roughly triangular, whitish glow seen in the night sky which appears to extend up from the vicinity of the sun along the ecliptic or zodiac. Caused by sunlight scattered by space dust in the zodiacal cloud, it is so faint that either moonlight or light pollution renders it invisible. The zodiacal light decreases in intensity with distance from the Sun, but on very dark nights it has been observed in a band completely around the ecliptic. In fact, the zodiacal light covers the entire sky, being responsible for 60% of the total skylight on a moonless night. There is also a very faint, but still slightly increased, oval glow directly opposite the Sun which is known as the gegenschein. [Source: Wikipedia]
30-sec, ISO 4000 | Nikon D3 + 24mm f/1.4G
An observer shuts down the Lunar Scintillometer used for the 8-m ALPACA telescope seeing tests. Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), East of La Serena, Chile, 13 April 2011
© 2011 José Francisco Salgado, PhD
The Small Magellanic Cloud and Large Magellanic Cloud in the Night Sky at Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
My first attempt at creating a planet like panorama. This is a link to the tutorial I used for CS6 www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECvNFxjymaM
This is a total of 27 photographs taken in portrait mode. 25 second exposures at ISO 4000 - 16mm f/2.8
This open star cluster, called NGC 290, is located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy orbiting our own galaxy. Open star clusters are collections of stars loosely bound by gravity.
The stars in this open cluster are all relatively young and were born from the same cloud of interstellar gas. Just as old school-friends drift apart after graduation, the stars in an open cluster will only remain together for a limited time and gradually disperse into space, pulled away by the gravitational tugs of other passing clusters and clouds of gas. Most open clusters dissolve within a few hundred million years, whereas the more tightly bound globular clusters can exist for many billions of years.
Open star clusters make excellent astronomical laboratories. The stars may have different masses, but all are at about the same distance, move in the same general direction, and have approximately the same age and chemical composition. They can be studied and compared to find out more about stellar evolution, the ages of such clusters, and much more.
For more information, visit: hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2006/news-2006-17.html
Credit: European Space Agency & NASA;
Acknowledgment: E. Olszewski (University of Arizona)
I composed this photo to look like some sort of precious jewel in the sky, framed by twisting tree branches, almost like a glowing gem set in a royal crown. A thorny crown. There are many aspects of photography that fascinate me and one of them is being able to set two objects in a photo like this to make them look like they’re close together even when they’re not. The tree branches were about five metres up above where my camera was placed. The jewel framed in the shot, the Large Magellanic Cloud, was around 163,000 light-years distant, or around 308,400,000,000,000,000,000 times further away than the tree.
If you go a’Googling you can find some very detailed photos of the Large (and its sibling the Small) Magellanic Cloud, showing many more stars and nebulae than you can see in this shot taken with my DSLR and a basic 50mm lens. To the lower left of the Cloud is the bright green smudge of light that’s known as the Tarantula Nebula, or its technical name of 30 Doradus. This is a nebula that has at its centre a star cluster that has an estimated mass of 450,000 times that of our Sun. You don’t have to know any of those facts to enjoy its beauty, fortunately.
A single shot captured with Canon EOS 6D Mk II, Canon 50mm @ f/2.2, 8.0 sec @ ISO 6400.
The Small Magellanic Cloud and Large Magellanic Cloud in the Night Sky at Blayney, Central West, NSW, Australia.
I debated posting this one, because there's not really anything that special about it - no foreground, no clouds to engage the viewer, but I went for it anyway because I still can't believe how bright those galaxies were! I know you Southern Hemisphere folk see them every night, but man, it's pretty special to me to be able to look up and so easily see right out of the Milky Way with my naked eyes! At first i thought I had smudges on my optics, and it was only until I shot this frame with my 24mm f/1.4 and zoomed into 10x til I realized what i was looking at was two other galactic clusters: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magellanic_Clouds
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope peered deep into a neighboring galaxy to reveal details of the formation of new stars. Hubble's target was a newborn star cluster within the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a small galaxy that is a satellite of our own Milky Way. This image shows young, brilliant stars cradled within a nebula, or glowing cloud of gas, cataloged as N 81.
These massive, recently formed stars inside N 81 are losing material at a high rate, sending out strong stellar winds and shock waves and hollowing out a cocoon within the surrounding nebula. The two most luminous stars, seen in the Hubble image as a very close pair near the center of N 81, emit copious ultraviolet radiation, causing the nebula to glow through fluorescence.
Outside the hot, glowing gas is cooler material consisting of hydrogen molecules and dust. Normally this material is invisible, but some of it can be seen in silhouette against the nebular background, as long dust lanes and a small, dark, elliptical-shaped knot. It is believed that the young stars have formed from this cold matter through gravitational contraction.
Few features can be seen in N 81 from ground-based telescopes, earning it the informal nickname "the Blob." Astronomers were not sure whether just one or a few hot stars were embedded in the cloud, or if it was a stellar nursery containing a large number of less massive stars. Hubble's high-resolution imaging shows the latter to be the case, revealing that numerous young, white-hot stars — easily visible in the color picture — are contained within N 81.
This crucial information bears strongly on theories of star formation, and N 81 offers a singular opportunity for a close-up look at the turbulent conditions accompanying the birth of massive stars. The brightest stars in the cluster have a luminosity equal to 300,000 stars like our own Sun. Astronomers are especially keen to study star formation in the Small Magellanic Cloud, because its chemical composition is different from that of the Milky Way. All of the chemical elements, other than hydrogen and helium, have only about one-tenth the abundances seen in our own galaxy.
The study of N 81 thus provides an excellent template for studying the star formation that occurred long ago in very distant galaxies, before nuclear reactions inside stars had synthesized the elements heavier than helium.
The Small Magellanic Cloud, named after the explorer Ferdinand Magellan, lies 200,000 light-years away, and is visible only from Earth's Southern Hemisphere. N 81 is the 81st nebula cataloged in a survey of the SMC carried out in the 1950s by astronomer Karl Henize, who later became an astronomer-astronaut who flew into space aboard a NASA space shuttle.
The Hubble image of N 81 is a color representation of data taken in September 1997 with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. Color filters were used to sample light emitted by oxygen and hydrogen.
N 81 was the target of investigations by European astronomers interested in understanding the formation of hot, massive stars, especially under conditions different from those in the Milky Way.
For more information please visit:
hubblesite.org/image/992/news_release/2000-30
Credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
A painting of The Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy in our galactic neighborhood.
Oil on canvas 24" x 24" © Maja Opacic 2015
Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ.Potsdam/L.Oskinova et al; Optical: NASA/STScI; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech
A solitary laser beam cuts through the night sky. It streaks upwards from Unit Telescope 4 of ESO's Very Large Telescope, located at Paranal Observatory in Chile. The two Magellanic Clouds are visible to the left of the beam as faint, fuzzy patches against the starry background. The particularly bright star to the right of the beam is Canopus, the second brightest star in our night sky after Sirius.
More information: www.eso.org/public/images/potw1443a/
Credit:
ESO/J. Girard
The SMC, along with Tuc47 or NGC 104, the most beautiful globular cluster visible from Earth ( on a normal telescope ). Yes, I do prefer it over Omega Centauri.
30 x 30 sec for Lum, R, G and B. Everybody's happy ! Oh, and 50 darks.
DARK SKY PROJECT Photo taken by Igor Hoogerwerf - Location: University of Canterbury Mt John Observatory, Lake Tekapo, New Zealand. For some stunning Dark Sky Project time-lapse animations, please refer to Dark Sky Project on You Tube.
Canopus, the second-brightest star in the night sky, is located about 310 light-years from our planet Earth, which means its light travelled for 310 years until it came through our atmosphere, then bounced off the surface of the water in this tidal pool and up into my camera. Featuring in the oral and written histories of people-groups from several countries, Canopus has been called many names throughout history.
To Egyptians living in the time of the pharaoh Thutmose III (circa 1450 BC) the star was called “Karbana”. Xhosa people in Southern Africa named the fifth month of the year “UCanzibe”, the "month of Canopus". In my home country of Australia, Canopus features in the lore of many of our indigenous nations, going by at least six different names.
The bright could-like puffs floating in space up to the right of Canopus are the dwarf galaxies known as the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Between them, these two companion galaxies contain over 30 billion stars, but to the naked eye, they look like clouds of water vapour that are moving slowly across the night sky.
I created this image from six overlapping photos that I shot with a Canon EOS 6D camera, a Rokinon 24mm wide-angle lens @ f/2.4, exposed for 13 seconds @ ISO 6400.
The Milky Way was a glorious sight above one of the out-buildings of St Mark’s National Theological Center and the brand new barbecue area. It was a very clear sky which meant that the Small Magellanic Cloud could be seen as a faint smudge of light on the extreme right edge of this scene. A light breeze moved the tree branches, producing a blur in the photographs that traced out their movements during each of the 16 second exposures.
From the horizon upwards, the following features stand out in the Milky Way :
- The Southern Pointers
- The Coalsack Dark Nebula
- The Southern Cross
- The Carina complex
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Links for background information ...
stmarks.edu.au/
My thanks to the staff of St Mark’s National Theological Centre (St Mark’s NTC) for their friendliness and encouragement of photographing on the grounds of their Barton campus.
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[ Location - Barton, Australian Capital Territory, Australia ]
Photography notes ...
The photographs were taken using the following hardware configuration ...
(Year of manufacture indicated in braces where known.)
- Hasselblad 501CM Body (Chrome) - S/N 10SH26953 (2002).
- Hasselblad CFV-50c Digital Back for Hasselblad V mount camera.
- Hasselblad Focusing Screen for the CFV-50c digital back, with focussing prism and crop markings.
- Hasselblad 45 Degree Viewfinder PME-45 42297 (2001).
- Hasselblad Carl Zeiss fisheye lens - F-Distagon 3.5/30 CF T* (1996).
- Really Right Stuff (RRS) TFC-14 Series 1 Carbon Fiber Tripod - MFR # 13996.
- Really Right Stuff (RRS) BH-30 Ball Head with Mini Screw-Knob Clamp - MFR # BH-30 PRO.
- Hasselblad HATQCH (3043326) Tripod Quick Coupling.
- Arca-Swiss ARUCP38 Universal Camera Plate 3/8”.
- Nikon AR-3 Shutter Release Cable.
- Artisan & Artist ACAM-302 Silk Cord for Hassleblad Cameras (Black).
To minimise the incidence of vibrations, I employed the following strategies :
a. Use of a sturdy tripod.
b. Pre-exposure mirror lock-up.
c. A mechanical shutter release cable.
I acquired 7 input photographs (8272 x 6200 pixels) with an ISO of 1600, exposure time of 16 seconds, and aperture of f/3.5.
Post-processing ...
Finder - Removed the CF card from the camera digital back and placed it in a Lexar 25-in-1 USB card reader. Then used Finder on my MacBook Air to download the raw image files (3FR extension) from the card.
Lightroom - Imported the 3FR images.
Lightroom - Exported the images as 16-bit TIFF files.
StarryLandscapeStacker - Loaded the TIFF files.
StarryLandscapeStacker - Adjusted the automatically derived stars and sky region. Stacked the images, making adjustments for the rotation and translation of the stars from one frame to the next. Output the result as a TIFF file. Also saved the Foreground/Sky mask image.
Lightroom - Imported the TIFF image.
Lightroom - Used the Map module to add the location details to the EXIF header.
Lightroom - Applied various basic lighting and color adjustments in the Develop module to optimize the lighting of the sky region.
Lightroom - Saved the Develop module settings as a preset.
Lightroom - Created a Virtual Copy of the image.
Lightroom - Applied various basic lighting and color adjustments in the Develop module to optimize the lighting of the foreground region.
Lightroom - Output the 2 images (i.e., foreground and sky versions) as JPEG images using the “Maximum” quality option (8272 x 6200 pixels).
Photoshop - Imported the two images, and the mask produced by StarryLandscapeStacker.
Photoshop - Blended the foreground and sky regions of the two optimized images using the mask file, Normal blend mode, 100% opacity, and a feather distance of 150 pixels.
Photoshop - Output the image as a JPEG image using the “Maximum” quality option (8272 x 6200 pixels).
PhotoSync - Copied the JPEG file to my iPad Mini for any final processing, review, enjoyment, and posting to social media.
@MomentsForZen #MomentsForZen #MFZ #Hasselblad #501CM #CFV50c #Lightroom #StarryLandscapeStacker #Photoshop #PhotoSync #Sky #Night #Dark #Stars #Trees #MilkyWay #SouthernPointers #Pointers #CoalsackNebula #SouthernCross #Carina #StMarks #StMarksNationalTheologicalCentre #StMarksNTC #SmallMagellanicCloud
The Milky Way has several smaller galaxies that are travelling through space with it (well, with us, in fact). These are known as “satellite galaxies” or “companion galaxies” and of the approximately sixty that have been detected only two are visible with the unaided eye. Named the “Magellanic Clouds” (for Ferdinand Magellan, on whose round-the-world voyage they were cataloged) you can see them at the left of this image, looking like two hazy blobs in the sky. I always find it a bit of a buzz to capture the Magellanic Clouds in the same image as their much bigger brother and hope that you get the same buzz seeing the three galaxies together in a photo like this.
Unless you’re shooting with a very wide-angle lens you can’t get all three galaxies into the one shot but you can use the process of “stitching” to finish up with such a wide photo. For this image I shot thirteen overlapping images and then used software to blend them (via stitching) into this single scene.
Each of the photos that make up today’s image were shot with Canon EOS 6D, Rokinon 24mm @ f/2.4, 13 sec @ ISO 6400.
Stopped on the side of the road between Brisbane and Boonah in Queensland, Australia. Set the camera up in a paddock with the moon behind lighting the fields and cows that dropped by for a look.
An astronomer carrying a blue flashlight illuminates the Very Large Telescope (VLT) as the morning twilight starts to bathe the eastern part of the sky. Also visible, Jupiter, the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds (SMC and LMC), The Pleaiades, Orion, Sirius, and Venus. Paranal Observatory, Atacama Desert, Chile. 25 Aug 09.
© 2009 José Francisco Salgado, PhD
See also:
All-sky video, Cumulative video, Milky Way still, 35-exp stack, Moonset,
This is a fully annotated version of this image:
www.flickr.com/photos/7776810@N07/33613274325/
I have identified 82 objects here:
36 x NGCs, 9 x ICs, 18 x Kron clusters, 13 x Lindsay clusters, 5 x Henize Nebulae and 1 x Hodge-Wright cluster.