Picture of the Week - October 7, 2024 | |||||||||||
Another great display! These images were taken just before midnight on Oct 7. Click on images for larger views. Image Details: October 7, 2024
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Picture of the Week - October 6, 2024 | |||||||||||
A brief but bright aurora on Sunday evening, October 6. Click on image for larger view. Image Details: October 6, 2024
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Picture of the Week - October 4, 2024 | |||||||||||
A late summer chestnut! The North American Nebula (aka NGC 7000) is large emission region close to the bright star Deneb that hangs high overhead on cool autumn evenings. This image was a "test run" of a small portable imaging rig that can be taken to remote areas. The image was made from 10, 1 minute exposures obtained on October 3 with a Stellarvue 70mm f/4.8 telescope, ZWO 294mc camera and ZWO AM5 mount. Click on image for a full screen view. Image Details - October 3, 2024
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Picture of the Week - September 30, 2024 | |||||||||||
The Milky way setting over the historic train bridge at Fabyan, Alberta spanning the Battle River valley on the night of September 27. This image is mosaic of 15 frames for the sky and 5 for the foreground. Each image taken with a Canon 6D and Tamron 35mm lens - iso 1600, f/2.5 and 60 s tracked. Click on image for a larger view. Image Details: September 27, 2024
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Picture of the Week - September 18, 2024 | |||||||||||
A not often seen atmospheric phenomenon called "The Glory" appeared on my early morning walk. This lovely effect occurs when very strong sunlight (the rising sun in my case) casts a shadow onto a fog or cloud layer. This circle of coloured light is reminiscent of the haloes often used by artists to depict a divine presence and although it looks like a small rainbow it is actually a result of the wave nature of light and interference of different colours of light scattered by the tiny droplets of mist hanging over our nearby wetland. Click on image for a full-screen view. Image Details: September 18, 2024
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Picture of the Week - September 16, 2024 | |||||||||||
A near Harvest Moon rises over an old farm south of Holden, Alberta. A combination of a super moon and the "moon illusion" make a dramatic scene! This image was taken the night before the true Harvest Moon - which was obscured by cloud on September 17 from this location. Not only was this a super moon but also a partial lunar eclipse! Click on image for a larger view. Image Details: September 16, 2024
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Picture of the Week - September 1, 2024 | |||||||||||
A late summer view of the Milky Way over Hastings Lake. Situated close to Edmonton the sky is heavily light-polluted which takes away some of the splendor of the night sky. Despite this it was still a very lovely sight! Click on image for a larger view. Image Details: September 1, 2024
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Pictures of the Week - August 29, 2024 | |||||||||||
The old Roland School - 12 km south of Consort, Alberta. How many generations of farm children were educated at this simple one-room school? Just like the iconic grain elevators, rural schools are rapidly disappearing from the Alberta landscape. This image was taken early morning, August 30. Click on image for a larger view. Image Details: August 30, 2024
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The remarkable Mud Buttes in eastern Alberta - about 10km south of Monitor. This site has some of the darkest skies in Alberta and in the image above the Milky Way core shine prominently over the butte. The image was taken on August 29 and is a mosaic of 12 panels for the sky and 4 for the foreground. Click on image for larger view. Image Details: August 29, 2024
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Pictures of the Week - August 11, 2024 | |||||||||||
A great auroral display on the night of the Perseid meteor shower! Images were taken 90 minutes south-east of Edmonton at the Ascension of Our Lord Ukrainian Catholic Church, Koppernick community Alberta. See if you can identify any colleagues/friends in the images! Click on images for full-screen view. Image Details: August 11, 2024
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Picture of the Week - August 3, 2024 | |||||||||||
The summer Milkyway from Red Rock Coulee in Southern Alberta. Red Rock Coulee is located about 50 km south of Medicine Hat, Alberta and features a small coulee filled with odd, often spherical concretions several metres in diameter. The image above shows the breathtaking beauty of the centre of our galaxy obscured by dust clouds that glow orange and brown. Interspersed are rosy red, star forming regions. This image was made on July 28 and is made from a mosaic of 25 images taken using a Canon 6D and a Tamron 35mm lens. Click on image for a full screen view. Image Details: July 28, 2024
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Picture of the Week - July 17, 2024 | |||||||||||
Our active Sun - lots of prominences and filaments as Sol enters its Solar Maximus. This image was taken with the spectroheliograph at TKUO #3 in Hydrogen alpha light. Click on image for full screen view. Image Details: July 17, 2024
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Picture of the Week - June 1, 2024 | |||||||||||
Was once a lovely farm! This abandoned farm south of Holden, Alberta on an early June night provided a beautiful foreground for the rising Milky Way. Click on image for a larger view. Image Details: June 1, 2024
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Pictures of the Week - May 11, 2024 | |||||||||||
A remarkable series of Coronal Mass Ejections earlier this week created this amazing auroral storm. The aurora was so bright that at times it cast a green or reddish glow on the foreground and was so bright that I did not need a headlamp to see! The photos were taken with a range of ISO settings (1600 - 3200) and exposures between 1s and 4 depending on brightness. These shots were taken at an old farmstead about 15 km south of Holden, Alberta. Click on each image for a full screen view. Image Details: May 10/11, 2024
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Picture of the Week - April 26, 2024 | |||||||||||
A lovely auroral arc in the early morning of April 26, 2024 over a pond near the King's Observatories. Click on image for larger view. Image Details: April 26, 2024
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Picture of the Week - April 12, 2024 | |||||||||||
The Spring-time Milky Way rising over The Ascension of Our Lord Ukrainian Catholic church in the Kopernik community roughly 20 km southeast of Holden, Alberta. The church was first built in 1905 but went through several devastating fires in its long history, closing in 2009 for regular services. This image was taken about 4:45 am on April 11 - just as dawn was about to break but the Milky Way was still bright. Click on image for larger view. Image Details: April 11, 2024
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Picture of the Week - April 8, 2024 | |||||||||||
The solar eclipse from Edmonton! Not as spectacular as a total eclipse but nonetheless interesting! We were thousands of km off the eclipse path so only caught about 34% of the eclipse. Interesting, however, is the graph below which shows the power output from our solar panels today! The eclipse is clearly visible as the dip that occurs betweem 11:30 and 1:30 pm. Click on the image of the sun for a larger view of the eclipse. Image Details: April 8, 2024
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Pictures of the Week - April 7, 2024 | |||||||||||
Image on the Left: This is another view of the Milky Way core taken under slightly hazy conditions at Lake Tekapo, New Zealand. In this case the natural greenish air-glow present in the image shown on March 27 has been removed to yield a truer representation of the actual colours in the galaxy. Click on image for a much larger view. Image Details: March 13, 2024
Image on the Right: The two cloudy patches in the image are the famed "Clouds of Magellan" - so named after the circumnavigating explorer Ferdinand Magellan's expedition in 1519-1522. The clouds are dwarf galaxies caught in the gravitational tug of the much larger Milky Way. Click on image for a larger view. Image Details: March 7, 2024
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Picture of the Week - March 27, 2024 | |||||||||||
Another view of the Milky Way and Church of the Good Shepherd at Lake Tekapo, NZ early morning on March 13, 2024. A very thin layer of mist helped to "bloat" the brighter stars which accentuates their colour in the image Visible at the very top - slightly right of center - is the famed Southern Cross. The slight greenish cast on the horizon is natural airglow. Click on image for a larger view. Image Details: March 13, 2024
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Picture of the Week - March 25, 2024 | |||||||||||
The southern hemisphere Milky Way and the iconic Church of the Good Shepherd in Lake Tekapo, New Zealand. This is an untracked panoramic image from 160 exposures (making a mosaic of 10 panels) - each exposure 14s using Canon 7D mii, Sigma Art 18-35mm @ 18mm, f2 and iso 6400. Image was taken early morning of March 14 while on a trip to New Zealand. Click on image for a larger version. Image Details: March 14, 2024
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Picture of the Week - January 19, 2024 | |||||||||||
Part of our cosmic origins start in beautiful star forming regions like this one! This is the Great Nebula in Orion (M 42) which is visible under a dark sky to the unaided eye as a fuzzy patch in the sword of Orion. The image was taken through a series of coloured filters and with a wide variety of exposure lengths (from 10 s to 300 s) with a total of approximately 4 hours of data being collected. Many different processing techniques were used to preserve both the faint nebulosity in the outer regions of the nebula while also keeping the bright inner core from saturating. The image was taken using a Stellarvue 102 mm refractor and the ZWO ASI 1600 camera. Click on the image for a full-screen view. |
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Picture of the Week - December 14, 2023 | |||||||||||
Not the Geminids that I was hoping for! This shot was taken where I had planned on photographing the Geminid Meteor Shower. The image was taken on a cold and very windy Tuesday - December 12 night which was about a day and a half before the expected peak of the meteor shower. Already cloud is obscuring the area and the next two nights were completely overcast. Despite this a rather pleasant shot of Orion peeking over the roof of the old Vermilion Valley School of Holden, Alberta. Thanks to Dave Maruszeczka - Curator Holden Museum in identiying the school! Image Details: December 12, 2023
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Pictures of the Week - December 1, 2023 | |||||||||||
Colourful aurora on the evening of Dec 1, 2023. A series of coronal mass ejections earlier in the week spawned some very colourful aurora. Unfortunately sky conditions were not optimal - nonetheless a lovely display. Click on mage for larger view.
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Image Details: December 1, 2023
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Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks imaged on the evening of November 24, 2023. The image is a sum of 50 images, each of 60 s exposure taken at TKUO #2 using the 250mm f8-RC and ZWO 294mc camera. This small comet (discovered in 1812) orbits the sun with a period of 71 years. Although normally peaceful as it passes earth on this passage the comet underwent a significant outburst of icy material as it approaches the sun. This caused a dramatic brightening (still much too faint to be seen with the naked eye) and ejected a large halo of icy vapours. Pons-Brooks will reached closest approach to the sun on June 2, 2024 so will continue to brighten over the next few months. Click on mage for larger view. Image Details - November 24, 2023
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Picture of the Week - October 12, 2023 | |||||||||||
Stars over the Elizabeth-Parker Hut. Image on the left was taken just after sunset on September 21 with the Milky Way setting over the hut. Six hours later - as the level of snoring in the hut drove me outside, Orion was rising over a very frosty hut! Each image is a mosaic made from many non-tracked shots 12s in duration. Click on each image for full screen view. Image Details: September 21, 2023
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Picture of the Week - October 4, 2023 | |||||||||||
An unexpected fall treat! A bright aurora developed early in the evening of October 4 and developed into a colourful arc and ray combination. Click on image for full view. Image Details: October 4, 2023
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Picture of the Week - September 21, 2023 | |||||||||||
The stars over Lake O'Hara with a waxing crescent moon and Milky Way setting behind Mount Shaeffer. Image was taken in the early evening September 21, 2023. Click on image for a larger view/ Image Details: September 21, 2023
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Picture of the Week - September 19, 2023 | |||||||||||
Nightscape of the Vermilion Valley School house and MilkyWay south of Holden, Alberta. Image was taken on September 13 using a Canon 6D and Samyang 24mm @ f2.8. Image made from tracked frames - 6 panels in sets of 3, each 2 minutes in duration. Click on image for a larger view. Thanks to Dave Maruszeczka - Curator Holden Museum for identifying the school! Image Details: September 13, 2023
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Pictures of the Week - August 20, 2023 | |||||||||||
No - this is not a moonscape! This is Red Rock Coulee - a unique natural area south of Medicine Hat, Alberta that contains numerous large boulders many of which are perfectly spherical! The amazing skies of south-eastern Alberta are among the darkest in Canada and provide a wonderful view of the Milky Way. Unfortunately on the night this shot was taken (August 14) the winds were very strong which compromised the image somewhat. The image is a panorama made from 9 sets of images stitched together. Image Details: August 14, 2023
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Part of the Milky Way as seen from The Tolman Bridge Campground - east of Trochu, Alberta on the evening of August 13, 2023. This a panorama of 17 panels (each consisting of 3 exposures of 2 minutes) taken using a 50 mm lens. At this focal length considerable detail begins to emerge in the Milky Way revealing numerous dust lanes, nebulae, star clusters and lots of stars! Click on image for larger view. Image Details: August 14, 2023
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Pictures of the Week - August 4, 2023 | |||||||||||
A remarkable sight! Bright aurora from a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) several days earlier in a lightning storm! With the sound of thunder all around the northern lights danced overhead - glorious! Bright display started just before midnight August 4, 2023. Click on each image for a larger view. Image Details: August 4, 2023
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Pictures of the Week - August 3, 2023 | |||||||||||
A different look at the Sun using the TKUO Spectroheliograph. In this image (and the two below) the sun was viewed in two different wavelengths on either side of the central wavelength of light produced by Hydrogen Alpha. The blue regions represent gases moving toward you at about 15 km/s while the bright orange regions are gases descending into the sun at 15 km/s. This is an example of the Doppler Effect (same principal that traffic cops use to reduce your net worth!) |
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Interesting dynamics around a major sunspot group. Also, note the small prominence midway on the solar limb. |
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This is the full-disc image from which the upper two panels were produced. Click on this for a full resolution view. Image Details:June 12, 2023
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Pictures of the Week - July 24, 2023 | |||||||||||
A minor solar storm sparked a brief but lovely aurora just after midnight on July 25/26. This is a panorama of 4 frames (1s @ f1.8, iso 3200) taken in rapid succession. Click on image for full view. Image Details: July 26, 2023
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The historic grain elevators in Rowley, Alberta with the Milky Way core in the background. These iconic prairie landmarks are rapidly disappearing. Rowley is a tiny hamlet ("Ghost Town") located about 50 kms north of Drumheller. The bright glow on the horizon is due to light pollution from Drumheller and several small towns that was exacerbated by forest fire smoke lingering in the area. This image is a combination of still foreground shots and a mosaic of 6 different panels (3 x 2minutes) for the night sky. Click on the image for a larger version. Image Details: July 24, 2023
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Picture of the Week - July 20, 2023 | |||||||||||
The sun is very active as we approach Solar Maximum. These are white light images of the solar surface - the top image shows many spots on the solar surface while the bottom image is a magnified region around a major spot group. Of particular note is the pronounced light bridge visible in the lower right spot. Bridges often signal the break up of the spot. Image Details: July 20, 2023
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Pictures of the Week - June 8, 2023 | |||||||||||
Moonrise and Milkyway above the Red Deer River just south of East Coulee, Alberta. Image takenin the early morning of June 8. Click for larger view. Image Details: June 8, 2023
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A peaceful early June night by the old grain elevator at Dorothy, Alberta. Dorothy is about 20 km south of Drumheller and is one of many ghost towns in south-eastern Alberta. This image is a mosaic of 9 panels all taken with a 24mm Rokinon lens and Canon 6D. Each panel is a sum of 10 images each of 10s exposure. Click on image for full screen view. Image Details: June 8, 2023
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Pictures of the Week - May 28, 2023 | |||||||||||
Sunspot AR3315 has been wreaking havoc over the past two weeks with numerous flares that have triggered radio blackouts in northern and southern latitudes around the globe. The above panel shows the sunspot group images in the light produced by Sodium atoms (left), Magnesium atoms (middle) and Hydrogen. The colours represent the colour of the respective parts of the spectrum for these 3 elements. The Hydrogen beta (blue) image is decidedly different - it originates higher in the solar atmosphere and gives a clear indication of the magnetic fields around sunspots. All three images were taken with the TKUO spectroheliograph (SHG V2). Click on the image for a larger view. Note: The King's Observatory now has a separate web page for solar observations. It is a bit "nerdy" but shows full resolution views of scans taken at TKUO #3. To see this go to https://martin.kcvs.ca/astro/course/solarGallery.html Image Details:May 28, 2023
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Pictures of the Week - May 24, 2023 | |||||||||||
Top image shows a triptych of the sun imaged in 3 different wavelgths: left and right images are light emitted by hydrogen gas while the centre is from light produced by sodium gas. The image on the bottom is the red (Hydrogen alpha) image before colour is applied. All of the images start out as monochrome and this is often a more useful way to view very fine detail on the solar surface. Click on either image for a full screen view. Image Details:May 24, 2023
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Pictures of the Week - May 19-21, 2023 | |||||||||||
SHG V2 image of the Sun on May 21 under very smoky conditions. Click on image for larger view. TKUO #3 image. |
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First image with the newly completed and larger spectroheliograph SHG V2. The solar surface is imaged in Hydrogen alpha light and shows a significant improvement in resolution over previous images taken with the smaller SolEx at TKUO #3. Click on image for larger view. |
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The newly completed spectroheliograph SHGV2 installed in TKUO #3 on the Stellarvue 102RT refractor. The red cylinder in the center of the frame is the imaging camera used to scan the solar surface. The instrument is being further refined and tweaked. The body of SHG V2 was printed on a 3D printer! |
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Pictures of the Week - May 12, 2023 | |||||||||||
The sun imaged in two different wavelengths produced by Hydrogen gas. On the left is the solar surface imaged in Hb - a hydrogen Balmer line at 486 nm (blue) and on the right in Ha at 656 nm (red). The conditions producing these wavelengths show subtle differences in the structure of the chromosphere of the sun. The images were both taken with the SolEx spectroheliograph at TKUO #3 and the SV70mm refractor. Click for a larger view.
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Picture of the Week - April 8, 2023 | |||||||||||
A glorious spring day sun festooned with prominences and filaments! Image Details: April 8, 2023
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Pictures of the Week - March 30, 2023 | |||||||||||
The Northern Lights dance over Ardrossan during a brief display on the evening of March 30. If it seems to you that we have been having more northern lights recently you are right! The Russell-McPherron effect has been known for about 5 decades and helps to explain why we get an increase in aurora at the times around the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. Click on image for a full-screen view. Image Details : March 30, 2023
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The magnificent Whirlpool Galaxy or Messier 51 (or NGC 5154) in Canes Venatici is a "nearby" galaxy - a mere 31 million light years from Earth!. The galaxy is a textbook example of galactic interactions as it collides with the smaller galaxy NGC 5155 in the upper right. The faint spray of light around the smaller galaxy is actually composed of stars and dust from both galaxies. Image was a 7 hour exposure through L,R,G,B filters and taken at TKUO #1 with the C14 telescope. Click on image for a larger view. Image Details - March 24, 27, 28, 2023
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Pictures of the Week - March 28, 2023 | |||||||||||
A very active Sun seen in H-alpha on March 27, 2023. Image taken with TKUO Observatory #3 SolEx - Spectroheliograph. Click on image for larger view. Image Details: March 27, 2023
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Galaxy Season is here! Early spring is the best time for peering out of our own galaxy and into the depths of the cosmos. The constellation Leo contains many galaxies. The three galaxies featured here are Messier 105, NGC 3384 and NGC 3384. The top two galaxies are approximately 40 million light years from us while the bottom (bluish spiral) is closer to 70 million light years away. Messier 105 is interesting - in its center lurks a super massive black hole (about 200 million times the mass of our Sun!).This is an 8.6 hour exposure through LRG & B filters. Click for larger view. Image Details - March 19,21,22,24, 2023
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Picture of the Week - March 23, 2023 | |||||||||||
The Sun in the wavelength emitted by Hydrogen gas (Hydrogen Alpha). This is a very high spectral resolution image that shows the chromosphere of the sun. Without a special instrument - such as the Spectroheliograph used here - the chromosphere is only visible during a total solar eclipse. There are 3 large sunspot groups visible and numerous dark "filaments" snaking across the solar surface. These are actually large arcs of hot plasma projecting in loops from the solar surface. When we see them at the solar edge they are called prominences but when seen face-on they are called filaments. This image was taken with the SolEx spectroheliograph at a spectral resolution of 0.12 A. Click on image for larger view. Image Details: March 22, 2023
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Picture of the Week - February 27, 2023 | |||||||||||
Aurora over Islet Lake. Back to back coronal mass ejections lead to several nights of intense auroral activity - this is a sample! The images were taken Monday evening and came near the end of the auroral storm. Click on images for a larger view. mage Details: February 27, 2023
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Picture of the Week - February 20, 2023 | |||||||||||
The start of a lovely week of Jupiter (upper left) and Venus conjunctions - this time with a very thin crescent moon. Keep looking in the south-west at sunset! mage Details: February 21, 2023
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Picture of the Week - February 20, 2023 | |||||||||||
The Rosette Nebula (Caldwell 49) is a bright cloud of glowing Hydrogen, dust and a smattering of other elements located 5200 light years away in the constellation Monoceros. The nebula measures 65 light years across and in the center lies the recently formed star cluster NGC 2244. The bright bluish stars in the center are all massive (and rare) O-stars which tells us that this cluster is only about 5 million years old. Processing of the image used spectrophotometric data from the Gaia space telescope to provide accurate colours of the nebula and surrounding stars. The image is a re-working of data from a TKUO pic of the week in February 2018. Click on image for bigger view. Image Details - January 22, February 3,5, 2018 - reprocessed February 20, 2023
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Pictures of the Week - February 9, 2023 | |||||||||||
Say goodbye to Comet C/2022 E3 - won't be back this way for another 50 000 years! Image Details - February 8, 2023
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Messier 44 or The Praesepe or "The Beehive" is a nearby open cluster of stars about 550 light years away in the constellation Cancer - the crab. Image Details - February 8, 2023
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Picture of the Week - January 29, 2023 | |||||||||||
Milkyway through the Turret Arch in Arches National Monument, Utah. Image was taken over two nights. The foreground was imaged but then cloud interrupted the evening! The following night clear skies prevailed and the image was completed. Image Details: September 23, 2022
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Picture of the Week - January 26, 2023 | |||||||||||
Another image from a September 2022 road trip through Utah and Arizona. This is the Owachoma Bridge in the Natural Bridges Monument, Utah. The image was taken on the evening of September 25 and is a combination of a still foreground shot and a series of tracked images of the sky. Image Details: September 23, 2022
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Picture of the Week - January 25, 2023 | |||||||||||
Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) silently drifts in the northern sky! This relatively bright comet is visible to the naked eye (under very dark skies) and put on a fine showing through a small telescope. In this image the bright coma of the comet is surrounded by gases that are released as the comet warms in the inner solar system. The long tail going up the page is the ion-tail while the grayish mass above and left of the nucleus is the dust tail. The ion tail always points directly away from the sun and is caused by the interaction of charged particles from the sun (solar wind) pushing these ions away from the sun. The dust tail forms as dusty debris embedded in the comet is released as the nucleus heats. To the lower right a faint "anti-tail" is visible. An anti-tail in a comet is a type of tail that appears to point in the opposite direction of the comet's actual tail. It is caused by the perspective effect of the observer's point of view. When a comet is close to the Earth and its orbital plane is inclined at a large angle to the line of sight, the tail will appear to be pointing in the opposite direction of its actual direction of motion. This is because the tail is pointing away from the sun but the observer is viewing the tail from a different angle. This is known as an "anti-tail" and it is an optical illusion caused by the observer's point of view, rather than an actual physical feature of the comet. This comet last graced our skies more than 50 000 years ago! Click on image for a larger view. Image Details - January 24,2023
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Picture of the Week - January 20, 2023 | |||||||||||
Orion through light cloud. This image was taken on January 20 from Nordegg, Alberta in the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. The light cloud gives the stars a subtle "glow". Also visible in the image is Mars in the upper right and the Pleiades a bit below right. Click on image for a larger view.
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Picture of the Week - January 4, 2023 | |||||||||||
The beautiful nebula in Orion (M 42) is a wonder through any size telescope! Under a very dark sky and a larger sized telescope the nebula glows green with touches of rose. This is a star forming region 1500 light years away in the Orion complex and can be seen with the unaided eye as a fuzzy patch in the sword of Orion. Click on the image for a larger view. Image Details - January 4,2023
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Pictures of the Week - December 27, 2022 | |||||||||||
Three images: Top - a warm welcoming home on a frosty winter night with Orion, The Pleiades and Mars hovering silently over head. Bottom two - a colourful aurora dancing in the eastern sky. |
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Image Details: December 26, 2022
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Pictures of the Week - December 14, 2022 | |||||||||||
The Crab Nebula in Taurus is what remains from a star that exploded (i.e. a Supernova) nearly a thousand years ago ( 1054 AD in our time frame). The Crab is about 6500 light years away and the progenitor supernova was visible during the day and for many months in the night sky. The abiding mystery is that while it was fully studied by Chinese astronomers there is no known record of it in European writing. This image was taken at TKUO #1 using the Celestron 14. Click on image for larger view. Image Details:December 14, 2022
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The star Maia (20 Tau) in the Pleiades star cluster illuminates fine carbon grain dust giving the lovely blue reflection nebula that graces the Pleiades or Seven Sisters. The Pleiades is located about 440 light years away in the constellation Taurus and appears as a tiny dipper shape in the Fall and Winter sky. See the November 10, 2017 pic of the week below for a shot of the entire cluster. Click on image for a larger view. Image Details:December 14, 2022
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Pictures of the Week - December 7, 2022 | |||||||||||
A rare occultation of Mars on the evening of December 7, 2022. Image was taken at TKUO#1 with the C14 @f11 and shows Mars emerging from behind the moon. Click to see a movie of this event (with sincere aplogies to Gustav Holst)! Image Details: December 7, 2022
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Pictures of the Week - November 24, 2022 | |||||||||||
The central regions of our Milky Way galaxy as seen from Cape Royal - north face of the Grand Canyon. This is a very dark site with the glow of Winslow and Flagstaff, Arizona and the south face Grand Canyon village along the horizon. In the distance a thunderstorm was also active adding to the drama! Click on image for larger view. Image Details: September 27, 2022
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A faint aurora danced overhead late on the evening of November 24. Click on image for larger view. Image Details: November 24, 2022
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Picture of the Week - November 10, 2022 | |||||||||||
September 23, 2022 image of the Milky Way core taken at Arches National Park, Utah. A Canon 6D and 35mm lens were used for this shot with an exposure of 360 s on the stars and 120 s on foreground at iso 800. Image Details: September 23, 2022
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Picture of the Week - November 3, 2022 | |||||||||||
Active sun on November 3, 2022 with numerous filaments and prominences. Image is in the wavelength emitted by hydrogen gas ("H-Alpha") and was acquired with the Spectroheliograph (SHG) at TKUO #3. Click on image for larger view. Image Details: November 3, 2022
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Picture of the Week - November 1, 2022 | |||||||||||
IC 2118 (aka the "Witch Head") is a reflection nebula located 900 light years away on the border between constellations Eridanus and Orion. The nebula, which is about 45 light years long, consists of gas and dust in our galaxy and is illuminated by the bright star Rigel - just seen in the upper right corner of the image. The Witch Head is an extremely faint object and requires very dark skies to image. Since it is low in the southern sky from Alberta I used the Telescope Live Network remote telescope located in Yass, New South Wales, Australia to acquire the data. Click on image to see a larger version. Image Details: Heaven's Mirror Observatory - Yass NSW
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Picture of the Week - October 31, 2022 | |||||||||||
A unique view of the Milky Way above Horse Shoe Bend in Paige, Arizona. The deep orange glow in the image was due to a wildfire near the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and my destination the next day! The image was taken September 27 on a recent trip to photograph the night sky in Arizona and Utah. Click on image for a larger view. Image Details: September 27, 2022
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Pictures of the Week - October 17, 2022 | |||||||||||
Jupiter and the 4 Galilean Moons. The 4 brightest Jovian moons were first observed by Galileo in 1609 and can be easily seen with a good pair of binoculars. Hover over the image to identify the moons. Click on image for latger view. Image Details: October 17, 2022
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Graceful filaments and prominences surround the sun. Solar prominences are large plumes of hot hydrogen gas projecting outward from the solar limb. Filaments are prominences seen directly over the solar disc and form dark sinuous strands on the face of the sun. "Filaproms" is the name given to large filaments at the solar edge that transition into prominences. A large filaprom is visible in the 11 o'clock position. Hover over the image to see the colours inverted. This makes the filaproms stand out more clearly and also gives a more 3-dimensional appearance to what is happening. This image was taken with the scanning Spectroheliograph at King's Observatory #3. Image Details: October 17, 2022
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Pictures of the Week - October 12, 2022 | |||||||||||
The Milkyway from Monument Valley, Arizona. On a recent road trip through Utah and Arizona a number of night shots of the Milkyway were realized. This one is from the iconic Monument Valley showing the "Three Sisters". Click on image for ful-screen view. Image Details: September 26, 2022
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Our Sun imaged on October 9, 2022 in full spectrum light (left) and Hydrogen Alpha (right). Very large sunspot groups have thus far produced no significant flare or mass-ejection events. The image on the right shows a more dramatic view with numerous filaments and prominences. Click on either for a larger view. Image Details: October 9, 2022
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Pictures of the Week - September 15, 2022 | |||||||||||
Asteroid 4 Vesta silently drifts by over a 2.5 hour span on September 14, 2022. Vesta is one of the largest objects in the Asteroid Belt at a diameter of about 600 km. It is not spherical - rather it looks like a big rock! Vesta was discovered in 1802 by the German astronomer Olbers and is named in honour of Vesta - the Greek goddess of home and hearth. mage Details: September 14, 2022
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Our active star imaged on Tuesday, September 13 at 11:30 MDT. Several large prominences as well as numerous filaments and plages are visible in the Hydrogen-alpha image produced with the spectroheliograph at King's Observatory #3. Click on image for larger view. This is a sum of 10 scans of the solar surface. Image Details: September 13, 2022
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Picture of the Week - September 6, 2022 | |||||||||||
Stephan's Quintet in the constellation Pegasus has long been a source of controversy. Five galaxies appear to be interacting with one another. While galactic interactions are common what is unusual here is the disparity of redshifts ( a proxy for distance) between the center "bluish" galaxy and the other four galaxies. Stephan's Quintet was one of the James Webb Telescopes first targets and it corroborates what the Hubble and other telescopes reveal - the bluish galaxy (NGC 7320) is much closer to us at 39 million light years than the remaining four galaxies - approximately 300 million light years away. In this image taken at TKUO #1 with the C14 very faint background galaxies (tiny fuzzy blobs!) can be seen at distances greater than 1 billion light years! Click on image for a larger view. Image Details: August 29 - September 1, 2022
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Picture of the Week - August 31, 2022 | |||||||||||
Our delicately patterned sun! This image was taken August 31 in TKUO#3 under excellent seeing conditions using the King's SpectroHelioGraph (SHG) at very high spectral resolution (R = 40 000) at a wavelength of 6562.8 Angstroms - light produced by hydrogen gas in the solar chromosphere. The numerous swirls, reminiscent of iron filings around a magnet help delineate the magnetic structure of our star! The image was constructed from a scan of approximately 3500 frames captured over a 17 s interval. The colour has been added to help distinguish features. Click on image for a larger view. Image Details: August 31, 2022
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Pictures of the Week - August 29, 2022 | |||||||||||
A rather faint aurora at 11:30 pm over Islet Lake. What makes this "special" however is the very strong STEVE event that accompanied the aurora. STEVE is an acronym for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement and is the result of hot gases from the solar wind flowing through Earth's ionosphere. This was a particularly strong STEVE and was for an hour or so brighter than the aurora. The aurora was only a few degrees above the NE horizon while STEVE bisected the sky overhead - hence the two phenomena were separated by hundreds of kilometers. Click on each image for a larger view. Image Details: August 29, 2022
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Pictures of the Week - August 18, 2022 | |||||||||||
A gentle aurora over Islet Lake - late evening August 18. Image Details: August 18, 2022
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Moon in 3rd quarter under good seeing conditions in the early morning hours of August 18. Click on the image for a full view. You can spend hours exploring the lunar surface in this shot! Image Details -August 18, 2022
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Pictures of the Week - August 15, 2022 | |||||||||||
Jupiter with moons Europa (lower left) and Io. Click on image for larger view. Image Details -August 15, 2022
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Lunar surface centred on Mare Serinitatis (Sea of Serenity) with the large crater Posidonius just below centre. Click for larger view. Image Details -August 15, 2022
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Picture of the Week - August 12, 2022 | |||||||||||
The active sun imaged with the King's Observatory scanning spectroheliograph (SHG). The image is taken in the light emitted by Hydrogen atoms in the upper atmosphere of the sun (Chromosphere) and is produced by scanning across the face of the sun while recording images at a rate of 275 frames/second. The roughly 2500 frames are then added together to form an image of the entire disk. The colour has been added. Along the limb of the sun are many small loops or prominences while the centre of the disk is crisscrossed by dark bands called filaments. These are prominences seen face on. Click on image for larger view. Image Details: August 12,, 2022
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Picture of the Week - August 1, 2022 |
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Abraham Lake with the Milky Way on the evening of Saturday, July 30. The greenish "haze" in the lower part of the sky is air glow - a naturally occuring emission from molecules in the Earth's atmosphere. This image was the result of 20 untracked exposures - each 20 s in duration - aligned and summed. Click on the image for a larger view. Image Details: July 30, 2022
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Picture of the Week - July 27-28, 2022 | |||||||||||
The solar chromosphere and prominences (colour added) taken with SolEx SHG showing filaments, prominences and other active regions. Some rasterization in the image is the result of "tweaking" still being made in the SHG which requires a precise match between the scan rate and camera frame rate. Image Details: July 28, 2022
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For Science Nerds! This image is a Doppler image showing solar rotation that was taken with a Spectroheliograph (SHG) currently under construction at the observatory. The unit is called SolEx and was built from plans published by Christian Buil. Images of the sun are created by scanning a very precisely tuned spectral line (in this the 6562.8 Angstrom line of Hydrogen or H alpha) across the solar disk in a series of several thousand small slices. These images are assembled in software to produce a complete solar image. In this image the rotation of the sun causes a blue shift on the one edge of the sun approaching us while the other edge is red shifted as the limb recedes. The dark "streamers" on the solar surface are actually silhouettes of prominences - large arcing loops of hot gas rising from the solar surface. Image Details: July 27, 2022
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Picture of the Week - July 14, 2022 | |||||||||||
Noctilucent clouds over Sandy Lake, Alberta near midnight on the evening of July 14, 2022. Image Details: July 14, 2022
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Pictures of the Week - July 8 - 13, 2022 | |||||||||||
July 13, solar activity is steadily increasing as we head towards solar maximum expected in 2025. Click on image for larger view. Image Details: July 13, 2022
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July 11 - sunspot activity is increasing with two major groups near center and a large spot emerging on the western limb. Click on images for larger view. Image Details: July 11, 2022
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Sunspots and faculae (the brighter areas around and near the spots) on the solar surface. Earth could easily fit inside the larger spot in the upper left. Click on image for larger view. Image Details: July 8, 2022
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Pictures of the Week - June 16, 2022 | |||||||||||
A few smaller sunspots this month as the Sun's solar cycle 25 strengthens. Click on image for larger view. Image Details: June 16, 2022
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Pictures of the Week - May 28, 2022 | |||||||||||
Just below centre, in the brilliant swirl of yellow-gold, is the star Antares in the constellation Scorpio. At a distance of 550 light years, this amazing star is almost 700 times bigger than our sun and if placed in our solar system would engulf all 4 of the inner planets reaching twice as far out into the solar system as the orbit of Mars! Unfortunately this beautiful summer star never gets higher than 10 degrees above our southern horizon. This image was acquired using the Telescope Live facility in Chile and represents nearly 4 hours of data taken over 4 nights in Red, Green and Blue filters to produce a stunning and accurate representation of the region around this star. Just to the right of Antares is the globular cluster M4. Click on the image for a larger view (Note - this is a BIG file!) Image Details: May , 2022
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Clouds roll in just as it gets dark! A recent photo-trip to Dinosaur Provincial Park was thwarted but not before I managed a single 60s image of Antares (just above the small hill in the centre of the frame) and a small meteor in the centre of the frame. As explained in the panel above this, Antares is a huge reddish star that only climbs 10 degrees above the southern horizon during an Alberta summer. Image Details: May25, 2022
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The Sun has been very active with two large sunspot groups which have created a number of strong x-ray flares over the past week. Both images were taken May 22 using "Lucky Imaging" - several thousand frames filtered and added. Image Details: May 22, 2022
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Pictures of the Week - April 20-24, 2022 | |||||||||||
A beacon in the night! Identified in the roll-over image, the bright star in the center of the frame is Supernova 2022 HRS (SN2022HRS) in the small spiral galaxy NGC 4647 located in the Virgo cluster of galaxies 63 million light years away. Directly above and to the right is the larger elliptical galaxy Messier 60. The supernova was discovered April 16, 2022 by Japanese astronomer Koichi Itagaki. Supernovae such as this are vital "standard candles" that we use to probe the depths of intergalactic space and tell us such thing as the accelerating expansion of the universe! Image Details -April 24, 2022
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Solar Cycle 25 is well underway and much more active than had been predicted a year ago. Several very large sunspots are visible in this white light image (orange colour has been added to help delineate the spots and other surface features. Active regions such as these can trigger Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) which in turn can spawn aurora. This image was taken using a Baader Solar Film filter and "Lucky Imaging" with the ZWO 294MC camera and approximately 1000 frames. Click on image for larger view. Image Details: April 24, 2022
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Orion - a last look for the season! The image shows the very luminous belt stars (L to R: Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka) and the intricate regions of gas and dust that form part of the Orion complex. Just below Alnitak is the Horsehead Nebula. This image was taken using the Telescope Live remote AU-2 installation in NSW, Australia. Click on image for larger view. Image Details: April , 2022
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Pictures of the Week - February 25, 2022 | |||||||||||
A "gentle" aurora makes a brief appearance in the early morning hours on February 25, 2022. Although there have been several huge coronal mass ejections in the past few weeks none have been directed towards Earth. It's just a matter of time until we get the next major storm. In the meantime there are often gentle aurora like the one shown here on many clear nights for those of us living in northern latitudes. Click on images for full-screen view. Image Details:February 25, 2022
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Picture of the Week - January 3, 2022 | |||||||||||
Messier 83 - sometimes known as The Southern Pinwheel - is a beautiful galaxy best viewed from the Southern hemisphere. M 83 is a barred spiral galaxy located approximately 15 million light years away in the constellation Hydra. For a comparison - see the "Northern Pinwheel" featured as the April 25, 2020 TKUO Picture of the Week. Since it barely rises above our southern horizon from TKUO this image was produced form 11 hours of data acquired remotely using the 0.6m CDK-24 telescope at El Sauce Observatory in Chile between February - August 2021. This is a first class observing site under the dark and steady skies of Chile and part of the "Telescope Live" network. Click on image for a larger view.
Image Details: February - August , 2021
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Picture of the Week - December 29, 2021 | |||||||||||
A rare "Double Sundog!" is one consolation from our recent extreme cold. More technically these are parhelion arcs and while a single arc is common in cold weather a double arc only occurs under extreme conditions with lots of ice crystals aloft. Also - note that at the top of the inner arc (just at the tip of the spruce tree)there is another inverted arc. This image was taken in the late morning on December 29 with the outside air temperature in the -26C range. Click on image for larger view. Image Details: December 29, 2021
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Picture of the Week - December 6, 2021 | |||||||||||
A beautiful planet ray alignment - from Lower right to top left: Venus = Saturn -Jupiter with a lovely crescent moon beneath Venus! Early evening just after sunset on Monday, December 6. Image Details: December 6, 2021
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Picture of the Week - December 3, 2021 | |||||||||||
Comet C/2021 A1 (Leonard) - in the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins - " she grows and sizes And spins her skirts out, while her central star Shakes its cocooning mists;". On December 3 Leonard passed close by the globular cluster Messier 3 as it journeys toward the sun. This is a composite of 60, 1 minute integrations early morning December 3, 2021 from TKUO #2. Click on image for larger view. Image Details: December 3, 2021
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Picture of the Week - November 28, 2021 | |||||||||||
Click on above image to see a movie of Comet Leonard drifting against background stars over a span of 80 minutes. |
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Comet Leonard C/2021 A1 is silently slipping through the inner solar system after thousands of years in a deep and frozen slumber! The comet was discovered in January of this year at the Mount Lemmon Observatory (Arizona). Best viewing is in the early morning hours just before dawn in the eastern sky. Currently it is an easy target in binoculars but by December 12 it will have shifted so that a possible naked-eye sighting may occur low in the SW just before sunset. Don't miss it - Leonard won't be back for another 80 000 years! Image was composed from a stack of 69, 1 minute exposures taken in the early morning on November 27 at King's Observatory #1 using the C14 @ f6.9 (2329 mm fl). Click on image for larger view. Image Details: November 27, 2021
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Picture of the Week - November 19, 2021 | |||||||||||
The near total lunar eclipse on November 19, 2021 was unusually long in duration - the longest in the past 600 years! Although not total (97%), the moon shone with a beautiful deep orange hue. The image shown here was taken at mid-eclipse or 2:03 am (MST). Click for larger view. Image Details -November 19, 2021
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Picture of the Week - November 5, 2021 | |||||||||||
M 76 is a lovely planetary nebula in the constellation Perseus. It sometimes goes by the name "The Little Dumbell' (see TKUO pic from July 9, 2021) or the "Cork Nebula". Planetary nebulae are one of the final stages in the evolution of solar-mass stars. Click on image for larger view. Image Details -October 30,31 - 21, 2021
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Pictures of the Week - October 29, 2021 | |||||||||||
Messier M 110 is a dwarf elliptical galaxy that is a satellite companion to the Great Andromeda Galaxy M31 (see TKUO pic for October 17, 2018). This is a typical pattern where small dwarf galaxies are found orbiting larger bodies. Our own Milky Way has a number of smaller satellite galaxies - The Clouds of Magellan being notable examples. Click on image for larger view. Image Details: October 29, 2021
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The edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 891 is a fall sky favourite. The prominent dust lane that bisects the galaxy is very similar to the long, sinuous dust lanes that one can see in the Milky Way The galaxy is located 30 million light years away in Andromeda. The image represents 2.5 hours exposure using C14@f6.6 and a ZWO 294mc camera. Click on image for larger view. Image Details: October 29, 2021
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Picture of the Week - October 28, 2021 | |||||||||||
This small emission nebula - NGC 1491 - is located about 10 000 light years away in the constellation Perseus. It is just one of many nebulae scattered throughout the galaxy and reminds us that the Milky way is a dynamic environment with star formation and star death occurring all the time. This is a site of recent star birth. The image was taken over two nights (October 25,26) and represents approximately 6 hours of data through a set of 3 narrowband filters. Click on the image for a larger view. Image Details: October 25,26 2021
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Picture of the Week - October 20, 2021 | |||||||||||
Sometimes referred to as The Wizard Nebula (or The Golden Snitch) NGC 7380 is a open cluster of stars embedded in a hot cloud of gas and dust. This object lies about 8500 light years away in the constellation Cepheus. This image shows the inner core of the nebula through a set of narrow band (Ha, OIII and SII) filters over 3 nights (Oct 15, 16, 21). Click on image for a larger view. A lower magnification view of NGC 7380 was featured as the October 31, 2018 pic of the week. Image Details -October 15 - 21, 2021
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Picture of the Week - September 24, 2021 | |||||||||||
Milkyway in Sagittarius with the Lagoon Nebula (M 8) and the Trifid Nebula (M20) in the middle right. Click on image for larger view. Image Details -September 7, 2021
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The amazing "starcloud" in the Scutum region of the Milkyway. Click on image for larger view. Image Details -September 7, 2021
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Picture of the Week - September 20, 2021 | |||||||||||
Milkyway in Aquila - Altair is the bright star in the centre with Terazed to the upper right. Click on image for larger view. Image Details -September 7, 2021
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Picture of the Week - September 15, 2021 | |||||||||||
Prominent in this image are The Double Cluster (NGC 869, NGC 884), the Heart Nebula (IC 1805) and the Soul Nebula (LBN 667). The Double Cluster was featured as the August 28, 2020 pic of the week and comprises a pair of star clusters located about 7000 light years away in the constellation Perseus. Also in Perseus and at a distance of 7500 light years are the Heart and Soul Nebulae, These are emission nebulae - regions of hot hydrogen gas. Note the diverse colours of the stars in this image - a rough measure of their temperatures. The garnet coloured stars are coolest (surface temperatures approximate 3500 K) while the blue stars are the hottest (temperatures 10 000+ K). Click on image for a larger view. Image Details -September 6, 2021
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Picture of the Week - September 13, 2021 | |||||||||||
The Milkyway over the Sweetgrass Hills as seen from Writing On Stone Provincial Park. The bright "stars" in the image are Jupiter (far left) and Saturn. Click on image for larger view. Image Details -September 6, 2021
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Picture of the Week - September 3, 2021 | |||||||||||
The North American Nebula (NGC 7000 or Caldwell 20) is a bright nebula of hot hydrogen gas situated about 2500 light years away in the constellation Cygnus. To the right and some what fainter is another emission nebula - The Pelican Nebula (IC 5070). The bright star in the centre of the frame is Deneb - the northern most star in the Summer Triangle. The milky way in this region is a wonderful complex of nebulae and star clusters and is high in our late summer skies. Click on the image for a much larger view. Image Details -September 3, 2021
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Picture of the Week - August 13, 2021 | |||||||||||
Video compiled from 350 frames, 15s each using Canon 6D, Samyang 14mm f2.8 at iso 3200. Numerous Perseid meteors and occasional satellites are visible in the over 1.5 hour span that this video covers. image was taken August 13, 2021 at Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan. |
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Milkyway in Cygnus as seen from Grasslands National Park. Image produced from 40 frames - 60 s each using Canon 7D mII and Samyang 16 mm f2.0 lens at iso 1600. Click on image for larger view. |
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Southern portion of Milkyway centered on Altair with Jupiter and Saturn visible in the lower left of frame. Image made from 50 x 60 s exposures, from Grasslands National Park using Canon 6D and Samyang 14mm f2.8 lens at ISO 1600. Click on image for larger view.
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Picture of the Week - July 14, 2021 | |||||||||||
NGC 7331 is a bright, large galaxy located 40 million light years in Pegasus It is roughly the same size as our own Milky Way galaxy and is the largest member of the NGC 7331 group of galaxies with many of the smaller members of this group also visible in this image. Click on image for larger view. Image Details -July 10,13- , 2021
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Picture of the Week - July 9, 2021 | |||||||||||
The "Dumbbell Nebula (aka Messier 27) has been featured several times in "Pics of the Week". This time it was used a s a test object for recent modifications made to the custom made mount in Observatory #1 using the Celestron C14 and zwo 1600mm camera. This object (technically a planetary nebula) represents the end-game for a solar-mass star. In roughly 7 billion years this will be the colourful demise of our Sun. The planetary nebula phase is a relatively peaceful end to the life of a low mass star with the outer envelope of the star shedding and drifting into interstellar space. Click on image for larger view. Image Details -July 9- , 2021
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Pictures of the Week - June 27, 2021 | |||||||||||
Noctilucent clouds just before midnight on June 27, 2021. Click on image for larger view. Image Details : June 27, 2021
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An exceptionally bright display of noctilucent clouds in the early morning hours of June 26. This is a 3 image panorama - click on image for full view. Image Details : June 26, 2021
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Picture of the Week - June 21, 2021 | |||||||||||
Spectacular noctilucent clouds over Islet Lake mark the Summer Solstice 2021. These impressive clouds are formed at an altitude of 80 km - high in the stratosphere and occur when water vapour condenses on meteoritic dust. These electric-blue clouds fluoresce and are only seen in the weeks around the solstice. This image was taken at 12:30 am this morning. Click for a bigger view. Image Details : June 21, 2021
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Pictures of the Week - June 13, 2021 | |||||||||||
Messier 57 or the Ring Nebula is a "text-book" example of a planetary nebula. This is the last gasp of a dying star similar in mass to our sun. In roughly 6 billion years this will be the likely fate of our own sun as it gently sheds its outer envelope which then expands into the interstellar medium. Careful inspection of this image reveals a fainter outer ring suggesting several episodes of mass ejection from the star. This is a 3 hour exposure through L,R,G,B and H alpha filters. Click on image for larger view.
Image Details -June 4, 11,12 - , 2021
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Another view of M 921 - a summer-time favourite. This magnificent globular cluster was last imaged as a pic of the week on May 2018. The current image is at a larger scale (0.68"/px) and was taken with the 0.34 m C14 Schmidt-Caeesgrain in TKUO Observatory #1. Total integration time through LRGB filters was 168 minutes. Click on image for larger view. Image Details -June 4, 11,12 - , 2021
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Picture of the Week - May 15, 2021 | |||||||||||
The Draco Triplet (located in the northern constellation Draco - the Dragon) comprises three galaxies - from L to R they are: NGC 5981, NGC 5982 and NGC 5985. These galaxies are approximately 120 million light years distance from Earth. Numerous "fuzzy" dots in the background are very distant galaxies - some more than 2 billion light years away! This image was taken over three nights and represents 10 hours exposure through L,R,G and B filters. Click on image for larger view. Image Details :May 5,9,11- 2021
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Picture of the Week - April 15, 2021 | |||||||||||
The "Needle Galaxy" or NGC 4565 is a large spiral galaxy seen edge-on and is located about 40 million light years away in the northern constellation Coma Berenices. The image above represents nearly 20 hours of data captured over 4 nights in early April. Click on the image for a larger view. Image Details :April 12,13,14,15 - 2021
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Picture of the Week - April 5, 2021 | |||||||||||
Markarian's Chain is a string of galaxies that are part of the Virgo Cluster - a massive family of more than 2000 galaxies located about 60 million light years from Earth in the spring constellation Virgo. The chain is named in honour of the American astrophysicist Benjamin Markarian. This 2.5 hour total exposure image was taken in the early morning of April 5, 2020. Click on image for larger view. Image Details - April 5, 2021
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Picture of the Week - April 1, 2021 | |||||||||||
Messier 3 - pictured above - is one of the great globular clusters of the northern spring-time sky. Located in the constellation Canes Venatici, M 3 is 33,900 light years away from us, measures 180 light years in diameter and contains about 500 000 stars. This image is a 1 hour exposure taken in the early hours of April 1, 2021. Click on image for a larger view. Image Details - April 1, 2021
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Picture of the Week - March 20, 2021 | |||||||||||
Aurora marks the start of spring! A moderately bright aurora exhibiting rapid pulsations appeared in the early hours of March 20 - marking the start of spring. The period of time around the equinoxes is marked by increased auroral activity ( the Russell-McPherron Effect) due to the favourable alignment of the Earth's rotational axis and the solar wind. Image Details : March 20, 2021
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Picture of the Week - March 18, 2021 | |||||||||||
Messier 94 (NGC 4736) is a rather odd spiral galaxy. A bright inner spiral structure, a dark surrounding "ring" and a much fainter outer spiral structure. This is an example of an orbital "resonance". A common name for this galaxy is the "Cat's Eye". The galaxy is located in Canes Venatici at a distance of 17 million light years. This image represents a bit over 11 hours of exposure through L,R,G and B filters. Click on image for larger view. Image Details : March 15,16 - 2021
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Picture of the Week - March 12, 2021 | |||||||||||
Located 30 million light years away in the constellation Canes Venatici, NGC 4631 is a spiral galaxy seen edge-on. The small reddish region in the centre indicates that this is a starburst galaxy - it is undergoing an episode of intense star formation (or at least it was 30 million years ago!!). This image represent 12 hours of data acquired over 3 nights. Click on image for larger view. Can you guess its popular name? (Hint: Herman Melville would concur with the name!) Image Details : March 6,9,10 - 2021
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Picture of the Week - March 9, 2021 | |||||||||||
NGC 3184 is a spiral galaxy located 40 million light years away in the constellation Ursa Major. The bright reddish star at the top of the frame is the cool M-giant star GP Ursa Majoris and is a "mere" 1000 light years away! This image represents 5 hours of data collected over two nights in February and March. Click on image for a larger view. Image Details :February 19, March 6 - 2021
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Pictures of the Week - March 2, 2021 |
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A minor geomagnetic storm spawned a lovely and very active aurora on Tuesday night, March 2, 2021. Images above show from start to finish (top L to bottom R) how the aurora developed and colours evolved over an hour and a half. Clickon each image for a full screen view. Image Details : March 2, 2021
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Pictures of the Week - February 19, 2021 | |||||||||||
Another aurora movie! A delicate aurora and bright moonlight above Islet Lake near midnight on Februaury 23, 2021. It was a magical night with the lake ice groaning and singing beneath us! A coronal mass ejection a few days earlier spawned a series of weak aurora at high latitudes. The movie was produced from a sequence of 40, 5s exposures. Image Details : February 23, 2021
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Pictures of the Week - February 19, 2021 | |||||||||||
Auroral Dance! The northern lights swirled and pirouetted gracefully over eastern Alberta late Friday evening. Click on the top image for a full screen view. The bottom animation was produced from a series of 1 second exposures captured at iso 6400. Click on either image for a full-screen view. Image Details : February 19, 2021
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Pictures of the Week - January 11, 2021 | |||||||||||
A short lived aurora developed around 11:00 pm on Monday evening, January 11, 2021. The animation above was produced from a series of 2 second exposures taken at my residence east of Sherwood Park, Alberta. Image Details : January 11, 2021
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NGC 2403 is a relatively nearby galaxy (8 million light years away) in the constellation Camelopardalis and is a member of the M 81 group of galaxies. The galaxy measures about 50 000 across and contains many star forming regions which appears as reddish knots of colour. The image was captured on the evenings of January 9 and 10 and represents 9 hours of exposure through multiple filters. Click on image for larger view. Image Details :January 9,10 - 2021
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Orion is the most recognizable of the Winter-sky constellations. The image above is a 38 minute combined exposure taken at Islet Lake (a moderately dark location) on January 8, 2021. Prominent in the image are the three bright belt stars - Alnilam, Alnitak and Mintaka (from L - R) as well as the famed Horsehead and Great Nebula (each featured as TKUO pics of the week). If you click on the image for a larger view you can explore this region and see that it is riven by numerous dust lanes. All of this is further evidence of the high degree of star formation occurring in the Orion complex. Image Details : January 8, 2021
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The Cone Nebula in the constellation Monoceros is part of a large star forming region in the Orion complex. This image combines 2.7 hours of Hydrogen alpha data with data taken in February 2020 (TKUO pic of the week - February 21, 2020). Click on image for larger view. Image Details : February 18,19 - 2020, January 8 - 2021
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Picture of the Week - January 6, 2021 | |||||||||||
The very young star cluster NGC 1893 in the constellation Auriga lies within a larger region the nebulosity IC 410 - sometimes called the Tadpole Nebula! Can you spot the tadpoles (Hint: look top-center right ). The nebula is huge and located about 12 400 light years from Earth. The predominantly red glow is produced by Hydrogen gas at a temperature of about 10 000 K. This image was produced from 10 hours of data over three nights. Click on image for larger view. Image Details : January 6,7,8 2021
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Pictures of the Week - December 22, 2020 | |||||||||||
The moon imaged under fair condition on Tuesday evening with TKUO #1 Celestron 14 at high magnification (3.91 m focal length). Rollover the images to identify prominent features Both images produced using "Lucky Imaging" from a video stream of approximately 2000 frames each. Image Details : December 22, 2020
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Pictures of the Week - December 20, 2020 | |||||||||||
A rare sight - Saturn and Jupiter in the same field of view! The planets were only 11 degrees above the south western horizon so the images are not optimal but this is a sight that has literally never been seen before! Image Details :December 20, 2020
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Almost touching! Saturn and Jupiter as they appeared on December 20, 2020. Image Details : December 20, 2020
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Picture of the Week - December 15, 2020 | |||||||||||
A beautiful prelude to the "great conjunction of Decemeber 21, 2020" as the thin crescent moon appears beneath Saturn and Jupiter at approximately 5:30 on December 15, 2020. If you look closely you can see Jupiter's moon Ganymede to the lower right of the planet. . Image Details : December 15, 2020
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Picture of the Week - December 11, 2020 | |||||||||||
NGC 1579 - sometimes known as the "Northern Trifid" (a reference to its more famous cousin in the summer sky) is a diffuse nebula in Perseus. The nebula is a star forming region stretching about 4 light years across and about 2100 light years from earth. The bright red glow is ionized hydrogen gas and the dark lanes are dusty regions - all the stuff to make stars! This image is a 13.6 hour exposure collected over several nights in November and December. Click on image for a larger view. Image Details : November 14, December 4, 10- 2020
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Picture of the Week - December 10, 2020 | |||||||||||
One of the best Martian oppositions in decades is drawing to a close. The image on the right was taken shortly after sunset on December 10. Note how much smaller the planet is compared to earlier this fall. Also - notice how the "phase" of Mars changes from a waxing gibbous to a waning gibbous shape - just like our moon! All of the images were taken at TKUO #1 using the C14 at a focal length of 10 m and using "lucky imaging" with a ZWO ASI-224MC camera. |
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Keep your eye on Saturn (upper left) and Jupiter! You may have noticed them all summer and also that they are getting closer. On December 21 we will be treated to a very rare conjunction when the two planets "merge" into one much brighter "planet"! This image was taken shortly after sunset on December 10. Image Details : December 10, 2020
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Picture of the Week - December 9, 2020 | |||||||||||
Early this morning - under less than ideal conditions - a close-up view of Mare Humorum ("Sea of Moisture") with Gassendi crater in the lower left was taken. You can spend hours pouring over the many details in the image that tell much about the history of our lovely celestial companion. The small craters in the smooth lava flood-plain of Mare Humorum remind us that asteroidal and cometary bombardment are a feature of our solar system environment. This image was taken in TKUO #1 using the Celestron 14 telescope and "lucky imaging" with a ZWO - ASI 174 camera. Click on image for larger view. Image Details : December 9, 2020
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Picture of the Week - December 4, 2020 | |||||||||||
IC 342 (aka "The Hidden Galaxy") is a nearby galaxy in the Maffei group of galaxies. At a distance of "only" 10.7 million light years IC 342 should be visible to the naked eye. However, it is located in the constellation Camelopardalis and its light is heavily absorbed by dust in our own Milky way galaxy. Thus the galaxy, although quite large in extent is also very faint. Classed as an intermediate spiral galaxy, IC 342 contains about 100 billion stars. This image was produced at TKUO #2 over four nights in November and December for a total exposure time of 15.7 hours. The distinct red "splotches" are Hydrogen emission nebulae (huge clouds of hot Hydrogen gas.) Click on image for a larger view. Image Details : November 8,11- 2020
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Picture of the Week - November 11, 2020 | |||||||||||
On a frosty November 11 evening Comet C/2020 Atlas M3 silently drifted through the constellation Orion. Atlas is one of literally dozens of comets that silently pass by each year. Not another Neowise but still an object of interest as it dates from the earliest epoch in the history of the Solar System. The greenish colour of comets like Atlas is the result of ultraviolet light from the Sun exciting molecules of Cyanogen (CN) and diatomic carbon (C2) that are contained in the mostly icy mix of water and carbon dioxide ices. Sadly - new and future comets like Neowise and Atlas will not have romantic names in honour of their discoverers (Halley, Hale-Bopp etc). Instead they are discovered by robotic telescopes and automated detection systems and thus are named for the system responsible for their detection. Click on image for a larger view. Image Details - November 11, 2020
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Picture of the Week - October 28, 2020 | |||||||||||
The first major sunspot group in the new Solar Cycle (number 25). This one is designated AR2778 and stretches more than 100 000 km across the Solar surface. This suggests that we are finally emerging from what has been a protracted solar minimum. Over the next few years we should see an increase in solar activity and this will mean an increase in Northern Lights! Compare this group with the last major group (TKUO pic of the week September 6, 2017). Image Details - October 28, 2020
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Picture of the Week - October 13, 2020 | |||||||||||
Mars at opposition! One of the best alignments in years has given us wonderful views of this enigmatic planet. Image was taken through broken cloud and used "Lucky" imaging. Ten thousand video frames were stacked and sorted then the "best" 2500 were combined to produce the image. This helps remove blurring from the otherwise turbulent atmosphere. Image Details : Ocrober 13, 2020
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Pictures of the Week - October 4, 2020 | |||||||||||
Mars under good seeing October 2, 2020. This image is a stacked combination of roughly 2500 frames taken from close to 10 000 using the ZWO 224MC camera and TKUO observatory #1 Celestron C-14 at f/28 Image Details : Ocrober 2, 2020
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Pictures of the Week - September 24, 2020 | |||||||||||
Two wide angle shots of the Milkyway taken from a Bortle 3 site north of Rocky Mountain House, Alberta on the evening of September 23, 2020. image on the left - centred on the Summer Triangle - was taken with a Canon 6D and 14 mm f2.8 Rokinon lens. On the right is a close-up of nebulosity in the Deneb-Sadr region in Cygnus taken using a Canon 7D mII and 135 f2mm Rokinon lens. Click on images for larger view. Image Details : Sept 23,2020
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Pictures of the Week - September 22, 2020 | |||||||||||
Mars under good seeing early morning September 21, 2020. This image is a stacked combination of roughly 1000 frames taken from close to 10 000 using the ZWO 224MC camera and TKUO observatory #1 Celestron C-14 at f/28 Image Details : September 21, 2020
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NGC 6946 - aka The Fireworks Galaxy - is a classic spiral galaxy with a very tight core. The galaxy is located 25.2 million light years away in the Cepheus-Cassiopeia region of the sky. One interesting feature (try to find it!) is a large "supernova bubble" - the remnant of an ancient supernova that is more intact than the Veil Nebula which appears as pic-of-the-week for September 5, 2020. Click on the image to get a bigger view. Image Details : September 20- 2020
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Picture of the Week - September 16, 2020 | |||||||||||
Mars is becoming a spectacular early morning guest! You can't miss the orange-red planet as it rises around midnight. This image was taken early on the morning of September 16 under fair sky conditions using "Lucky Imaging" - 4000 video frames were collected using the Observatory #1 C-14 telescope. Of these 4000 frames the best 500 were stacked and processed to show the Red Planet. Mars will continue to grow in size and brilliance as it nears closest approach to Earth on October 6. Image Details : September16, 2020
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Picture of the Week - September 11, 2020 | |||||||||||
Shown above is a 6-hour exposure of NGC 6823, a young star cluster embedded in a hydrogen emission nebula in the constellation Vulpecula (The Fox). This is a very young cluster - only about 2 million years old and is located about 6000 light years from Earth. The dark lanes that crisscross the image are evidence of the molecular clouds from which the stars formed. Click on image for larger view. Image Details : September 8,10- 2020
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Pictures of the Week - September 5, 2020 | |||||||||||
Somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago our ancient ancestors would have been startled at the sight of a blazing new star within the constellation Cygnus. Pictured above is the Veil Nebula - the remnants of a shattered star that exploded as a supernova. Current estimates suggest that this object is located about 2400 light years away in the rich star fields of the Milky way. The Veil Nebula is a classic example of a supernova remnant (SNR). The glowing colours are produced predominantly by Hydrogen (red) and Oxygen (blue) but we now understand that supernova events are the birth mothers of all of the heavy elements in the universe. The image was produced over 4 nights using 6 different filters and approximately 7 hours total exposure. Click on the image for a larger view. Image Details - August 22, 26 - September 2,3 2020
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Pictures of the Week - August 28, 2020 | |||||||||||
At distance of 7500 light years, the "Double Cluster" in Perseus is easily visible to the unaided eye under a dark rural sky. It consists of two rich star clusters - NGC 869 and NGC 884 and has a total mass of about 20 000 solar masses. It is believed that both cluster are 12.8 million years old which makes them a very young collection of stars. Click on image for larger view. Image Details - August 28, 2020
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High in the summer sky and just north of the bright star Deneb you will find this knot of bright blue stars. Messier 39 is a small open cluster located about 1000 light years away and is believed to be approximately 250 million years old (roughly 1 galactic year!). Click on image for larger view. Image Details - August 28, 2020
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Pictures of the Week - August 25, 2020 | |||||||||||
NGC 7822 (or Sharpless-171) is a beautiful star-forming complex in the constellation Cepheus. At a distance of about 3200 light-years it is home to newly forming stars and the bright glow of the nebula is created by the intense radiation from some of these stars. Image was captured over 4 night in early August. Click on image for larger view. Image Details - August 12,13,16,17, 2020
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Messier 2 is a summer sky globular cluster in the constellation Aquarius. At a distance of 55 000 light-years it is one of the largest known globular clusters containing about 100 thousand stars and about 180 light-years in diameter. Click on image for larger view. Image Details : Aug 17 - 2020
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Pictures of the Week - August 18, 2020 | |||||||||||
NGC 7023 or Caldwell 4 is also know as the Iris Nebula and is a lovely example of a reflection nebula. The bluish colour is the result of light from the central star (SAO 19158) scattering from fine dust grains surrounding the star. The Iris is located about 1300 light years away in the constellation Cepheus. Click on image for larger view. Image Details : May 24, Aug 16,17 - 2020
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Sharpless 101 (Sh2-101) is perhaps better known by its more common monicker - The Tulip Nebula. This bright Hydrogen emission region is located in the constellation Cygnus, about 6000 light years from Earth and measures roughly 70 light years across. The image on the left shows only light emitted by Hydrogen atoms ("narrowband") while the image on the right shows the Tulip in all wavelengths ("broadband").Click on images for larger views. Image Details : Aug 4,10,12,13 - 2020
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Picture of the Week - August 7, 2020 | |||||||||||
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NGC 7789 (sometimes called The White Rose Cluster or Caroline's Rose) is an open cluster of several thousand stars discovered in 1783 by Caroline Herschel. This lovely cluster is located about 7600 light years away in the constellation Cassiopeia and is approximately 50 light years across and about 1.7 billion years old. Click on image for larger view. Image Details - August 7, 2020
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Pictures of the Week - July16-22, 2020 | |||||||||||
A medley of Comet Neowise pictures over the past week. Unfortunately we have not had good sky conditions and all of these images are either through thin cloud or small breaks in the cloud. Click on each image for a larger view. Bottom Right shows Comet Neowise in the early morning of July 16, 2020 through a combination of tropospheric and noctilucent clouds. (Canon 7D mii, 50mm f1.7, 30 s @iso 400) Bottom Left shows the comet on July 20,2020 as seen from Islet Lake, Alberta at approximately 11:45 pm (Canon 6D , 50mm f1.7, 20 s @iso 400) Top Left shows the comet on July 21,2020 as seen from Islet Lake, Alberta at approximately 1:45 am (Canon 6D , 50mm f1.7, 30 s @iso 400) Top Right shows the comet on July 21,2020 as seen from Islet Lake, Alberta at approximately 1:00 am (Canon 6D , 135mm f2.8, 60 s @iso 800) This image shows clearly BOTH tails of the comet. The fainter bluish-purple tail is the ION TAIL - it is a straight tail produced by the solar wind blowing outward from the sun and causing entrained gases to glow in their respective colours. Most comets will exhibit an ion tail (albeit faint at times). The brighter white "Dust Tail" is produced by the debris of fine "dirty-icy" particles boiling off the comet's nucleus. The fan shape of this tail actually delineates the orbital path of the comet as it swings around the sun. The brightness of the dust tail varies greatly between comets and is a function of how much dusty material is contained in the cometary ices.
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Picture of the Week - July12, 2020 | |||||||||||
Comet C/2020 F3 - aka "Neowise" has become an unexpected summer sky guest - one of the finest naked eye comets in the past decade. This image was taken at about 1:30 am July 12 as the comet skimmed the northern horizon. What is particularly nice are the noctilucent clouds just below and to the left of the comet. These are clouds that form high in the stratosphere/mesosphere (80 km up) and are what happens when water vapour condenses on the "smoke" created by in-falling meteors. What is really cool, however, is the fact that most of this meteoritic dust comes from the tails of comets!! Comet Neowise has an unusually large nucleus which is why it has brightened so dramatically over the past weeks. The camera was tracking the comet and stars which is why the foreground trees are slightly "blurred". Click on the image for a full-screen view. Image Details : July 12 ,2020 - 1:30 am
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Picture of the Week - July1, 2020 | |||||||||||
A very pretty display of Noctilucent Clouds to celebrate Canada Day! Image Details : July 1 ,2020 - 11:30 pm
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Pictures of the Week - June 9, 2020 | |||||||||||
Delicate wisps of Noctilucent Clouds graced the early morning sky above the Edmonton region. These are Meso-spheric clouds that occur when water molecules from ground level drift upward into the Mesosphere (about 80 km) where they condense on the dust particles ("smoke") created by the constant rain of small meteors that enter our atmosphere. Seen only this time of year and mostly in the northern part of the sky the clouds glow a pearly-white because of the interaction with solar radiation at this altitude. On the right is a nice shot of the Moon, Saturn and Jupiter (in that order). Click on both images to get full screen views. Image Details : June 9,2020 - 4:00 am
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Picture of the Week - May 12, 2020 | |||||||||||
The Owl Nebula (aka Messier 97) is a textbook example of a planetary nebula or the end stages in the life of a sun-like star. The nebula is a shell of gas expelled approximately 8000 years ago by the aging star seen at the centre of the image. The nebula is approximately 1.8 light years in diameter and is located about 2000 ly away in a region just beneath the Big Dipper. Click on image for larger view. Image Details : May 12,2020
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Picture of the Week - April 25, 2020 | |||||||||||
The majestic Pinwheel Galaxy or M 101 is a classic example of a grand-design spiral galaxy. Located about 21 million light years away and situated just above the handle of the Big Dipper, M 101 is huge - almost twice as big our own galaxy and home to more than a trillion suns! Its asymmetric shape is the result of gravitational tugs exerted by other nearby galaxies. This image represents 23 hours of exposure over a series of evenings in April. Click on the image for larger view. Image Details : April 12,18,20,21,22,24 - 2020
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Picture of the Week - April 12, 2020 | |||||||||||
"I coulda been a contender!" In early January Comet C/2019 Y4 (aka Atlas) brightened dramatically and many of us were hoping for a Hale-Bopp class comet in early May. Alas comets are fickle creatures and two weeks ago the nucleus of the comet began to break up. The movie shown above captures 2 hours in the life of Comet Atlas as it drifts across the background stars high in the northern sky. The tip of the comet is stretched into a rather bright line - indicating multiple chunks shedding from the nucleus. Image Details : April 11 - 2020
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Picture of the Week - April 2, 2020 | |||||||||||
Spring is Galaxy Season! From March through May we are treated to views of truly distant worlds. This is NGC 4725 situated 40 million light years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. This is an "active galaxy" and harbours a supermassive black hole in its centre. This image was taken over a number of nights in March and early April and represents 11.5 hours of total exposure through 4 different filters. Click on image for full view. Image Details : March 20, April 2 - 2020
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Picture of the Week - March 9, 2020 | |||||||||||
An unusual star - UU Auirgae! This is a faint star in the constellation Auriga and its lovely red-orange colour is easily visible in binoculars or a small telescope. The star belongs to a very cool class of "Carbon Stars". With temperature of about 2700K these stars have complex atmospheres that produce fine particles very similar to "soot". These are carbon and Silicon-Carbide dust grains that can be ejected as dusty clouds that will cause periodic dimming of the star. Click for a full-screen view. Image Details :
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Picture of the Week - February 23, 2020 | |||||||||||
Messier 106 (NGC 4258) is a beautiful galaxy is the constellation Canes Venatici. The galaxy is located about 25 million light years away and spectroscopy tells us that the core of the galaxy contains a very hungry supermassive black hole! This image represents a total of 14 hours exposure on the evenings of February 21,22. Click on image for a larger view. Image Details : February 21,22 - 2020
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Picture of the Week - February 21, 2020 | |||||||||||
Orion as seen from The Blackfoot Recreational Area on the evening of Friday, February 21. Currently the star Betelgeuse is doing something very strange - it has been steadily dimming to unprecedented faintness since we have been recording stellar brightness. What's going on? We don't know! But, we do know that sometime in the next 100 000 years Betelgeuse will explode to produce a brilliant supernova appearing as bright as the full moon and visible during the day. Is it about to "blow"? Astronomers world-wide are carefully watching what was once the brightest star in Orion. To compare with a similar shot taken 2 years earlier go to the February 18, 2018 TKUO pic of the week (scroll down). Click on image for larger view. Image Details :February 217 - 2020
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Picture of the Week - February 21, 2020 | |||||||||||
The Cone Nebula shown above is part of an elaborate star-forming region and young star cluster which collectively is called NGC 2264. This lovely object is in the constellation Monoceros (immediately east of Orion) and located about 2700 light years from Earth. Of note is the dark, dusty region in the right half of the image. If you look carefully you will see many deeply red stars. These are stars whose light is being heavily filtered by the dust that lies between them and us - the same phenomenon that produces red sunsets on Earth! This image was captured in a 5h exposure over two nights from King's Observatory #2 using the 0.25 m Ritchey-Chretien telescope and QSI camera. Click on image for full-scale view. Image Details : February 18,19 - 2020
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Pictures of the Week - February 3, 2020 | |||||||||||
Messier 95 (NGC 3351) is a classic example of a barred spiral galaxy and is located about 33 million light years away in the constellation Leo. This image was captured over three nights in late January and early February and represents a12 exposure through 4 different filters. Click on the image for a larger view. Image Details :January 25,28, February 3 - 2020
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Messier 53 (NGC 5024) - at a distance of 58 000 light years - is one of the more distant globular clusters that orbit our galaxy. This is a very old object (about 12.7 billion years old) and has a mass of about 850 thousand times that of our sun. Click on image for a larger view. Image Details :February 3, 2020
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Picture of the Week - December 2, 2019 | |||||||||||
IC 405 (also called the "Flaming Star Nebula") is an emission nebula measuring about 5 light years across and about 1500 light years away in the winter constellation Auriga. This image is an 8 hour exposure taken over several nights and uses the Hubble palette - Hydrogen gas shows up as a green hue while traces of Oxygen gas are blue and Sulphur appear as reddish hues. Click on image for larger view. Image Details : November 25, December 1, 2019
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Picture of the Week - November 27, 2019 | |||||||||||
A lovely aurora and hoar frost on trees! This is a re-processed image from January 2016 and hopefully will become a more frequent sight as the Sun emerges from the last solar minimum. Click on image for larger view. Image Details : January 21, 2016
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Picture of the Week - November 11, 2019 | |||||||||||
This Remembrance Day - November 11, 2019 - was marked by a rare celestial event - a transit of the planet Mercury as it passed between us and the Sun. These events occur only in the months of May or November. Our next Mercurial transit will occur in November 2032. In the history of astronomy transits have played a critical role in determining basic characteristics of our solar system. "Fortunately" there are no sunspots visible today so spotting Mercury is easy! Click on the image for a larger view. Click here for link to a short movie clip of the transit (spans about 15 minutes) Image Details : November 11, 2019
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Picture of the Week - October 26, 2019 | |||||||||||
A moderately bright display of Northern Lights as seen from Long Lake, Alberta on the evening of October 26/27. Even though we are currently in an unusually deep solar minimum aurora still can and do occur. Click on images for larger view. Image Details :October 26,27 - 2019
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Picture of the Week - October 22, 2019 | |||||||||||
NGC 891 is a medium sized spiral galaxy (about 2/3 the size of our Milkyway) located 30 million light-years away in the constellation Andromeda. We see the galaxy "edge-on" and the dark band that bisects the galaxy is dust in the spiral arms of NGC 891. In the background are much more distant galaxies visible as tiny "smudges". This image represents an 11.5 hour exposure taken taken over 4 nights in late October. Click on the image for a larger view. Image Details :October 17,18,20,21 - 2019
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Picture of the Week - October 11, 2019 | |||||||||||
The very rich and intricate emission nebula IC 1805 is shown above. This image was taken over a number of nights and represents nearly 8 hours of combined exposure through narrow band filters. The object lies in the constellation Cassiopeia about 7500 light years distant in the Perseus arm of our galaxy. In the center is a small cluster of stars - Melotte 15. Several of these stars are massive - more than 50 times the mass of our Sun. Click on the image for a larger view. Image Details : September 5 - October 11, 2019
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Picture of the Week - September 6, 2019 | |||||||||||
In the centre of the image is a remarkable star in Cygnus designated WR 134 (mouse over to see it). WR stands for two 19th century astronomers - Charles Wolf and Georges Rayet who first noticed the very odd spectra produced by these stars. While most stars produce "ROYGBIV" spectra with lots of thin dark lines (absorption lines in the bottom spectrum on the right) the WR stars have very bright and "fat" emission lines (top spectrum). We now know that these stars are very massive, hot stars. The fluorescent blue arc below centre in the image may well be an ancient ejection from WR 134. If you click on the spectral profile (top right) you will see an identification of the elements that are producing these bright lines. All of this tells us that not only are these stars hot (50 000 K or so) but they are ejecting material into space at great velocity. A simple measurement of the spectrum suggests that gas is streaming away from WR 134 at a speed of more than 2000 km/s (7.2 million km/h!!) which is why the lines are as broad as they are. Click on the image of WR 134 to get a bigger view. Details for: Spectrum: September 5 - 2019
Image: August 22,24,26 - 2019
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Picture of the Week - September 2, 2019 | |||||||||||
The Northern Cross (part of Cygnus the Swan) is almost directly overhead in the early September sky. Located in the middle of the cross is the bright star Sadr. This region is rich in emission nebulae and cold, dark knots of dust and lies about 3700 light years away in one of the spiral arms of our galaxy. This image was taken using two filters - one passing light from Hydrogen, the other Oxygen. The bright ring in the upper left is caused by internal reflections in the camera due to Sadr - just visible on the edge of the field of view. Image Details : September 2 - 2019
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Pictures of the Week - August 23,28,29 - 2019 | |||||||||||
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NGC 7331 is a large spiral galaxy 40 million light years away in the constellation Pegasus. In the background and and above the galaxy are a number of much more distant galaxies - about 400 million light years away. Click on image for larger view. Below the galaxy image is a low resolution spectrum of the combined light from the galaxy taken at The King's University Observatory in August 2017. The faint dark absorption lines in the spectrum (primarily due to Iron, Magnesium and Hydrogen) are red shifted and measurements indicate that the galaxy is receding from us at 800 km/s - evidence for the expanding universe. Image Details : August 23, 28 - 2019
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Globular cluster M 15 is located 32 600 light years away in the constellation Pegasus. At approximately 12 billion years it is one of the oldest known globular clusters and is one of several hundred that orbit our galaxy. The cluster consists of more than 100 000 stars of roughly the same mass as our sun. Click on image for larger view. Image Details : August 28 - 2019
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Pictures of the Week - August 20, 2019 | |||||||||||
Five wide field images from a lovely late August evening at Long Lake Provincial Park. The top shows what is likely a "straggler" Perseid meteor (from the Perseid shower which peaks around August 11 but is active through most of August). This image is a composite of 11 frames on which one captured the meteor - passing through the summer triangle (the bright 3 stars in the image) and bisecting the dust lane of the milky way. Some high cloud was in the area hampering observations a bit. The next two images show starlight and a soon to rise moon reflecting off the water of the lake. The last two images are of constellations Cassiopeia and Perseus. Click on each image for a full screen view. Image Details : August 20 - 2019
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Picture of the Week - August 13, 2019 | |||||||||||
NGC 281 is a bright emission nebula located about 9500 light years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. The nebula is located in the Perseus arm of our galaxy and is about 48 light years in diameter. This image is a "work in progress" - data here represents 5 hours exposure through Hydrogen, Oxygen and Sulphur filters under marginal sky conditions. Click on image for full screen view. Image Details : August 13,16 - 2019
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Pictures of the Week - August 6, 2019 | |||||||||||
IC5146 - The Cocoon Nebula - was featured as the July 22 TKUO pic of the week. Here is the same object as imaged at higher magnification at TKUO observatory #2 on three evenings in July 29 - August 3, 2019. Click on image for larger view. |
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Image Details: July 29 - August 3, 2019
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Again - another dust cloud region in the Cygnus arm of the Milkyway. Pictured above is the "Cygnus Wall" region of the North American Nebula (NGC 7000 - see the July 27, 2018 pic of the week for a full view of this area). The luminous blue is primarily due to light emitted by Oxygen atoms (doubly ionized) while the orange regions are combined light of Hydrogen, Oxygen and Sulfur. This image was produced over 3 nights using narrow band filters and a combined exposure time of 5 hours. Click on image for larger view. Image Details : July 29-August 3, 2019
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Picture of the Week - July 25, 2019 | |||||||||||
Barnard 150 (or the "Sea Horse Nebula") is one of 366 objects catalogued in the early 20th century by the American astronomer E.E. Barnard. It is an example of a dark molecular cloud which consists of very fine soot-like particles of interstellar dust. Such objects are ideal "chemistry labs" - their interiors are very cold. At only a few tens of degrees above absolute zero collisions between atoms are very gentle and allow the formation of simple molecules. These regions are also mark the eventual birth sites of new stars. This object is located about 1200 light years away in the constellation Cepheus. Click on image for larger view. Image Details -July 25, 2019
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Picture of the Week - July 22, 2019 | |||||||||||
IC5146 or the "Cocoon Nebula" is an active star forming region located about 4000 light years away in the heart of the arm of our galaxy that sweeps through the summer-time constellation Cygnus - "The Swan". The nebula is about 15 light years across. A darker lane of dust (Barnard 168) can be seen surrounding the nebula and projecting diagonally to the lower right. This image was taken on the nights of July 21,22 and represents a total exposure of 2.5 hours. Click on the image for a larger view. Image Details -July 21,22, 2019
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Picture of the Week - June 14, 2019 | |||||||||||
Ghostly wisps of Noctilucent Cloud weave low across the northern sky of the Edmonton region at 2:00 am June 14. These subtle and graceful clouds are formed very high in the Earth's stratosphere at roughly the same height of aurora (80 km) and are believed - in part - to form when traces of water vapour condense on meteoritic dust. They are normally only seen at high latitude in the few weeks around the Summer Solstice. You can contrast the lovely and very bright white of these clouds with a much lower "normal" cloud seen at the top of the frame. This was a particularly bright display of noctilucent clouds. Click on image for larger view. Image Details - June 14, 2:00 a.m. 2019
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Picture of the Week - April 24, 2019 | |||||||||||
The famous "Whirlpool Nebula" (aka Messier 51 or M 51) is a favourite spring target. This was the first "Island Universe" observed to have a spiral structure - this was done visually in the mid 1850s using the Lord Rosse telescope which is located in Birr, Ireland. M 51 is a classic spiral galaxy 23 million light years away in the constellation Canes Venatici and also shows a collision between the main galaxy (M 51) and a smaller galaxy (just beneath). The faint glow around the galaxies is created by millions of ejected star systems. This image was taken over several nights in April and represents a total exposure of 13.5 hours. Click on the image for a larger view. Image Details - April 23,24,25, 2019
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Pictures of the Week - April 11, 2019 | |||||||||||
A monster galaxy in the heart of the Virgo cluster! This image shows Messier 87 (M 87)- an enormous elliptical galaxy 55 million light years away - in the very core of the large cluster of galaxies known as the "Virgo Cluster". M 87 has fascinated astronomers for decades, not only because of its enormous size (more than 5 times the mass of our own galaxy) but also because of a huge jet of material squirting out of the galaxy and traveling at close to the speed of light. This is produced by a massive black hole (more than 2.5 billion solar masses) located at the centre of the galaxy. In early April of this year, after a two-year study using the Event Horizon Telescope Array - a first ever image of a black hole was released showing the black hole in the centre of M87. The images above were produced at The King's University Observatory #2 on the evening of April 11, 2019. The bottom image shows M87 at the centre of the frame while the top image provides a close-up roll-over image that has been re-processed using a High Dynamic Range stretch to show the relativistic jet projecting from the galaxy. If you trace this jet back to the centre of M 87 you will find the location of the black hole. Image Details - April 11, 2019
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Picture of the Week - March 12, 2019 | |||||||||||
NGC 2903 is a beautiful example of a barred-spiral galaxy. Careful inspection of this image shows a long bar-structure cutting through the middle of the galaxy from roughly the "1 o'clock position to 7 o'clock. Bars are common - our own Milkyway galaxy is also a barred spiral. This particular galaxy is located about 30 million light years away in the constellation Leo. Click on the image for a full-screen view. The image was captured over several nights in February and March - total exposure of more than 200 images through 4 filters was approximately 13.5 hours. Image Details - February 25, 27, March 3,4, 5
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Picture of the Week - March 8, 2019 | |||||||||||
The "Horse head Nebula" (technically known as IC 434 or Barnard 33) is a challenging object to image from our light polluted Edmonton skies. The horse head is a dusty region in the belt of Orion, the bright red glow is caused by hot hydrogen gas glowing with its characteristic red colour. This image is a 7.5-hour exposure taken over five nights in late January through early March. ( Click on image for a larger view) Image Details - January 21, February 25, 27, March 3, 5
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Picture of the Week - January 20, 2019 | |||||||||||
Lunar Eclipse of the "Wolf-Moon" - January 20, 2019. This image was taken at TKUO#3 under very poor conditions. Despite this the coppery colour of the lunar eclipse shows in this 2-second exposure. Image Details - January 20, 2019
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Picture of the Week - October 31, 2018 | |||||||||||
NGC 7380 or the "Wizard Nebula" is a rather faint emission nebula in the constellation Cepheus. This 6-hour long narrow-band image was taken on the evenings of October 22 and 23. The greenish glow is due to hydrogen gas that is energized by numerous newly formed stars. The background shows faint traces of hydrogen emission and clouds of dust. The "Wizard" can be seen in profile in the bright central part of the nebula (if you have a good imagination!). Click on image for full-screen view.
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Picture of the Week - October 24, 2018 | |||||||||||
The Andromeda Galaxy or M 31 is our nearest, large galactic neighbour. Visible to the naked eye, this massive spiral galaxy in the constellation Andromeda contains nearly a trillion stars and is located 2.2 million light years from us. Currently M31 is approaching our Milky Way galaxy at a velocity of 300 km/s. In about 2 billion years our two galaxies will collide. This LRGB image was taken through 4 separate filters on the evenings of October 17, 19. Click on the image for a full-screen view. Image Details - October 17,19 - 2018
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Picture of the Week - October 16, 2018 | |||||||||||
NGC 1499 , also popularly known as the "California Nebula", is an emission nebula located high in the northern sky in the constellation Perseus. Like most gas clouds in the Milky way this is illuminated by numerous nearby bright young stars. In the case of NGC 1499 the illuminating star is the bright blue star Menkib located in the upper left corner of the image. This image was taken October 16, 2018 over a span of 6 hours through narrow band filters. Click on the image for a full screen view. Image Details - October 16 - 2018
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Picture of the Week - October 5, 2018 | |||||||||||
IC 1396 is the name given to the region pictured above. This is a cloud of gas and dust situated in the northern constellation Cepheus. At 2400 light years away and more than 100 light years across, the entire nebula is energized by the bright, multiple star system HD 206267 located in the center of the image. To the immediate left is a tongue of gas and dust commonly referred to as the "Elephant Trunk" nebula. (A magnified image of this was presented in the TKUO pic-of-the-week on September 15, 2016.) This is a site of active star formation. This image is the result of nearly 10 hours of data collected over 3 nights using narrow-band filters and rendered in the "Hubble Palette". Hydrogen gas is rendered green, Sulphur red and Oxygen blue. Click on the image for a full screen view. Image Details - September 5, October 3,4 - 2018
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Picture of the Week - August 21, 2018 | |||||||||||
I am like a slip of comet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1864
Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner imaged August 21, 2018. Every year dozens of minor comets pass us silently in their journeys around the Sun. Comets are the oldest bodies in the solar system, predating the formation of the Earth and each one a "travelling museum" of our Solar System's birth and early history. Comet Giacobini-Zinner is nearing closest approach tot he Sun later this fall, It will continue to brighten until mid September. At this time it will be visible through binoculars from a dark sky region. Click on image for a fullscreen view. Image Details - August 21, 2018
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Picture of the Week - August 13,14 2018 | |||||||||||
The Milky way from Writing on Stone Provincial Park in southern Alberta is truly humbling! These images were taken during the evenings of August 13, 14 at the tail end of the Perseid Meteor shower. Image on the left: The faint streak in the top middle of the image on the left is not a meteor - rather a "pesky" satellite! The bright blob on the lower left is the planet Mars shining through a thin layer of smoke-haze. This is a single 10 s exposure, untracked. Click on the image for a full screen view. Image on the right: A composite of 19, 30 s exposures revealing a stunning number of stars and the subtle colours of this spiral arm of our galaxy. Among the myriad of stars you can see three very bright ones - the Summer Triangle. Top left is Deneb, middle right is Vega and lower middle is Altair. If you look next to Deneb you can spot the North American nebula which was the TKUO pic of the week on July 15 and again July 27 this summer. Click on the image for a full screen view. Image Details - August 13,14, 2018
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Picture of the Week - August 5, 2018 | |||||||||||
On the eastern edge of the summertime constellation Cygnus - The Swan - lies the faint remains of a long dead star. This object is commonly referred to as the Veil Nebula and is the central portion of the Cygnus Complex - a supernovae remant (SNR) thought to have been created by the explosion of a massive star located about 1500 light years from Earth sometime in the past 5000 to 8000 years. This 4-hour exposure was created by combining images made through Hydrogen and Oxygen filters. Click on the image for a full screen view. Image Details - August 5, 2018
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Picture of the Week - July 27-29, 2018 | |||||||||||
Narrow band image of NGC 7000 (aka The North American Nebula) and IC 5070 (aka The Pelican Nebula) in the constellation Cygnus taken over three nights (July 27,28,29). This are large clouds of gas and dust located in a spiral arm of our galaxy and illuminated by bright stars. The image was taken through 3 separate filters with a total exposure time of 6 hours and shows the light emitted by Hydrogen, Oxygen and Sulphur atoms present in the galaxy. Click on the image for a full-screen view. Image Details - July 27,28,29, 2018
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Pictures of the Week - July 15,16 2018 | |||||||||||
NGC 7000 is also aptly known as "The North American Nebula" and is located about 2200 light years away in the constellation Cygnus (The Swan). This is just beneath the bright star Deneb and is within the Milky Way and thus the numerous background and foreground stars. The reddish glow is from hot hydrogen gas silhouetted against darker clouds of dust. Click on image for larger view. Image Details - July 16, 2018
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A wonderful conjunction between the Moon and Venus as it appeared Sunday, July 15 2018. Click on the image for a bigger view. Does this remind you of the flag from a Middle-Eastern nation? Click on the image to get a bigger view. Image Details - July 15, 2018
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Picture of the Week - May 28, 2018 | |||||||||||
Despite being at solar minimum our Sun is still an active place! Several small sunspots are currently visible as well as a few dramatic prominences. This image is a composite of two different image sets each consisting of several thousand frames collected as a "video stream" and then mathematically combined into a single image. Click on image for larger view. Image Details - May 18, 2018
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Picture of the Week - May 22, 2018 | |||||||||||
Messier 92 is the "other" great globular cluster in Hercules. M 92 is located 26 700 light years away, contains about 200 000 stars and is one of the oldest known globular clusters. It could be as much as 2 billion years older than M13 pictured below. Click on image for bigger view. Image Details -May 22, 2018
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Picture of the Week - May 17, 2018 | |||||||||||
The return of warm spring evenings also marks the return of the great globular clusters! Pictured above is Messier 13 - the Great Globular in Hercules. This image was taken in May 2016 but just processed now! Globular clusters are very old objects that formed before the galaxy itself and orbit our galaxy at distances of thousands of light years. M13 is thought to be 11.65 billion years old and is located 25 thousand light years away. It contains about 300 000 stars and is 180 light years across. Even through a small telescope under a dark sky it is an amazing sight! Click on image for a larger view. Image Details -May 13, 2016
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Pictures of the Week - May 11, 2018 | |||||||||||
An aurora named STEVE (aka Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement) makes an appearance in the southern sky over Edmonton Friday night! This still poorly understood auroral type was identified first by an Alberta group of aurora enthusiasts who suggested the name "Steve" in jest and the name stuck. Eventually space scientists came up with the rather tortured acronym Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement! Image Details - May 11, 2018; 22:10 MDT
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A very quiet day on the sun! One tiny sunspot lingers in the lower left quadrant (can you find it?) while there is a faint prominence on the solar limb at the 2 o'clock position. This image is the sum of 2000 images captured in Hydrogen alpha light. Click on the image for a full screen view. Image Details -May 11, 2018
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Picture of the Week - May 6, 2018 |
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A solar storm spawned a rather faint and short-lived display Sunday night over Alberta. The image shown above was taken at 10:16 pm and shows the characteristic greens of atmospheric oxygen as well as some purple emission from Nitrogen. Click on image for full-screen view. Image Details - May 6, 2018
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Picture of the Week - April 23, 2018 | |||||||||||
The scarred face of our moon! If you inspect each image carefully you can begin to see a history of the moon reveal itself. Older, "submerged" craters are still visible through the smooth "lava-plains" that flowed several billion years ago on the lunar surface. Numerous tiny craters (as well as the dominant ones in each image) are more recent and remind us that asteroidal impact events still occur in the solar system. Small "rivulets" that were at one time lava-rivers are also visible. Rupes Recta (panel on the right) is a 100 km long escarpment. Click on each image for a larger view. The images were taken using "lucky-imaging" - several thousand frames from a video stream are combined with mathematical filtering techniques rejecting frames blurred by the atmosphere. Each of these images represents several thousand frames captured at roughly 50 frames per second over a continuous span of many minutes. Image Details - April 23, 2018
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Picture of the Week - April 19, 2018 | |||||||||||
An unexpected bright aurora Thursday evening - just before the clouds rolled in! Click on image for full screen view. Image Details - April19, 2018
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Picture of the Week - April 4, 2018 | |||||||||||
The magnificent "Whirlpool Galaxy" or Messier 51 (M 51) is seen interacting with its smaller companion NGC 5194. These galaxies are approxximately 23 million light years away and located the "Hunting Dogs" constellation or Canes Venatici - just below the handle of the Big Dipper. This is a classic example of a galactic collision and the spray of light around the galaxies is the debris of stellar systems ejected from the galaxies during the encounter. Numerous background galaxies are also visible in this image. Click on image for larger view. Image Details - April4, 2018
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Picture of the Week - March 12, 2018 | |||||||||||
Mercury and Venus make a rare appearance! For the next few nights you will be able to see Mercury quite high above the western horizon. What makes this conjunction unusual is how bright Mercury is - it is seldom this easy to see and indeed few people will have seen the inner most of the planets. Keep watching over the next few nights as the planets move closer together and Mercury fades - but don't wait too long! Mercury always sets (or rises) close to the sun. This image was taken at 8:32 pm. (Click on image for larger view) Image Details - March 12, 2018
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Picture of the Week - March 8, 2018 | |||||||||||
When you see the constellation Leo the Lion rising in the east at sunset you know spring is fast approaching! Leo is a region of the sky rich in galaxies and pictured above is a lovely trio - the Leo Triplet which comprises Messier 65, Messier 66 and NGC 3628 (from left-right and top-bottom). This cluster is about 35 million light years from earth and reminds us that galaxies are a gregarious lot and like to live in families! Messier 66 was featured as TKUO pic of the week April 18, 2012 while NGC 3628 was pic of the week for April 11, 2015. Click on the image to get a full screen view. Image Details - February 22, March 7,8, 2018
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Picture of the Week - March 1, 2018 | |||||||||||
NGC 2174 (or "The Monkey Head Nebula") is an emission nebula in the Orion star-forming region of the sky. (The "monkey" is seen in a 1/4 profile looking to the left with its head tipped slightly upward!). This image is taken through Hydrogen, Oxygen and Sulphur narrow-band filters and using the Hubble Palette which assigns blue to OIII, green to H-alpha and red to SII emission. Click on this image for a full-screen view. Image Details - February 22,26,28, 2018
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Picture of the Week - February 26, 2018 | |||||||||||
A brief burst of geomagnetic activity above the Edmonton region! This playful aurora appeared in the early evening of February 26 and just as quickly disappeared! (You can catch events like this with the aid of Spaceweather.com). Click on each image for a full-screen view. Image Details - February 26, 2018
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Picture of the Week - February 18, 2018 | |||||||||||
The beauty of a dark rural sky is sadly becoming a rare experience for most Canadians. This is an image of the winter-time favourite constellation Orion as seen from L'Amable Lake in the Kwartha Lakes region of central Ontario. Visible in this image is a minor spiral arm of the Milky Way known as the Orion Arm (which is the where we are located!). If you mouse over the image the major star and nebulae names will appear. Click on the image for a larger view. The Orion region is dominated by very hot young blue stars. The obvious exception is the distinctly reddish Betelgeuse. Faintly visible is a reddish arc surrounding the left side of Orion - evidence that this is a vast star forming region in our galaxy. Image Details - February 18, 2018
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Picture of the Week - February 12, 2018 | |||||||||||
The Rosette Nebula through "Alien Eyes"? Imagine if our eyes responded only to the light emitted by Sulphur, Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms. Then perhaps the Rosette nebula would look like the image on the left. This image was taken through filters that only pass a very small slice of the visible spectrum. The green areas are due to the emission of light from Hydrogen, the red areas from Sulphur and the blue areas from Oxygen. This form of presentation is called the Hubble Palette and is a common colour-coding used by the Hubble Space Telescope. Click on the left-hand image for a full screen view.
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Image Details - February 11, 2018
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Picture of the Week - February 6, 2018 | |||||||||||
The stunning Rosette Nebula (aka Caldwell 50) is a winter sky gem. Tucked away in the constellation Monoceros ("The Unicorn") at a distance of 5000 light years, the Rosette Nebula is a star forming region and part of the much larger Orion-star forming complex. In the centre of the nebula is the bright young cluster of stars - NGC 2244. The two objects are related - the gas and dust of the nebula has provided the stuff from which the stars were born. Click on the image for a full-screen view. Image Details - January 22, February 3,5, 2018
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Picture of the Week - January 22, 2018 | |||||||||||
The Open Cluster Messier 35 (middle of image) is a family of roughly 1000 stars located 2800 light years from Earth in the constellation Gemini. The cluster is relatively young having formed about 150 million years ago. Below and to the right is the much more distant cluster NGC 2158. At a distance of 11 000 light years, this object was once thought to be a globular cluster but now it is believed to be a very old open cluster (about 2 billion years old). Image Details - January 22, 2018
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Picture of the Week - January 19, 2018 | |||||||||||
The Great Nebula in Orion (NGC 1976) is a marvelous sight in a small telescope and spectacular in a large one! Located in the Sword of Orion and visible to the unaided, M42 is an active star forming site located approximately 1300 light years away and is the closest star forming region. The intricate wisps and variety of colours tell us about the chemical composition and structure of the cloud. Beneath the nebula lies "The Running Man Nebula" (Sharpless 279) where the bright blue colour derives from scattering of starlight from fine dust grains in the nebula. Click on image for a full-screen view. Image Details - January 4,5,11, 2018
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Picture of the Week - January 15, 2018 | |||||||||||
A cosmic "pas des deux" as two nearby galaxies are locked in an orbital embrace. The top galaxy is the magnificent spiral M 81 (aka Bode's Galaxy - featured as January 20, 2017 TKUO pic of the week) while the bottom galaxy is M 82 (aka the "Cigar" featured April 20, 2015). These galaxies are located about 11 million light years away in the region of the sky above the bowl of the Big Dipper. M 82 is an enigmatic object - the red plumes radiating from the centre are evidence that this galaxy is undergoing "violent" star-formation and is classified as a "starburst galaxy". Click on the image for a full screen view. Image Details - January 4,5,11, 2018
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Pictures of the Week - December 20, 2017 | |||||||||||
The "Double Cluster" (NGC 869 & NGC 884 or h & χ Persei) is a beautiful fall/winter object. Visible to the unaided eye it is located between the constellations Perseus and Cassiopeia at a distance of approximately 7600 light years. This lovely object is a collection of several thousand newly formed stars and at an age of 12 million years is one of the youngest star clusters in our sky. Click on the image for a full screen view. Image Details - December 20, 2017
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The Andromeda Galaxy (aka "The Great Nebula in Andromeda" or Messier 31) is visible to the unaided eye as a grayish "smudge" in the constellation Andromeda. At a distance of 2.5 million light years it is the main member of our local group of galaxies and is approximately 60% larger than our own Milky Way galaxy. This image comprises more than 25 hours of data acquired in November of this year. Click on the image for a full screen view. Image Details - November, 2017
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Picture of the Week - December 15, 2017 | |||||||||||
The Horsehead nebula (or more poetically called IC434!) is seen as a dark chimney of dust against a bright red background of hot hydrogen gas. The nebula is part of the vast Orion star forming region and is found just next to the brilliant star Alnitak (most easterly of Orion's belt stars). Click on the image for a full screen view. Image Details - December 12,13, 2017
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Picture of the Week - December 9, 2017 | |||||||||||
The star cluster Messier 37 (ngc 2099) is a beautiful winter sky object in the constellation Auriga. Seen with a small telescope or binoculars through a dark sky the cluster appears as a shimmering spray of mostly bluish hued stars. The cluster of more than 500 stars is about 400 million years old and 4500 light years away. Click on image for a full size view. Image Details -December 9, 2017
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Picture of the Week - November 10, 2017 | |||||||||||
Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades? The Pleiades (Messier 45) are arguably the most beautiful star cluster in the heavens! This family of stars formed about 100 million years ago and is located about 444 light years away in the constellation Taurus. As the image above shows the cluster is surrounded by dust which appears as the intricate web of blueish and reddish-brown wisps illuminated by the most luminous of the Pleiads. Interstellar space is not completely empty and M45 is "ploughing" through a dusty part of our galaxy. The image was produced over 3 nights and represents over 6 hours of exposure through 4 different filters. Click on the image to get a full screen view. Image Details - October 27, November 8, 10, 2017
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Picture of the Week - October 20, 2017 | |||||||||||
This is the same object (M33) as shown below but this time in full colour! The image was created by combining 5.5 hours of data taken over of a series of nights in September and October. Subtle details in the core of the galaxy are visible through the use of HDR (High Dynamic Range) processing applied to the data. The spiral arms of the galaxy are traced by numerous bright blue stars that have recently formed. Also visible in the arms are bright reddish "blobs" - regions of active star formation. Click on the image to get a full screen view. mage Details - September 29, October 3, 13,16, 2017
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Picture of the Week - October 4, 2017 | |||||||||||
The magnificent galaxy M33 located 2.7 million light years away in Triangulum rises in the early evening this time of year. This image is part of a senior thesis project currently being conducted by Benjamin Lien. Ben is attempting to measure the expansion rate of the universe (reproducing the epochal discovery of Edwin Hubble in 1929). This particular galaxy is part of the study and part of our local group of galaxies. M33 is moving towards us at about 180 km/s. Measuring this velocity with our small observatory telescope was a challenge - the galaxy has a low surface brightness. So - we measured the bright reddish areas that can be seen in the image. These are vast star forming regions that shine brightly in the light emitted by hot Hydrogen gas. Click on this image to get a much bigger view and then pan around in the galaxy to see many such regions. The image was constructed as a "two-tone" image by adding a Luminance or white light view with a deep red (Halpha) view. This helps bring out the presence of the hot, hydrogen regions in the galaxy. Image Details - September 29, October 3, 2017
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Picture of the Week - October 2, 2017 | |||||||||||
NGC 6820 is large emission nebula located 6000 light years away in the constellation Vulpecula (The Fox). In summer and early autumn this object lies in the heart of the milky way as it arches overhead in Alberta skies. In the centre of the image is a small cluster of very young stars that are providing the energy to make this region glow. The predominantly red colour is due to the presence of Hydrogen atoms in the surrounding space, the darker regions are signs of the dust from which these stars were born. This image was taken over a span of 4 nights and required more than 10 hours of exposure through 5 different filters. Click on image for a larger view. Image Details - September 6,10,27,28 2017
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Pictures
of the Week - September 27, 2017 |
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Magnificent aurora captured by King's astronomy student and professional photographer Chris Wood at the conclusion of an Astro 200 evening lab at the TKU Observatories on September 27, 2017. Click on each image for a full screen view. |
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Pictures
of the Week - September 10, 2017 |
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Stars are Born - in dust clouds such as this - NGC 6820 in the constellation Vulpeculae! Vulpeculae or The Fox is a faint constellation in the northern summer sky situated just above Altair, the bottom star in the summer Triangle. This is part of our Milky Way, about 6000 light years away and is a vast star forming region. This image represents "a work in progress". If skies permit, over the next several weeks more data on this image will be acquired and eventually a colour image of the region will be produced. The image shown above was taken through a broadband "L' filter on Sunday evening, September 10. Click on this image for a larger view. Image Details - September 10, 2017
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Pictures
of the Week - September 6, 2017 |
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A spectacular group of sunspots is currently populating the solar surface. These are HUGE spots and can even be seen with the unaided eye and an appropriate filter. What makes these odd is the fact that the sun should be approaching solar minimum - a time in which we usually see very few sunspots. Often accompanying such large spots is increased flare activity and the potential for bright northern lights. This image was produced by taking roughly 1500 frames - each of 0.01 s duration and then summing them. Click on this image for a larger view. The image on the right is a close-up of the major sunspot group. In this image you can see the dark area (umbra) surrounded by the lighter penumbra of the sunspots. Image Details - September 6, 2017
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Pictures
of the Week - August 21, 2017 |
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click for videoclick here for youtube video by King's alum Daniel Vanderwel |
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The image shown above uses a technique known as HDR or High Dynamic Range imaging. This specific image of the eclipse was made by combining 11 different shots with exposure times ranging from 1/4000th of a second to 1 second. This enables one to see the subtle detail in the corona and clearly shows how the hot gases in the Solar corona follow the magnetic field lines of the sun - reminiscent of the way in which iron filings will trace out the field around a magnet. Click on the image for a larger view.
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The Total Solar Eclipse 2017 as seen from Idaho Falls, Idaho on August 21, 2017. This spectacular event was only 1minute 41 seconds in duration but what a 1 minute and 41 seconds! Under nearly perfect skies the corona was exceptionally bright. The frames on the left and right show ingress and egress "Diamond Rings" (1/1000 s exposure) while the center frame (1/2 s exposure) shows streamers in the solar corona. Also visible in the image on the left are numerous solar prominences. Without the aid of a solar telescope and H-alpha filter (see last week's image for example) the only way to see prominences with the un-aided eye is to view them during an eclipse. Click on each image for a larger view. Image Details - August 21, 2017
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Picture
of the Week - August 17, 2017 |
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A very active sun! Two huge solar prominences and lots of smaller ones along the solar limb as well as an extended sunspot group on the solar surface. This is a composite image produced by stacking 2000+ images of the solar surface and limb details. Click on image for a larger view. Image Details - August 17, 2017
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Picture
of the Week - July 29, 2017 |
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The "jellyfish-like" object in the centre of the frame goes by a number of names: The Crescent Nebula, NGC 6888, Sharpless 105 or Caldwell 27. This is the end-stage in the life of a massive star destined to become a supernova - likely sometime in the next few thousand years! Just off centre in the nebula is the progenitor star WR136 or HD192163. This is a Wolf-Rayet star which is a rare class of stars (only about 150 are known in our galaxy) that is the inner core of a star that has blown much of its outer envelope into space. The large nebula is the result of rapidly moving material from the star colliding with an earlier episode of mass ejection in the star's recent past. This star has a mass of more than 20 times the sun's mass and is about 4.7 million years old. The image shown here was produced over two nights and is "bi-colour" - the result of combining an image of light emitted by Hydrogen atoms (reddish hues) and Oxygen atoms (bluish hues). Click on the image for a full-screen view. Image Details - July 25,29, 2017
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Picture
of the Week - July 13, 2017 |
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A very active sunspot group has formed on the Sun! This image was taken at 12:00 on July 13, 2017 and shows one of the largest sunspots in several years. Click on this to get a full screen view. You can see the classic "umbra-penumbra" structure in the spot. The umbra is the darkest area and is about 4000 K or roughly 2000 degrees cooler than the surrounding solar photosphere. Just off centre is another "swarm" of many tiny spots that are forming. This is a "white-light" image taken with a neutral density filter in front of the telescope. Image Details - July 13, 2017
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Picture
of the Week - July 7, 2017 |
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Lovely solar prominences today (July 7)! The delicate brush-like structure at the "8o-clock" position is sometimes referred to as a hedgerow prominence. Above appears a small sunspot group and a brighter area known as a plage. The delicate swirling pattern delineates the strong magnetic fields that accompany sunspots. Click on this image for a larger view. Image Details - July 7, 2017
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Picture
of the Week - July 5, 2017 |
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During our lovely summer evenings the Milkyway arm of our galaxy bisects the night sky. The image shown above represents a total exposure time of 8 hours and was taken over two nights at King's Observatory #2. If you look up and find the summer triangle (an asterism marked by the bright stars Deneb, Vega and Altair) you will see a faint glowing band. The image shown here is a small portion of the Milkyway, replete with clouds of glowing gas, near Deneb. This image uses the Hubble Space Telescope colour palette - Hydrogen gas is shown in green, Sulfur in red and Oxygen in blue. Dark areas in the image are dusty regions full of "star stuff"! Click on image a really big view! Image Details - July 3,4, 2017
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Picture
of the Week - June 25, 2017 |
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Our Sun's ever changing face! This image was taken in Hydrogen-alpha light on the afternoon of June 25, 2017. Solar prominences are dynamic phenomena tracing the movement of hot, hydrogen gas threading along the magnetic field lines of the sun. These structures evolve over the span of just a few hours. This particular one is several times larger than Earth and has been visible for the past several days. Click on image for larger view. Image Details - June 25, 2017
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Picture
of the Week - June 19, 2017 |
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A solar inferno! This image was produced using a very special kind of telescope that focuses the red light emitted by Hydrogen atoms. This allows you to see delicate features not visible in white light (for example - compare this image to the TKUO pic of the week for March 29) . The mottled surface and twisting shapes show how the electrically charged plasma of the sun follows the tangled magnetic field lines that poke up through the solar surface and then back into it. At about the "one o'clock" position on the limb of the sun you can see a solar prominence. This is an arc of hot hydrogen gas leaping off the solar surface and following the magnetic field. The dark, long wisps (or filaments) on the solar surface are prominences seen from above and form a silhouette against the solar surface. To help give a bit more perspective - at the upper right corner is a tiny insert showing the size of the Earth in comparison to the features in this image. If you click on the image a full size pop-up will appear. Image Details - June 19, 2017
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Picture
of the Week - May 28, 2017 |
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The early summer sky in the constellation Lyra is dominated by the bright star Vega. Close by is a remarkable sight - the "Smoke Ring" nebula or Messier 57. This is a classic example of a planetary nebula - one of the last phases in the evolution of a star like our sun. The nebula is located about 2000 light years away and is roughly 1 light year in diameter. Planetary nebulae are short-lived stages in stellar evolution lasting only about 10,000 years in this form before gently dissipating into interstellar space. Click on this image to get a close-up view of the Ring Nebula. Image Details - May 28, 2017
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Picture
of the Week - April 3, 2017 |
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A bit of everything - a beautifully placed first quarter moon, an elusive comet and a nearby galaxy! Click on each image to get a larger pop-up view. The middle image is Comet 2015V2 Johnson - this solar system interloper has lived most of its life deep in the Oort Cloud at an average distance of about 60 000 AU (or 60 000 times the earth-sun distance). This small ball of water, carbon dioxide and other trace organics (as well as some dust) is one of the oldest objects in our solar system. The comet was discovered in 2015 (hence its name) - this will be the last time it will ever be seen. The comet is on a hyperbolic orbit which means that it will be ejected into inter-stellar space after its encounter with our Sun. The last image is a wide-filed view of the "Whirlpool Galaxy" as it interacts with a smaller neighbor. For a closer view take a look at the April 1, 2016 image of the week. Image Details - April 3, 2017
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Picture
of the Week - March 29, 2017 |
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Our Sun is a bit more active after several weeks of no-spots! A number of prominent sunspot groups are present. The dark region of the sunspot ("the umbra") is created by the effect that strong local magnetic fields have on the solar surface. The magnetic fields inhibit the flow of warm gases to the surface. Despite this the sunspot core is still very hot - about 4000 C degrees compared to the roughly 6000 C of the solar surface. This image was taken using a combination of neutral density filters and narrow-band hydrogen alpha filters. Click on image for larger scale pop-up. Image Details - March 2, 2017
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Picture
of the Week - March 2, 2017 |
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Our quiet Sun! In recent decades we have seen a significant decline in the number of sunspots. Today we are still 2 years away from the next solar minimum. The image above shows the Sun at noon MST on Thursday, March 2. A small chain of sunspots is visible in the center with another group on the western limb (on the right side of the image). At this rate we will have the smallest solar maximum in over a century! Despite this there are a number of interesting features to note in this image. Around the sunspots (and in a number of other places) you can see bright areas - these are called "plages" and are caused by the hot gas from the lower depths of the sun being forced (by the suns magnetic field) around the sunspots and to the surface. Also - if you look carefully (click on image for bigger view) you will see that the sun has an "orange-peel" complexion. This is the granulation pattern of the sun and is evidence of how energy is transported from the interior of the sun to the surface. It is by convection - just think about a pot of oatmeal or cream of wheat bubbling on the stove! Image Details - March 2, 2017
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Picture
of the Week - January 20, 2017 |
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M81 or NGC 3031 (aka Bode's Nebula) is a magnificent spiral galaxy located 11.7 million light years away in Ursa Major (above the bowl of the Big Dipper) and is the largest member of the M81 group of galaxies. Image was taken on the night of January 20/21, 2017. Click on image for a larger view. image Details: January 20/21 - 2017
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Picture
of the Week - October 19, 2016 |
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Cosmic Bubbles! The faint nebula NGC 7635 appears as a spherical "bubble" in this image taken in the light emitted by Hydrogen, Oxygen and Sulphur atoms. NGC 7635 is located about 8000 light years away in the "W" - Cassiopeia and measures about 6 light years across. The bubble is produced by gas flowing outward from a very hot central star. The star in question is SAO 20575 - about 44 times the mass of our sun. Such massive stars (known as Wolf-Rayet stars) have very short life-spans (only about 1 million years - our sun has a life span of 10 billion years!) and, at the end of their lives produce fierce stellar winds sweeping out into interstellar space. image Details: October 19- 2016
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Picture
of the Week - September 15, 2016 |
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A very rich portion of our galaxy - this is IC 1396 as imaged in the light produced by atoms of Hydrogen (coded green), Oxygen (blue) and Sulphur (red) to produce a surreal glimpse of an active star forming region. IC1396 is located about 2400 light years away in the constellation Cepheus. This image is of the central part (called IC 1396A) and is dominated by a 6 light year long chimney of dust that is back-lit by the glow of recently formed stars. mage details:
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Picture
of the Week - September 6, 2016 |
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A final version of the star forming region IC 5070 captured August 25,28,29 and September 6, 2016. The image is a combination of separate images taken with filters that allowed viewing the full spectrum ("L" filter) as well as the light emitted by Hydrogen, Oxygen and Sulphur atoms. The Hubble Space Telescope palette was used where hydrogen light is coded green, light from sulphur red and oxygen is coded blue. Click on image for full-screen view. Image details:
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Pictures
of the Week - August 25 - 30, 2016 |
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A zoomed-in view of the star forming region IC 5070 which hangs overhead in late August evenings in Cygnus the Swan. This image was taken at TKUO #2 using the RC10 telescope and in light emitted by predominantly hydrogen, oxygen and sulphur atoms. The dark plume of dust in the upper right of the image is, fittingly dubbed the "Elephant Trunk". IC 5070 is a large region in the Milky Way just below and west of the bright star Deneb. This very dusty region is illuminated by numerous newly formed stars. Image details:
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Picture
of the Week - August 5, 2016 |
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Messier 27 (NGC 6853) or The Dumbbell Nebula is a nearby planetary nebula. The term planetary nebula, coined in the early 18th century , has nothing to do with planets! These objects are actually the end stages of the evolution of stars like our sun. This particular nebula is located in the constellation Vulpecula about 1200 light years away. The image was taken over several nights using a combination of filters through the RC10 telescope at TKUO#2. Click on image for larger view, Image details:
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Picture
of the Week - May 11, 2016 |
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The lunar surface is always a fascinating sight! This image is the sum of 30 frames (each 0.005s duration) taken in rapid succession to mitigate the effects of turbulence in the atmosphere and then combined to produce a higher resolution image. By moving your mouse over the image you can see a number of the major features in this image. Click on the image to load a bigger view. Theophilus Crater is a major impact crater and was likely formed during the era of intense bombardment in the early solar system (1.3 - 3.2 billion years ago). Note the location of the Apollo 11 landing site in the Sea of Tranquility. This image was taken at TKUO #1 using the C14 f/8 telescope and Atik314L+ camera on the evening of May 12, 2016. | |||||||||||
Picture
of the Week - May 2, 2016 |
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Messier 100 is a text-book example of a Grand Design Spiral galaxy. Although in the constellation Coma Berenices (The Northern Crown) M100 is part of the Virgo cluster of galaxies. It is about 55 million light years from Earth and measures a bit more than 100 thousand light years across. This image is a 11.3 hour exposure taken on nights from April 13 - May 3, 2016 at King's Observatory #2. (click on image for larger view) Image details: L: 14 x 500s, R: 14 x 600 s, G: 21 x 600 s, B: 20 x 600 s. RC10 @f/8 (2000 mm fl), QSI 616 camera, PMX mount. |
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Picture
of the Week - April 20, 2016 |
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A star is born! This is actually data that was taken January 28, 2016 but just processed now and shows the great nebula of Orion or M 42. Located about 1500 light years away this is an active stellar nursery. The swirls of gas and dust with the bright glow in the centre of evidence of this. The image was taken at TKUO #2 with the RC10 f/8. Image was produced by combining images through red, green and blue ('RGB') filters. See the January 8 image of the day for a lower magnification view.ing object. Click on the image for larger view. | |||||||||||
Picture
of the Week - April 10, 2016 |
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Messier 63 or NGC 5055 (also known as the Sunflower Galaxy) is part of the same group of galaxies that contains M51 (below). The galaxy is also in the constellation Canes Venatici and is about 37 million light years away. This image was produced from 12.6 hours of data taken on the evenings of April 7, 9 and 10, 2016. Image details:
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Picture
of the Week - April 1, 2016 |
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The great "Whirlpool Galaxy" or Messier 51 in Canes Venatici (the "hunting dogs") is a spectacular spring-sky galaxy. It is located just under the handle of the big dipper and is about 23 million light years away. The galaxy is colliding with and cannibalizing a companion galaxy. The faint spray of light that extends outward from the two galaxies consists of gas and dust ejected from both galaxies. The image is a combination of images taken through L,R,G,B colour filters taken on the nights of March 5, 2016 and April 1, 2016. (Image details: L:2h, RGB 1.75 h, QSI616 camera, 10" RC f/8 on Paramount MX) | |||||||||||
Picture
of the Week - March 18, 2016 |
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The crater Copernicus is one of the most dramatic sights on the lunar surface. Pictured here, the crater is 93 km across and nearly 4 km deep. The crater is thought to be about 800 million years old and formed as the result of the impact of an asteroidal body and the moon. Image was taken at dusk on March 18 using TKUO#1 C14 at a fl of 4000 mm. The smallest features visible in this image are about 2 km across. The image was made by combining 2500 video frames captured at 60 frames/second. | |||||||||||
Picture
of the Week - January 21, 2016 |
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A winter treat - a graceful aurora, bright moon and lovely hoar frost! A few minutes earlier (as I fumbled with the camera) the aurora was brilliant with bright pink hues. Despite fading it still was a glorious sight! Image with Canon 1100D at 8 s, ISO 800. Click on image for full screen view. | |||||||||||
Picture
of the Week - January 5, 2016 |
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Next time it's clear look carefully at the sword of Orion (the path of stars dangling below Alnilam - the middle of the belt stars). You will notice a fuzzy patch. This is the great nebula of Orion or M 42. Located about 1500 light years away this is an active stellar nursery. The swirls of gas and dust with the bright glow in the centre of evidence of this. The image was taken using the 80 mm ED f/7.5 telescope and a Canon 1100D camera. Unfortunately this camera has low sensitivity in the red end of the spectrum where a great deal of the light produced by hydrogen gas in the nebula is emitted. Despite that it still reveals a fascinating object. Click on the image for larger view. (Image details: 20 x 120s sub-frames, 80mmEDf/7.5 telescope, un-modded Canon 1100D, Paramount MX) |
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Pictures
of the Week - December 19, 2015 |
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An evening stroll on a cold winter's night was made special with a wonderful display of northern lights! A Coronal Mass Ejection (or CME) earlier this week is the culprit here! As Earth sweeps through the CME - which is a large blob of hydrogen gas ejected from the Sun's surface, the high speed particles from the sun excite Nitrogen and Oxygen atoms 100 km above the Earth's surface. The result is a lovely dance of colours as the solar particles race along the Earth's magnetic field lines and interact with the upper atmosphere. Click on each image to get a larger view. Images taken December 19 with a Canon 1100D - exposures ranged from 5s to 15s. |
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Picture
of the Week - December 5, and December 15, 2015 |
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December 15: The Cone Nebula (NGC 2264) in colour created by combining images taken in Hydrogen Alpha light (coded red) and the same region through green and blue filters. The Hydrogen Alpha image is shown on the left (in monochrome). The image on the right captures the dramatic colour of this star forming region. Of particular note are the many, small orange stars. This is created by the heavy layer of dust surrounding the nebula (stuff stars are formed from) scattering the light of background stars as they shine through the nebula. The effect is very similar to what causes red sunsets on earth. Click on either image for larger view. Green and Blue Images were taken with TKUO #2 RC10 on the morning of December 15, 2015. December 5: NGC 2264 (or the Cone Nebula) was first observed by Sir William Herschel in 1784 and is now understood to be an active star forming region. This nebula is 2700 light years away and located in the constellation Monoceros - just above and slightly east of Orion. This image was taken in the light emitted by Hydrogen atoms in the red part of the spectrum ("H-alpha") and is the sum of 6, 1200s exposures. The brighter areas in the image are produced by hot, glowing Hydrogen gas and the darker "blotches" reveal rich clouds of dust that are giving birth to new stars. The central cone is illuminated by numerous bright, new stars situated within this nebula. Please click on the image for a full-screen view. Image was taken with TKUO #2 RC10 on the morning of December 5, 2015. |
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Picture
of the Week - November 25, 2015 |
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M81 - sometimes called Bode's Galaxy - is a relatively "nearby" galactic neighbor at only 12 million light years from us. This beautiful spiral galaxy is located in Ursa Major (above the bowl of the "Big Dipper") and harbours a 70 million solar mass black hole in its centre! Click on image for full view. (Image details: 2 h exposure through L filter using QSI 616 camera and RC-10 telescope at TKUO#2, image processing using PixInsight) | |||||||||||
Pictures
of the Week - November 18, 2015 |
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The first quarter moon under very good seeing conditions reveals an amazing amount of detail. Dark shadows cast by crater rims and lace-like rilles (ancient lava flow channels) etched in the lunar surface make this a fascinating moonscape. Monochrome Images taken through a blue filter using the QSI616 camera (0.02s) attached to the TKU Observatory #2 RC10 telescope. Click on each image to get a full screen view. | |||||||||||
Picture
of the Week - October 26, 2015 |
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Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades? The Pleiades or the Seven Sisters is a marvelous sight rising on a crisp November evening. This image was taken on Oct 16, 2015 using a Canon 1100D and ED80 f/7.5 telescope at King's Observatory #2. Mouse-over the image to see the names of the principal stars of the Pleiades. Click on the image to get a much bigger view. The Pleiades are a group of young stars - technically a galactic cluster - that formed about 60 million years ago. The bluish glow is caused by light scattering off fine dust particles that engulf the cluster - likely a dusty region that the cluster is traveling through as it orbits the galaxy. |
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Pictures
of the Week - October 20, 2015 |
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The "Propeller Galaxy" or NGC 7479 is an intriguing spiral galaxy in the constellation Pegasus. The galaxy is about 105 million light years away. It has the peculiar distinction that the outer regions of the galaxy seem to be rotating in the opposite direction than the inner part of the galaxy - perhaps the result of a "recent" merger with another galaxy. Image was constructed from multi-filter images taken from Oct 12, 2015 - Oct 20, 2015. |
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Great student pics of the first quarter moon! Both images were taken by eyepiece projection using smart phones on October 20, 2015 during an Astronomy 200 lab. The image on the left was taken by Julia Borden, the image on the right by Paul Den Oudsten - both member of the Astronomy 200 class at King's. Click on each image to getter a bigger view. | |||||||||||
Picture
of the Week - October 9, 2015 |
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Stunning early morning sky today! If you were up early this morning your reward was a beautiful conjunction between (from bottom to top) Jupiter, Mars and Venus forming a gentle arc above the thin crescent moon. Visible above Venus is the bright star Regulus in Leo, the Lion. There was light cloud - note the haze around the moon as well as the "earthshine" - the reflected light from Earth illuminating the darker part of the lunar phase. | |||||||||||
Pictures
of the Week - October 5, 2015 |
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The "nearby" galaxy NGC 7331 is located about 40 million light years away in the constellation Pegasus. In the background fainter and more distant galaxies (about 300 million light years away) are visible. This is an image taken over several nights beginning in mid September and is the combination of images taken through red, green, blue and clear (L-band) filters. Image details: TKUO #2, RC10 telescope (f8/2000mm): QSI 616 camera, LRGB image (L:60 min, R:60min,G:60 min,B:60min) Image dates: Sept 11, 2015 - Sept 30, 2015 |
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The glorious Milkyway hangs over head in the early Fall sky. In this wide-angle image the Crescent Nebula (see the September 11, 2015 TKUO image for comparison) is in the lower right corner while the center-top is marked by the distinctly orange-yellow pulsating star RS Cygni. Middle image shows our nearest large galactic neighbor - the Andromeda Galaxy. At a "mere" 2.2 million light years away it can be seen as a fuzzy smudge in the constellation Andromeda. This is a galaxy very similar to our own and contains at least 200 billion stars! Image on the right is the beautiful Double-Cluster in Perseus. This is a pair or stellar families in our galaxy. Click on each image for a bigger view. (Image details: Canon 1100D, 6 x 300s, ED80 f7.5 doublet) |
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Pictures
of the Week - October 2, 2015 |
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A lovely morning conjunction on October 2, 2015 showing from top to bottom: Venus, Regulus, Mars and Jupiter. (Image taken 6:30 am Canon 1100D, 1s) On the right are two images of the King's Observatories showing the small roll-away observing shed (TKUO3) that houses a large visual-use telescope and TKUO2 and TKUO1 behind that house the robotic telescopes used for imaging as well as photometry and spectroscopy. Click on the images for larger views. | |||||||||||
Picture
of the Week - September 27, 2015 |
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Eclipse of the Super Moon! Click on each of the above images to get a bigger view of the September 27, 2015 eclipse. It is called a Super Moon because the moon is at its closest approach to the Earth and hence its biggest apparent size. You will need to wait one Saros - 18 years, 11 days and 8 hours for these conditions to re-occur. Plan now! One thing to notice is the profusion of faint stars around the moon - they would normally be completely lost in the glare of a full moon. Images taken at TKUO #2 using the 800 mm ED80 refractor and Canon DSLR with exposure of 15s at mid eclipse. |
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Picture
of the Week - September 12, 2015 |
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Picture
of the Week - September 11, 2015 |
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Wolf-Rayet stars are massive and very energetic stars reaching the end of their normal lives. In this phase the star is shedding mass via a very powerful stellar wind and in the process producing a beautiful nebula. This image shows the Wolf-Rayet star WR 136 and the "Crescent Nebula". Roll over the image to see the location of the progenitor star WR 136. This object is high overhead in the late summer sky, roughly in the centre of Cygnus the swan. Image details: TKUO #2, RC10 telescope (f8/2000mm): QSI 616 camera, RGB image (R:50min,G:50 min,B:50min) Image dates: Aug 16, 2015, Sept 11, 2015 |
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Picture
of the Week - May 20, 2015 |
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The "Draco Triplet" - from left to right: NGC 5985 (face on spiral galaxy), NGC 5982 (elliptical galaxy) and NGC 5981 (edge-on spiral) are a trio of galaxies about 100 million light years away in the constellation Draco. Faint galaxies in the background are easy to spot and these are more than 1 billion light years away! This is a 9.4 hour exposure through 4 filters (L: 3h, R: 2.6h, G 2.6h and B: 1h) taken with the TKUO #2 RC10 May 14 - 19, 2015 | |||||||||||
Picture
of the Week - May 14, 2015 |
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The King of the Northern Sky globular clusters is M 13 (NGC 6205) located 22 000 light years away in the constellation Hercules. M 13 is a very old object at approximately 11.7 billion years. This is an impressive sight even in a small telescope. This image was taken on the evening of May 14, 2015 using TKUO #2 RC10 through R (80 minutes), G (40 minutes) and B(40 minutes) filters and Paramount MX. | |||||||||||
Picture
of the Week - May 13, 2015 |
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The great globular cluster M3 is in Canes Venatici. This ball of several hundred thousand stars orbits our galaxy (one of about 200 such objects) and is about 34 000 light years away. This LRGB filter image taken using TKUO #2 RC10 and QSI 616 camera L: 60 minutes, RGB: 50 minutes each. | |||||||||||
Picture
of the Week - May 12, 2015 |
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Galaxies are cannibals! Shown here is the spiral galaxy M51 or the Whirlpool Galaxy located in the constellation Canes Venatici - just below the handle of the Big Dipper. This classic spiral galaxy is caught in the act of devouring the smaller galaxy (NGC 5195) beneath it. The faint glow beneath the galaxies is created by stars and dust clouds that have been ejected from the system during the interaction. This movable feast is taking place about 23 Million light years away. Sad to say but our own Milky Way galaxy is - as we speak - cannibalizing a number of smaller satellite galaxies. Galactic collisions and mergers are an important part of the evolution of large galaxies. This image was taken at TKUO #2 through the 250 mm Ritchey-Chretien telescope at a focal length of 2000 mm on the nights of May 8, 11 2015. This is a 4-filter LRGB image: 60 minutes through each filter. | |||||||||||
Picture
of the Week - April 20 , 2015 |
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The enigmatic galaxy NGC 3034 or Messier 82 (sometimes also called the Cigar Galaxy) has long been a puzzle. The bright red central filaments projecting above and below the plane of the galaxy suggest that a violent event has occurred in the core of the galaxy. It is now commonly believed that the centre of the galaxy is scene to intense star-formation and hence NGC 3034 is classified as a Starburst Galaxy. The galaxy is located a relatively close 11 million light years away in the constellation Ursa Major. This image is the composite of images taken April 19 and 25, 2015 through L, R,G, B (60 minutes each) and Halpha (120 minutes) filters using the King's University Observatory #2 C14/f8 and QSI616 camera | |||||||||||
Picture
of the Week - April 11 , 2015 |
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The edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 3628 (aka - the Hamburger!) is located about 35 million light year away in the constellation Leo. The galaxy is part of a trio of galaxies that are gravitationally interacting and distorting each other's shapes. The disk of this galaxy is about 300 000 light years long and is being warped by the tugs exerted by the other two galaxies - not visible in this image., This image was taken on the nights April 8, 10 and 11, 2015 with the King's Observatory #2 C14/f8 through L, R, G and B filters with the QSI 616 camera. (L:60 min binned 1x1, RGB: 60 minutes binned 2x2) |
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Pictures
of the Week - February 20, 2015 |
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Left: A wonderful conjunction of the moon, Venus (brighter of the two planets shown) and Mars taken on a very cold February 20 night from Toronto! I was fortunate to be in Toronto visiting my daughter and son-in-law at the time as this event was clouded out in Edmonton. Earthshine (reflected light from Earth filling the dark portion of the lunar phase) is also evident. Photo taken with a Lumix Digital Camera courtesy Leopold Kowolik/B. Martin. (Click to enlarge) Right: The dark nebula IC 434, better known as the Horsehead Nebula is a cloud of dust silhouetted against a hot, glowing expanse of hydrogen gas. This image was obtained on the evening of February 21, 2015 with the King's Observatory C14 through a Hydrogen alpha filter (4 x 600 s exposures). (Click to enlarge) |
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Picture
of the Week - January 20, 2015 |
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The Crab Nebula and its central pulsar are shown in this image. The crab nebula is the remnant of a star that exploded roughly 1000 years ago and was visible as a new star (super nova) in the night sky (and the daytime sky as well for a short period) for more than a year. If you mouse over the image the location of this star is revealed by a tiny, rapidly spinning neutron star or PULSAR that is all that remains of the original and once massive star. This tiny star is the mass of our sun but only the size of Edmonton! It is spinning rapidly - about 30 times per second and the interaction between its intense magnetic fields and the surrounding nebula is what causes the Crab Nebula to glow as brightly as it does. Compare this with the image from December 15, 2014. That is a narrow band image which shows the structure of the shock fronts being whipped up by the pulsar. Image details: January 20, 2015, C14/f8 and QSI616 camera, L,R,G,B: 60 minutes |
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Pictures
of the Week - January 12, 2015 |
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Comet 2014Q2 otherwise known as Comet Lovejoy 2014 is making a rare appearance in our early evening skies this month - but you will need a pair of binoculars to see it. The comet is just below and west of the Pleiades. The animated image above shows the comet drifting during a 40 minute span relative to the background stars. In this image - taken with the King's Observatory #2 C14 telescope - the comet is moving through the solar system at about 37 km/s and was about 74 million km from Earth. If you miss it this time you will need to wait another 14 000 years (about when the Oilers will post a winning season!) | |||||||||||
A rare glimpse of Venus (brighter - left of centre) and Mercury together. Over the next week the two planets will be visible at sunset - a treat to see Mercury this easily - it is usually difficult to spot in the glare of the sun. | |||||||||||
Picture
of the Week - December 15, 2014 |
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The supernova remnant known as the "Crab Nebula" is shown above and represents the first image of the newly acquired Quantum Scientific Imaging (QSI616) camera. THe image is created by combining 3 separate images of the nebula taken in the light emitted by sulfur atoms (red), hydrogen atoms (green) and oxygen atoms (blue) - this is called the Hubble Palette since it is the same system used by the Hubble Space Telescope. The new camera, combined with the Paramount MX robotic telescope mount installed this September in the new King's Observatory #2 represents a significant improvement in the capacity of our observatory. For example, compare this image with one of the TKUO images of the week for March 1, 2012. Image details: SII filter: 11 x 600s subframes; Halpha filter: 11 x 600s subframes; OIII filter 10 x 300 s subframes Celestron C14 at 3000 mm fl; QSI 616 camera and Paramount MX mounting |
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Picture
of the Week - October 13, 2014 |
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The shards of an exploded star! This narrow band image of NGC 6960 - part of the Veil Nebula in the constellation Cygnus the Swan shows the remains of a star that exploded sometime between 5000 and 8000 years ago and is 1480 light years away. This would have been a truly awesome sight from earth - at its peak the supernova that produced this remnant would have shone with the brightness of the full moon and been easily visible during the day. It would have remained a brilliant object in the sky for several years. The remnant is a shock wave produced by material ejected by the supernova and traveling out into interstellar space. (3 hour exposure through Halpha, SII and OIII narrowband filters, C14/Paramount MX) | |||||||||||
Picture
of the Week - October 6, 2014 |
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Narrow-band image of the Planetary Nebula M27 in the light emitted by three elements - Hydrogen , Oxygen and Sulfur. This image was taken over 2 nights - Oct 2 and Oct 6, 2014 at The King's University Observatory. THe "Hubble Palette" is used here - in this case light emitted by Hydrogen atoms is rendered green, light from Sulfur is red and light from Oxygen is rendered blue. Fainter detail and stars are added with a luminance layer - an image taken through a broad-band filter. Image details: 4 hour exposure (1 hour in each filter), C14-Paramount MX. Image scale 1.34"/px | |||||||||||
Picture
of the Week - Septemeber 15, 2014 |
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Living on the edge! Both objects pictured here (Neptune on the left, M92 on the right) have something in common - each object "lives on the edge". Neptune is the most distant planet and lives on the edge of our solar system. This image was taken September 13, 2014 at The King's University Observatory. At that time Neptune was a "mere" 4 billion, 329 million km away! The tiny "star" just above and to the left of the planet is Neptune's major moon Triton. Messier 92 (M 92) is one of the late summer sky's most magnificent globular clusters and lives at the "edge" of our galaxy 26 700 light years away! This is an ancient object - approximately 13 billion years old and likely older than our galaxy - around which it orbits! Globular clusters are typically "balls" of hundreds of thousands of old stars, each with a mass comparable to that of our sun. This image was taken in the early morning, September 15, 2014 at TKUO. Each of these objects was imaged withTKUO's C14 @ f/7 and through LRGB filter sets with a Paramount MX mount. |
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Picture
of the Week - September 1, 2014 |
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The planetary nebula Messier 27 (M27) is a late summer classic. The nebula is the outer remnant of a dying sun-like star - slowly shedding its surface layers into inter-stellar space. This image was captured as part of a test of a new guiding system at The King;s University Observatory #1. The image is made by combining light of separate images taken through clear (L), Red, Green and Blue filters to produce an LRGB composite. This gives a very faithful rendering of the colour of the object. Images were sets of 3 minute exposures: L 10 x 3 min, R: 3 x 3 min, G: 8 x 3 min, B 8 x 3 min. Images taken with the Atik314L+ camera on the C14 at f/7. | |||||||||||
Picture
of the Week - August 28, 2014 |
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A gentle auroral arc engulfs the Pleiades or Seven Sisters! Image was an 8s exposure taken late on the evening of August 28, 2014. Fall evenings bring earlier dark skies and more opportunities to catch a glimpse of the northern lights. Click on the image to have it open in a larger pop-up window. | |||||||||||
Picture
of the Week - June 18, 2014 |
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A wonderful display of noctilucent clouds (or polar mesospheric clouds) . These are the highest altitude type of clouds and are formed by water crystals at an altitude of about 80 km. This means that these clouds form well above the troposphere. This image was taken shortly after midnight on June 18, 2014. Such displays are uncommon and usually restricted to the northern latitudes between 50 and 70 degrees latitude. The sun is below the northern horizon and is illuminating the clouds producing this startling "ghostly" appearance. The bright star in the middle and above the cloud mass is Capella. Click on image for a full screen view. | |||||||||||
Pictures
of the Week - January 26, 2014 |
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Supernova in a nearby galaxy! This is an image of a supernova ( an exploding star) in the "nearby" galaxy M82 that was first detected January 22, 2014. M82 is about 8 million light year away and is an enigmatic galaxy in its own right - It is an example of a starbust galaxy - an episode of intense star formation - likely caused by an interaction with a neighboring galaxy is causing large amounts of material to be ejected from the core of the galaxy. This gives the galaxy a turbulent appearance. Roll your mouse over the image to see the location of Supernova SN2014J. Image taken on the evening of January 26, 2014 using the C14 at f/7 - unfiltered. | |||||||||||
Pictures
of the Week - November 6, 2013 |
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A trio of fall -sky "classics" taken by Astronomy 200 students at an evening Lab (Nov 6, 2013). From left to right they are: M15 - globular cluster in Pegasus, M27 planetary nebula in Vulpeculae and M57, planetary nebula in Lyra. | |||||||||||
Pictures
of the Week - October 11, 2013 |
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The Double-Cluster in Persei (NGC 869 and NGC 884) is a pair of open clusters located about 7500 light years away in the Perseus arm of our Milky Way galaxy. These are families of newly formed stars - most of the stars formed about 12 million years ago making them much younger clusters than the Pleiades shown below. Image was taken Monday, October 14 using a Canon T3 attached to the ED80 mm f/7.5. Click on the image for a bigger view. | |||||||||||
"Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades? Can you loosen Orion’s belt?" (Job 38:31). The central part of the Pleiades cluster (Messier 45) showing the bright blue reflection nebula of dust surrounding the brighter Pleiads. The Pleiades are about 400 light years away and formed about 100 million years ago. This is a 2 hour exposure taken through a combination of Red, Green, Blue and Luminance filters using a 600 mm f7.5 lens. The coloured bands around the very brightest stars are created by internal reflection in the camera and filters. Image was taken on the night of Friday, Oct 11, 2013. Click on the image for a full-sized view. |
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Pictures
of the Week - September 9, 2013 |
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This is an image of the lovely "Dumbbell Nebula" taken on the evening of September 9, 2013 using the f7.5/80 mm wide angle telescope attached to the main instrument at TKUCO. The Dumbbell is an example of a planetary nebula - the highly evolved remains of a sun-like star. This image was constructed by combining images of the nebula produced by the light emitted by Sulphur, Oxygen and Hydrogen atoms present in the nebula. To compare this with a "natural light" image of the same object scroll down to the August 21, 2011 TKUCO pictures of the week. Image details: Sii, Oiii and H-Alpha each 1000 s (10x100), Luminance filter L 2000 s (20x100); Atik 314L+ and Orion f/7.5 80mm |
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Pictures
of the Week - September 1, 2013 |
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A Cosmic Epiphany - lifting the veil on the "Veil Nebula". The Veil Nebula (or NGC 6960) is the ancient remnant of a star that exploded approximately 8000 years ago in Cygnus the swan. Cygnus is a beautiful summer constellation that passes directly overhead in the late evening and through which the Milky Way winds gracefully. We think that the star that exploded to produce this nebula was about 1500 light years away and hence would have been a very bright "new star". This image reveals that indeed we are "star stuff". Why are we "star stuff"? Supernovae produce the heavy elements that make life possible. This image was taken on the evening of September 1, 2013 through a series filters that show light emitted by sulphur, oxygen and hydrogen atoms. If you move your mouse over the image it will "invert" to give a negative view. This is a common technique used in astronomy to help pick out faint detail. In this case you can see the veil more clearly which is part of the remains of the star expanding outward into the galaxy and seeding new star forming regions with heavier elements. | |||||||||||
Pictures
of the Week - August 21-22, 2013 |
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Nova Delphini 2013!! There is a new star in the sky! On August 14, 2013 a normally very faint star in the constellation Delphinus (the dolphin) dramatically brightened by about 25 000 times to become one of the 35 brightest novae in history and one of the first visible to the unaided eye in decades. A nova is an explosive episode in the life of a white dwarf star that is orbiting and gradually sucking mass from a nearby companion star. The material it receives is mostly hydrogen and eventually it accumulates enough hydrogen to experience a thermonuclear explosion across the entire surface of the star which is why it brightens so dramatically. For science geeks, the images on the right top show the spectrum of the nova and a remarkable set of emission features (including most of the Balmer lines). By way of comparison a "normal star" (Altair) has a very different spectrum shown in the bottom two images. Here you see only absorption lines. Click on the thumbnails for full views. Images and spectra taken at the King's Observatory on the evenings of August 21,22 - 2013. |
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Pictures
of the Week - May 17, 2013 |
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It has been a long time since I have posted images of the northern lights! On Friday evening, May 17 a lovely display danced overhead. The green is caused by Oxygen molecules, the purple-rose by nitrogen molecules excited by high energy particles from the sun. Recent solar flares have contributed to creating this "geomagnetic storm". The images were taken with a Canon 1100D and 15s exposures. Click on the images to get a bigger view. | |||||||||||
Pictures
of the Week - February 22, 2013 |
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The Moon in colour! The image on the left is a monochromatic image taken through a green filter. The image on the right is a composite of lunar images taken through Red, Green and Blue filters. The composite image reveals subtle hues on the lunar surface - especially in the darker lunar "seas". The prominent crater just off centre is Copernicus, the major crater at the top is Tycho. Images taken on February 22, 2013 using the ATIK 314L+ camera and 80mm f7.5 telescope. | |||||||||||
Pictures
of the Week - January 3, 2013 |
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The "Pinwheel Galaxy" or Messier 33 is a nearby galaxy (2.7 million light years away) in the small constellation Triangulum. This is a classic spiral galaxy, the bright blue arms are the product of "recent" star formation triggered by a slowly moving spiral density wave that creates the pinwheel shape of the galaxy. This image was taken on January 3, 2013 through a series of Red, Green, Blue and neutral filters using the Atik 314L+ camera and 80mm f/7.5 lens. Total exposure was about 2 hours. | |||||||||||
Pictures of the Week - December 14, 2012 |
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A lovely crescent moon in the early evening sky of December 18. Image (sum of 20, 0.005s exposures) taken with the Atik 314L+ camera and 80 mm F/7.5 lens. | |||||||||||
"Can you bind the chains of Pleiades or loosen the cords of Orion?" Job 38:31. This is a part of the lovely Pleiades star cluster (also known as Messier 45, the Seven Sisters or the Subaru). This cluster is a young group of several hundred stars and hangs in the eastern sky in the early December evenings. It looks like a tiny dipper but is really a small family of stars that formed about 60 million years ago. Most of the stars are bluish in colour and the blue haze seen around the brighter stars is scattering due to dust in the cluster. This image is a composite of images taken through Red, Green and Blue filters using an 80 mm f.7.5 telescope attached to the TKUCO C14. Total exposure time was 75 minutes. | |||||||||||
Pictures
of the Week - November 10, 2012 |
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What's not to LOVE about winter! While clearing the driveway (again!) early Saturday morning, November 10 one of my rewards was a beautiful display of sundogs. Most unusual however was the view overhead! Image on the right shows a nearly complete parhelic arc. Myriads of tiny ice crystals in the air create these lovely displays. Click on images to enlarge. | |||||||||||
Pictures
of the Week - August 29, 2012 |
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Not quite a Harvest Moon - but still lovely! This image, taken on the evening of August 29 is a sum of 20 frames each 0.001 s in duration and taken using a Hydrogen Alpha filter to help reduce the effect of atmosphere turbulence on the image. A new, 600 mm focal length f/7.5 lens was used for this picture. Prominent in this image are the lunar "rays" emanating from the major craters. These are paths of ejected material created when the craters formed via interplanetary bombardment with asteroids and other bodies in the early history of the solar system. Click on the image to get an enlarged view. | |||||||||||
Pictures
of the Week - June 5, 2012 |
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The rare 2012 transit of Venus - first contact. This is an image taken by colleague Dr. Martin Connors of Athabasca University. The image was taken near Vegreville, Alberta through a tiny (and the only!) pocket of clear sky. The first image shows Venus (upper right) just crossing the solar disk. Within a few minutes cloud moved in (hence the reddish tint) and transit observations were over for most people in this region! Oh well - there's still the 2117 transit coming! While transits of the Sun are very rare events the Kepler space craft is designed to look for such events around other stars and to date more than 1000 transits of exo-planets around distant stars have been observed. Exo-planet transits is the most productive method astronomers have to detect planets around other stars. The very tiny drop in light created by the transiting planet is the tell-tale sign of the planet's presence. | |||||||||||
Pictures
of the Week - May 28, 2012 |
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Worlds apart! Image on the left is the famous whirlpool galaxy (M51) in the constellation Canes Venatici. This image is a combination of a white-light image with an image taken in Hydrogen Alpha (red) light overlaid. The Hydrogen-Alpha image highlights the star forming regions of the spiral arms in the galaxy. Image taken on the evening of May 20, 2012. Image on the right is a May 27 white light image of the moon in the Sea of Serenity region. Both images are taken with the C14 at f/7. Click on the moon image for a full screen view. | |||||||||||
Picture
of the Week - April 18, 2012 |
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The spiral galaxy Messier 66 in Leo. This is relatively nearby - a "mere" 36 million light years away! Image taken on the evening of April 17-18, 2012 using the C14 at f/7. | |||||||||||
Picture
of the Week - April 1, 2012 |
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Copernicus crater (upper middle) dominates this scene. Image taken under fair conditions with the C14 at f/7 and the Atik 314L+ camera. Click on image for larger view. | |||||||||||
Picture
of the Week - March 30, 2012 |
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The Apennine Mountains with craters Archimedes (centre) and Plato (lower left). Careful inspection of the images reveals a lot! See if you can spot some old and submerged craters. Image taken on the evening of March 30, 2012 with the King's C14 at f/7 using the Atik 314L+ camera. Click on image of a larger view (pop-ups must be enabled.) | |||||||||||
Pictures
of the Week - March 1, 2012 |
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Pictures
of the Week - February 9, 2012 |
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"I believe that a leaf of grass Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855)
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The Crab Nebula is the last dying gasp of a star that exploded (a supernova) almost 1000 years ago. The image was taken on a cold February evening and shows the remnants of an exploded star racing outward into inter-stellar space. Supernovae explosions are among the most violent events in the universe but are also essential to life! It is in the exploding cores of supernovae that all of the heavy elements including Oxygen, Carbon, Nitrogen and Iron are formed. This image was taken with the Atik 314L+ camera and C14 at f/7. | |||||||||||
Pictures
of the Week - February 4, 2012 |
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Test shots for the new ATIK 314L camera! These lovely views of the moon show regions near Tycho crater (left) and Kepler crater (right). Studying these images tells us a lot about both lunar and solar system history. The moon is a museum of "cosmic catastrophes" revealing an intense era of asteroidal bombardment in the early solar system. The gray areas are the lunar seas - once vast flood plains of lava. Each image is a composite of rough 30 images taken with the King's C14 at f/7. Click on each image to see a (much) larger view. | |||||||||||
Good sky conditions on the evening of Saturday, February 4, 2012 yielded this lovely image of Jupiter and 3 of its "Galilean" moons. Also prominent on the planet is the great red spot - just slightly below centre iin this image. The image was taken using the King's C14 at f/7. Rollover the image to see the names of the Galilean moons. | |||||||||||
Picture
of the Week - January 16, 2012 |
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Ice crystals and -20C produce magnificent "sun dogs" or parhelia. Small ice crystals are suspended in air to produce an effect not unlike the rainbows created by crystals hanging in a window. These parhelia were observed on Sunday morning, January 15, 2012. Click on the image for a larger view. | |||||||||||
Pictures
of the Week - November 27, 2011 |
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Venus will soon become our evening star and also our "Christmas Star" this year. Over the next weeks Venus will climb higher in the south western sky at sunset and become a glorious object. Here Venus is in conjunction with a newly emerging moon. Image was taken on the evening os Saturday, November 26. Venus was 219 million km from Earth at the time and very low in the south western sky. Click on the image to get a larger scale view. | |||||||||||
Pictures
of the Week - November 4, 2011 |
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Left: Copernicus crater under more direct illumination Right: multi-filter image of Jupiter. Images taken on the evening of November 5, 2011 - temp -15C. Click on images for bigger view. |
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Three prominent lunar craters Left-right: Eratosthenes, Copernicus and Archimedes. The above images were taken with the King's C14 at f/11. Click on images for bigger view. | |||||||||||
Picture of the Week - October 24, 2011 |
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Just after sunset on Monday, October 24 a brilliant aurora lit up the sky. Vivid green hues were also accompanied by reds, mauves and pinks. The above image was a 15 second exposure. | |||||||||||
Pictures of the Week - October 17, 2011 |
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Clear skies early on the morning of October 15, 2011 yielded some lovely views of Jupiter and the Moon. Click on each image to load a larger view. The lunar image shows the craters Aristoteles (top, 87 km across) and Eudoxus (bottom, 67 km across). Both images taken with TKUCO C14 at f/11. | |||||||||||
Picture
of the Week - October 14, 2011 |
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Our Sun is finally emerging from Solar Minimum (about 3 years late!) and sunspots are beginning to re-appear. These sunspots are "typical" - the dark inner region is called the umbra; the lighter outer region is the penumbra. The slightly "feathered" appearance is a hint of what creates sunspots. The spots are regions on the Sun where the Sun's magnetic field lines are converging and creating enough of a magnetic force to prevent hot gases from beneath to well up to the surface. The surface temperature of the Sun is about 6000 degrees C but only about 4500 C at the centre of the spots. To see the size of the spots roll-over the image with your mouse! You will see that Earth could easily fit inside these spots!! Increased sunspot activity also means that we should expect to see more aurora and possibly major solar storms over the next few years. This image was taken about 13:30 pm MDT, October 14, 2011 using the TKUCO C14 and a solar blocking filter. |
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Pictures of the Week - September 28, 2011 |
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Jupiter - 3:00 am September 29. The famous "Great Red Spot" is visible just below centre in the image. The moon Ganymede is visible in the upper right. Image produced using the TKUCO C14 at f/11 and by combining 6000 frames through Red, Green and Blue filters. | |||||||||||
A glorious greenish glow and slender ray form part of this image of auroral activity on the night of September 27-28. Centred in the image are the Pleiades or Seven Sisters. Beneath them are the Hyades - the V-shaped cluster with Aldebaran shining brightly. Just visible in the upper right corner presides Jupiter. The characteristic green colour is produced by Oxygen atoms at a height of about 100 km. (For science nerds it is the forbidden transition at 5577 Angstroms!) Recent increased solar activity means auroral activity will increase in the coming months - keep looking up! (Click on image for enlarged view) | |||||||||||
Picture of the Week - September 9, 2011 |
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Jupiter and two of its moons. This is a 4-filter (LRGB) image. The moon immediately to the left is Io with Europa farther left. In the space of about 10 minutes between the images the planet and moons move enough affect registration of the image (hence Europa is a bit distorted). Images were taken using the TKUCO C14 at f/11. | |||||||||||
Picture of the Week - August 26, 2011 |
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The famous "Smoke-ring Nebula" in Lyra is one of the treats of the summer sky. It is located about 2300 ly from us. Similar to M27 (below) this is a planetary nebula. The progenitor star is visible in the centre of the ring. This 4-filter composite image was taken with the TKUCO C-14 operating at f/7. Image taken August 28, 2011. | |||||||||||
Pictures of the Week - August 21, 2011 |
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This is Messier 15 - a bright globular cluster that graces the late summer and fall sky. It is an ancient object. Current estimates place its age at 13.2 billion years which is certainly older than our galaxy and makes M15 one of the oldest known star clusters. Globular clusters are literally "balls of stars" - in this case more than 100 000 stars. Along with several hundred other similar objects M15 orbits our galaxy at a distance of about 33 000 light years from us. The cluster measures about 175 light years in diameter. | |||||||||||
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Messier 27 (M27) is a beautiful example of a planetary nebula - a phase at the end of the life of a solar-type star. At the end of our Sun's life it will expand and gently expel its outer 1/3 into space. The result, for a short period of time (about 10 000 years) will be a glorious ball of gases illuminated by the hot stellar remnant left behind. This object is in the small constellation Vulpecula (southern part of the Milky Way as seen from Edmonton on a warm August evening) and is about 1300 light years away. The colour image shown here was created by adding together 4 separate sets of images taken in different spectral regions. The four composite images are shown above. When colour coded and added the result is a realistic rendering of the light coming from this object. The Heavens truly are telling God's glory! | |||||||||||
Picture of the Week - May 1, 2011 |
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Colour images of two beautiful spring-sky objects. On the left is the magnificent globular cluster M3 (Messier 3) and on the right is a "textbook" example of a barred spiral galaxy M109. If you look carefully at the image of M3 you will see many little distinctly bluish stars called "blue stragglers". These have long been a "mystery" but are no doubt related to how stars evolve in very crowded environs such as those of a globular cluster. M3 is about 34 000 light years from us and is at the outer edge of our galaxy. M109 is nearly 80 million light years away! The images are 4-filter (LRGB) composites taken with the King's C14 at f/7. Click on each image for a larger view. |
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Picture of the Week - April 20, 2011 |
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The magnificent spiral galaxy M51 (L,C) and the bright spiral M65 in Leo imaged with the C14 at TKUCO. The image on the left is taken through a luminance "L" filter while the center and right ones are composite colour images taken through LRG and B filters. M51 is located 37 million light years away and is located under the handle of the Big Dipper. M65 is about 35 million light years away and is close to the bright star Denebola. |
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Picture of the Week - April 4, 2011 |
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You are looking at something 2.4 billion light years away! This little dot is the quasar 3C273. First identified in 1963 this object is actually a galaxy that is rapidly receding from us at more than 45000 km/s! The image was taken at The King's Observatory on the morning of April 5, 2011. The long streaks are spectra produced by a diffraction grating in the light path. If you mouse over to the negative image you will see two spectral lines produced by hydrogen gas in the galaxy. These are what we used to determine the redshift of the quasar and from that its distance from us. |
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Picture of the Week - March 1, 2011 |
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Even at -35C the morning sky can be awesome! Here a thin, waning crescent moon rises with Venus. Venus is disappearing as our beautiful morning star - a role it has joyfully played all winter. It is now approaching its own (full) phase and will soon, for a few weeks, be lost in the glare of the Sun. |
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Picture of the Week - December 5, 2010 |
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Under good sky conditions this multi-filter image of Jupiter was obtained. The moon in the lower right is Ganymede. Image taken with the TKUCO C14 and LRGB filters. This image has a more natural colour balance than the November 8 image. |
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Picture of the Week - November 8, 2010 |
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Jupiter and one of its moons (Europa to the left) as imaged on the evening of Novemebr 8, 2010. Sky conditions were good and the image was created with the TKUCO C-14 at f/11 by combining four separate images taken through Red, Green, Blue and Clear colour filters. |
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Picture of the Week - October 4, 2010 |
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Jupiter - King of the planets - is the brilliant "star" seen rising in the east during the month of October. This image - a composite of 2000 images taken in a 30 second span helps to remove atmospheric blurring and reveals some of the subtle cloud features on the planet - including the "great Red Spot". Unfortunately the atmospheric conditions were only marginal on this evening and colour (filtered) imagery was not possible. If the image looks "squished" a bit - it's because it is! Jupiter rotates so fast that it is actually flattened by about 7%. Picture taken Saturday morning, October 2, 2010 with the king's C14 at f/11 using the DMK 21AU04.AS imager. |
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Pictures of the Week - May 10, 2010 |
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Two spring sky classics M3 the great globular cluster and M51 - The Whirlpool Galaxy - both in Canes Venatici. M3 is a ball of about 50 thousand stars and is about 30 thousand light years from us. It orbits around the centre of our galaxy. M51 on the other hand is an "island universe" - a separate galaxy of 100 billion stars (or so) about 37 million light years away! At the top of the image is a smaller galaxy (NGC 5195) which is in collision with and being "cannibalized" by M51. Both images taken with the King's Observatory C14 at f/7. (The M51 image is actually a mosaic of 4 sets of images stitched together to provide a larger field of view.) |
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Pictures of the Week - April 5, 2010 |
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The" evening star" or Venus has a companion - the planet Mercury! This image was taken Easter Sunday, April 4, 2010. During this week keep an eye on these two. Best time to view is around 9:00 pm with a clear view of the western horizon. This is a rare event - seldom will you see Mercury and Venus together like this. Few people ever see Mercury - it is usually lost in the glare of the setting or rising sun. Click on either image to get a bigger view. |
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Picture of the Week - February 1, 2010 |
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Rupes Recta - Do you have a crack in your sidewalk or garage pad? The moon does too! Pictured above is Rupes Recta or the Straight Wall. This is a lunar rille which is a region on the lunar surface that collapsed (sank) as the lava-flooded sea cooled. Rupes Recta is an abrupt 200 m drop and measures about 100 km long. This image is a result of 2000 images frames taken with the King's C14. THe frames were stacked, combined and image processed to produce this view. |
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Picture of the Week - January 18, 2010 |
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Mars approaches! On January 29, 2010 Mars will make its closest approach in the past two years. While by no means one of its best oppositions, Mars is getting very bright and you may have noticed it rising just after sunset. It is currently one of the brightest objects in the sky and a very deep orange-red. The image shown above was taken on the evening of January 16, 2010 under fair conditions. At this time Mars was 101 million km from Earth. The picture is a composite of 4 images taken through colour filters and combined to produce this shot. The northern polar cap is prominent in this picture. Image taken with the King's C14 @ f11. |
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Picture of the Week - December 26, 2009 |
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Lunar images from The King's C14 @f11. Click for enlarged view. Left: Prominent crater bottom left is Capuanus. Centre: Large crater Clavius. Right: Crater Longomontanus. |
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Picture of the Week - November 30, 2009 |
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Lunar crater Gassendi take with the King's Celestron C14 @ f/11 under fair atmospheric conditions. Gassendi is a large crater (about 110 km across) with a rim reaching almost 3 km above the crater floor in places! Click on image to see a larger version . |
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Picture of the Week - November 19, 2009 |
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The "edge-on" galaxy NGC 891. This galaxy is 30 million light years away in the constellation Andromeda. The dark line bisecting the galaxy is dust - a common part of all spiral galaxies. Image taken using TKUCO C14 @ f/7 |
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Picture of the Week - October 16, 2009 |
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Conjunction of the Moon and Venus on the morning of October 16, 2009. Earthshine (glow in the dark area of the moon) is caused by light reflecting from the Earth back to the moon. Venus is near full phase while the moon is a thin, waning crescent. Click on image to see bigger version |
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Pictures of the Week - September 28, 2009 |
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Test image using the new Celestron - 14 telescope at The King's University Observatory. This is an image of the Globular Cluster M15 in the constellation Pegasus and is a ball of more than 200 000 stars that orbits our galaxy at a distance about 33 000 light years from us. The object measures about 88 light years across. |
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Pictures of the Week - November 5, 2007 |
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The subtly changing appearance of Comet Holmes. Left image is an update on Comet Holmes taken November 4/5, 2007. Note the brightening in the central region and slight elongation of the shell. Middle image is from the evening of November 7, 2007. The image on the right shows Comet Holmes on the night of November 8, 2007. The shell continues to elongate and a hint of the tail can be seen. It is still extremely bright. |
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A beautiful start to the week! This morning we were treated to a glorious conjunction of Venus and the late 3rd quarter moon. click images to enlarge in separate window |
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Picture of the Week - October 28, 2007 |
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click image to enlarge in separate window |
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Comet Holmes (AKA Comet 17P) was actually discovered in 1892 by British astronomer Edwin Holmes. The comet usually slips through the northern sky every 6.9 years as a silent and very faint ghost. On October 25 Comet Holmes underwent a remarkable brightening by over 400 000 times! This was due to the sudden "outgassing" of a mixture of water, carbon dioxide and dust. The spherical shell created during the outburst now measures more than 1 million kilometers across or about 70% the size of the sun! We don't see a pronounced tail becuase of the orientation of the comet. From our vantage point the tail is pointing almost directly away from us.Comet Holmes is now the brightest comet since Hale-Bopp and is easily visible to the naked eye in the constellation Perseus. The telescope image shown above was taken on the evening of November 2, 2007. An even better view can be had with a simple pair of 10 X 50 binoculars. To learn more about how to find Comet Holmes follow this link. |
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Pictures of the Week -September 26, 2007 |
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Shine on Harvest Moon! The full moon closest to the fall equinox is called the Harvest Moon (the next one will be the Hunter's Moon) and when it comes up it looks huge! Last night we had a wonderful moonrise but, sadly, though it looks big it is in fact no larger than when seen over head later at night. This famous effect is called the moon illusion. The photo on the right was taken 4 hours later and if you measure you will see that the images are the same size. Despite this, it is still a wondrous sight and always gets your attention! Click on the images to enlarge them! |
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Pictures of the Week -September 15, 2007 |
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Three galactic delights in the fall sky! While testing the drive system at King's Observatory on a wonderful September 15/16 evening these images of M15, M27 and M57 were taken. M15 is a globular cluster - a ball of about 100 000 stars orbiting our galaxy at a distance of about 33 000 light years from us. The middle and right hand images are examples of planetary nebulae - the recently shed cocoons of dying stars. M27 is located in the constellation Vulpecula (just beneath Cygnus the swan) and is about 1000 light years away. M57 is about 2300 light years from us and is in the constellation Lyra. Each image is a 15 minute exposure. Click on the images to see enlarged views. Click on the images to enalarge them to full screen. |
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Picture of the Week - August 28, 2007 |
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Lunar eclipse August 28, 2007. This was an interesting eclipse - the duration of totality was unusually long - about 90 minutes. The copper red colour occurs because during eclipse the moon is still illuminated by light that passes through earth's atmosphere. Thus, the moon is bathed in "sunset" colours. Click on image to enlarge (you need pop-up windows enabled for this). |
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Pictures of the Week - June 26, 2006 |
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Ephemeral summertime visitors - Noctilucent ("night - shining") clouds form high in the earth's atmosphere (85 km) at altitudes placing them in the mesosphere - the region that separates the lower atmosphere from the transition of the atmosphere into interplanetary space. The origin of these clouds, predominantly ice crystals, is still uncertain but their increased frequency since 1885 has led some to speculate that they may be related to climate change and human impact on the atmosphere. These rare clouds are occasionally visible in northern latitudes from late May to early July. |
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Pictures of the Week - April 28, 2006 |
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Even though we are close to the Solar Minimum - brilliant aurora can still happen. Early, Friday morning this lovely aurora danced over head! Click on images for larger versions |
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Picture of the Week - February 2, 2006 |
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Quickcam image of moon taken at The King's Observatory on the evening of February 2, 2006. Click to enlarge in separate frame (if you don't see anything then you have pop-up frame blocking enabled on your computer. Click here to open image in a new window) |
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Picture of the Week - December 11, 2005 |
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A stunning sunrise on the morning of Saturday, December 10. These brilliant shades are due to scattering of light by molecules and tiny particles of dust suspended in Earrth's atmosphere. Click to enlarge. |
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Picture of the Week - December 4, 2005 |
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Venus is a glorious "Christmas Star" this year. Venus and moon in conjunction on the evening of Sunday, December 4, 2005. Venus is the brilliant star currently visible at sunset, low in the southwest. (click to enlarge) |
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Picture of the Week - September 28, 2005 |
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Galaxy NGC7331 in Pegasus. This galaxy is 46 million light years away. The smaller "smudges" are background galaxies more than 300 million light years away! Picture taken at Astronomy 200 lab at the King;s Observatory. |
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Picture of the Week - September 29, 2004 |
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Supernova 2004et in the spiral galaxy NGC 6946. The parent galaxy and supernova are located about 18 million light years away in the direction of the constellation Cepheus. Image was taken on the night of September 29, 2004 at the King's University College Observatory. The image on the right is a pre-supernova image. Supernova are among the most violent of events in the universe. A star literally explodes and in so doing creates all of the heavy elements that make life (you and me) possible. |
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Picture of the Week - April 9, 2004 |
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The magnificent Whirlpool Nebula or Messier 51. A nearby spiral galaxy colliding with (cannibalizing?) a companion. Composite of 20, 60 s exposures. Click to enlarge image. |
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Pictures of the Week - March 22, 2004 |
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Conjunction of Venus, Moon and Mercury on the evening of March 23, 2004 (click to enlarge) |
WebCam image of the moon taken at prime focus of the TKUC 0.32 m. Prominent crater group at top of frame is Walther, Regiomontanus and Purbach. (click to enlarge) |
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Pictures of the Week - March 8, 2004 |
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WebCam image of the moon through a 90 mm Meade SCT |
WebCam image of Saturn taken at prime focus of 0.32 m f/4.5. Poor sky conditions. |
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Picture of the Week - February 23, 2004 |
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Beautiful conjunction of moon and Venus, February 23, 2004. click to enlarge |
Orion in the late winter sky - February 2004. Canon G3, 15" exposure, F2.0 click to enlarge |