It's A Wonderful Life - Stephan's Quintet

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What galaxy photo do you think has been seen by more people than any other?  Your first thought might be that it could be the Andromeda galaxy, but I'm thinking it might be a group of galaxies instead.  In one of the most watched movies of all time, the 1946 movie "It's A Wonderful Life", there is a short scene at the beginning of the movie where God an two angles are talking.  God and one angel are represented by galaxies and a star represents a third angel.  These galaxies, called the Stephan's Quintet and are the subject of my latest astro photo above. I snatched the second image from the movie on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_lR6HEdOb8

My image, taken last Fall, is a three hour exposure using my 7.5" Mak/Newtonian, 1000mm focal length telescope.  Stephan's Quintet is the group of 5 galaxies at lower left.  At the upper right is the beautiful spiral NGC 7331.

NGC7331 is the largest member of a cluster of galaxies, some of which you see above and below the galaxy. At 49 million light years away, NGC 7331 is similar in size to our own Milky Way galaxy.  The other galaxies are further away a varying distances.  A unusual thing is going on with this galaxy.  Astronomers have determined that the central bulge of stars in NGC7331 are rotating opposite that of the rest of the galaxy.  This was probably caused by infalling material, probably from smaller galaxies millions of years ago.

Stephan's Quintet was discovered by Edouard Stephan in 1877, however, only four of the five are actually part of the group.  The largest galaxy in the grouping only seems to be close, since it is 7 times closer to us (40 million light years), while the other four galaxies are 290 million light years away.  Click on the above image to bring up a larger image and notice that they are not normal spirals, but are distorted and have long arcing arms.  This is because the galaxies are violently colliding with each other.  Over millions of years, they will merge into one large elliptical galaxy.  To see a really nice Hubble Telescope image and more interesting information go to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Stephan%27s_Quintet_Hubble_2009.full.jpg

How To Take Pictures Of Waterfalls

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Waterfalls are a magical show of sight and sound.  Capturing these tumbling cascades of rushing water with your camera is not hard, but taking one that you will treasure requires some forethought and planning.  This particular waterfall, called Soco Falls, was taken just east of Cherokee, North Carolina not far from the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Smokey Mountains.  It is located on a winding road with a very small parking area near the road.  A 5-minute hike down to a wooden platform on the steep hillside gives you a nice view of the falls.  Click here for directions to the falls.

I took a few pictures but the lighting was not good.  The falls were lit by a high afternoon sun, with dark shadows and bright highlights.  I wanted more subdued light so I came back late in the evening, when the sun was no longer shining directly on the scene.  Instead of shooting from the wooden platform looking down on the falls I decided to hike down near the creek below the falls.  Carrying a camera and a tripod was not easy on the slippery path of rocks and mud (later I found out that a few people have fallen to their death at these falls).

With my camera on a tripod, I set my zoom lens to its widest view, 18mm.  To get the silky-water look you need a fairly long exposure, so I set my camera to aperture priority mode.  Aperture priority lets you set the f/stop (its aperture) manually while the camera sets the shutter speed automatically.  The larger the f/stop number you use, the longer the shutter speed has to be to get the same amount of light into the camera's sensor.  The setting for this picture was f/22 with a shutter speed of 8 seconds and an ISO 200.  The other thing that you need is a shutter release cable otherwise just you touching the camera's shutter button will blur the image.

Long exposures to capture the moving water is almost impossible in bright sunlight, so wait for more subdued lighting.  Cloudy, even rainy days are perfect.  Stop down the lens for long exposures to get the silky-water look.  And finally, taken lots of pictures from many viewpoints.  One is bound to be just the one you are looking for.

How To Take Pictures of Lightning

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Not a Winter scene for this cold first month of a new year, but a Summer scene I took back in 2007.  This was taken from the Astronomical Society of Kansas City's dark sky site south of K.C.  Instead of viewing stars on this particular night, we were viewing one of natures marvelous light shows instead.  The lightning was far away from us.  The smoke you see near the horizon is coming from a power plant about 12 miles away, so the lightning is striking some distance beyond that.

Taking pictures of lightning is fairly easy.  First and foremost, take them from a good distance away and not in the middle of the storm itself.  Needless to say, lightning strikes are extremely dangerous.  Instructions for Digital Single Lens Reflex cameras are shown here, but non-slrs can also be used, you'll just have to read your camera instruction book to learn how to set it in manual mode.  And of course learning how to use your camera's various modes is always a good thing.

1. You'll need to have a camera that allows you to set it manually.  Most of the time auto exposures and auto focus do not work in this type of situation, so you'll need to set your camera to manual mode.  Once in manual mode set it to "Bulb".  This setting allows you to hold the shutter open and take long exposures.
2. You will also need a shutter release cable to allow you to open the camera's shutter without physically touching the camera.  Touching the camera during a long exposure will of course jiggle it ruining the image.
3. A tripod is a must, since hand holding the camera during a long exposure will also ruin the picture.
4. Getting a good focus is a little bit tricky, but easy if you know how.  You first need to auto focus the camera on a distant object.  This could be a distant street light or something bright enough so that the camera can focus.  The camera will not focus on darkness or very dim light, so if you leave auto focus on while trying to image the lightning, the auto focus will not have time enough to lock on a brief lightning flash, so it's best to focus on something bright, then turn auto focus off.  The camera will now be in focus so long as you dont touch the camera's focus ring or zoom.
5. Set the ISO speed to about 400 or so.
6. Once the camera is set, put it to where the lightning is flashing the most, open the shutter with the cable release and wait for it to flash.  Once you see a flash or two, close the shutter.  Take a look at the camera's LCD screen to see how it turned out, then quickly open the shutter again.

You can get more than one lightning strike on the same image, like I did in the above image, but be aware that sometimes too many will wash out the image.  It's all trial and error, so just keep shooting.  It's just like fishing.  Once in a while you'll get a big one.

Lunar Eclipse on the Winter Solstice

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I hope you took a peek at a rare event going on over our heads on December 21.  A Lunar Eclipse is not rare, but the fact that it happened on the Winter Solstice is.  The last time there was a Lunar Eclipse on the first day of Winter was 372 years ago, and it won't happen again until 2094.  The picture above was taken a few minutes after the Moon started moving into the Earth's shadow.

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It was cloudy all day but soon after the event started the clouds started to dissipate and cleared enough to get the above picture.  Note the red color caused by sunlight first passing through the Earth's stratosphere then reflecting off the Moon.  At the upper right there is a turquoise fringe.  This is sunlight first passing through the Earth's ozone layer.

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As it started to emerge from the Earth's shadow the clouds started coming back giving a "diamond ring" glow to this wonder of nature.

All pictures were taken with my 300mm f/4 and Canon XTi on a tripod.

Bubble Nebula and M 52

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The Bubble Nebula, lower left, and the Star Cluster M 52, at upper right, create a beautiful contrasting duet of deep sky objects in the constellation Cassiopeia.

M 52 can be seen as a fuzzy patch in a pair of binoculars, but it takes a telescope to resolve about 200 stars in Cassiopeia's rich starry field.

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The Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635) looks like a tiny soap bubble, but this bubble is six light years in diameter.  It definitely takes a telescope to detect it.  The bright star, upper right of the bubble's center, is 40 times the mass of our sun.  High energetic winds from this star blow the surrounding gas into a glowing shell.  In time, the star will explode into a supernova, pierce the bubble and scatter it and its surrounding further out into space.  Something we may be able to see even without a telescope.

M33 - Spiral Galaxy in Triangulum

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My previous post was of a spiral galaxy (NGC 891) seen edge on.  Here is a spiral galaxy seen face on.  This galaxy is much closer to us, therefore almost filling the field of view of my 1000mm telescope.  Formally known as Messier 33 (M33), it is also call the Pinwheel galaxy due to its fantastic spiral shape.  If you know exactly where to look in the sky, you are away from the light pollution of a city and have good eyesight, you can just see it as a fuzzy patch of light without optical aid.  At 3 million light years away, it is one of the furthest objects you can see without a telescope.

Make sure to click on the image so that you can take a look at all the intricate detail scattered across the galaxy.  Because this is a very active star forming galaxy, you can see small pink areas that are hydrogen emission nebulae (star factories), large star clusters and many lanes of dust circling this incredible scene.

NGC 891 - Edge On Galaxy

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This galaxy, NGC 891 in Andromeda, is one of the most beautiful examples of a spiral galaxy seen exactly edgewise.  The above image shows the entire field of view photographed through my 1000mm focal length telescope.  The image is a combination of five exposures, fifteen minutes each.

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In this close up, you can see the complex system of dark clouds extending across the entire galaxy.  These are clouds of gas and dust spraying out like filaments away from the galactic plane.  The galaxy is a member of the Local Supercluster of galaxies and is about 30 million light years away.  This is not an easy object to view through a small telescope, only seen as a smear of light, but in a large scope it is a grand sight.

The field is strewn with lots of smaller and more distant galaxies.  I have taken three sections from the full image and enlarged them 100%.  Click on each image for a larger view.