...and they say there's no ET!

This is a photograph of the well known constellation Cygnus (the Northern Cross). Visible is the Butterfly Nebula, in the center, and the North American Nebula, lower right. Few people realize just how densly populated it is up there. Population density down here often obscures such views with the growth of cities and the problem of light pollution.

Comments please. Cheers, Aaron

Very well...

Really spectacular. I'd love to learn how to do that.

beats mine 1000s of times!

Hehehehe. Yeah, you definately need more than 15sec to get the colours and density. Unless you have specialized CCD photo equipment, astrophotography is one of the areas still best served by film.

I remember a clear winter's night, walking home from from my gran's, maybe we were out first footing, the sky was full of them. Last time I saw so many... damn lights!

Almost looks like it was taken with a Schmidt camera..... good job with the polar alignment.

Thanks! It took me a while to get it aligned that way.

You should be more than happy with this result, Aaron! It is a very rich part of the northern hemisphere night sky indeed and the HII regions that you have captured show up very nicely. One thing that unsettled me a little, is the orientation. I could make a joke about your alignment (I won't because it's spot on), but a flipped version shows me a more natural view of the central part of Cygnus, imo.

Yeah, I know. I can't quite explain it, but I felt it looked better with NGC7000 on the right, eventhough that it's no longer the orientation of North America. It's similar to most photographs of the Great Nebula in Orion: they're upside down. Just for curiosity's sake, what where you going to say about my alignment?

Nothing too inflammatory, just a little jibe about your alignment looking pretty good for the southern hemisphere...or something like that.

As far as I'm concerned, astrophotography is a serious subject matter which takes a considerable effort to "get it right". I wonder how many people actually appreciate what is involved with polar alignment and exposing film for minutes at a time. You don't get too many of these in one night...

Again, you should be justifyable proud of this result. It really looks great to me.

Thought this was brand new and some abstract you did. Sat looking for 10 mins and was gonna comment how very creative making some cinders, adding some blood, was. Was marvelling just how much it looked like outer space. huh....10" wow your lucky guy. Must be great to see andromnia out there in the clear skies with that. Take a pic!!! got something for you to better hehe......

David Malin @ AAO?! I think you're a tease, Paul...

Personally, I prefer something like this

More realistic, inasmuch as to what can be achieved with relatively modest equipment. Certainly within reach of the LX 200...

Paul: believe me I've tried! I use film and don't have a CCD autoguider, so it makes manually guiding for 30min+ a real pain. Also, I'm glad you found it so abstract! That's one of the reasons I posted it. The density is incredible, and I was hoping those without knowledge of the sky might find interesting things in it - like you did to begin with. That's also why I reversed the orientation.

 

Peter: I can't believe the shot in your link was 23 exposures! Personally, my favorite is done by Philip Perkins:

 

www.astrocruise.com

 

Next on the list is Auriga. Peter, I can't guarantee it will be the right side up, though. Lol ; )

Peter i prefer to sit back and let hubble do all this hehe but results by amatures are certainly appriciated. Difficult and personal. Aaron should be proud of the above. Seeing andromnia for the first time with my old C8 was beyond any astonomy pic no matter how close. Just wowowowow.

Here in Holland we can barely see the moon, so huge is the light pollution. That is why your image is so important, as many people have never seen this and can hardly realize what is out there (if they do not read the right books/magazines). The optics you use must be ossum. cheers Jana