Lat=42deg 0min December 25, 1994 Happy Holidays, y'all Last year I sent you some 5x7 snapshots of objects that are in the night sky. This year, thanks in part to a friend that used the same idea last year, I've decided to "go digital" and show you more of 'em! Enclosed you'll find a set of 21 pictures. Believe it or not, ALL of them were printed on a computer printer (just like this letter) called the 'Epson Stylus Color'; you may have heard it advertised on the radio. It boasts near-photographic quality (720 dpi). Based on these pictures, I can believe it. WARNING: keep these pictures out of extreme temperatures; they aren't as durable as normal prints! If, at this point, you take out the pictures, I'll walk you thru them. This little "tour of the Universe" should take about 15 minutes: . # 0 This is a "summary" page. I have collaged all of the following pictures (images) to 1 page. Note that, for most of my images, I have inserted the same object, but as taken with the largest telescopes of Earth. At bottom left is the United States at night; MUCH light pollution here! My individual digitized images are .JPG; some > 1/2 million bytes (1/3rd a 3 1/2" floppy). . # 1 (purple for the Moon) Earth's one and only Moon. This picture was taken in 7/93, when it was almost at full phase. At this time, the Moon was the closest to Earth for that year. If you hold the image at arms length, you will be able to see the "man in the moon" left of center; the dark areas are the "eyes" and "mouth", while the dark area right of the bright spot (middle left of center) is the "nose". The Moon is about 1 1/3 light-seconds away; that is, a light beam (like a laser beam) travels about 186,000 miles/300,000 kilometers in 1 second. Our Apollo astronauts took days. . # 2 A close-up shot of mountains (Montes Caucasus) on the Moon. You can see the shadows. This picture was taken in 8/93 when it was in half phase (half full). You may notice a "scratch" on the image running horizontally just above center. This was on my negative, but I was able to cover it up with computer software. . # 3 A close-up of a valley (Schroter; 100 miles long by 7 miles wide by 1/2 mile deep) and a new, bright crater (Aristarchus) on the Moon. A few hundred million years ago (rather short in the life of the Moon), the crater wall broke and the molten lava that was in it overflowed and lazily carved out a valley. This was taken in 4/94 when the Moon was near full. In order to see objects like this, the Moon can't be full because then there are almost no shadows (like in summer around Noon) to provide better contrast. . # 4 A close-up of a crater within a crater (Babbage) on the Moon. Right of center is a small, nearly circular crater, smack in the middle of a larger, not-as-spherical, crater. Again, in order to see this, the terminator (the light-dark "line" separating day and night) is just to the right. This allows the crater walls to have some light shine on the INSIDE and thus allow us to see it from Earth. . # 5 The bottom of the moon when it was almost full. The long, oval-shaped crater right of center is called Schiller. . # 6 (blue for the Solar System) Jupiter, King of the Solar System. You can see 3 of its moons that orbit Jupiter in a horizontal line. Also, to the top left, is another "moon"; ah, but this is really a star! Jupiter was very near the star in the constellation Virgo on 6/93. If you look closely, you'll notice that the star is whiter than Jupiter & its moons, which are more yellow-orange. The yellow-orange color is due to reflection from our Sun, where the star generates its own light. Jupiter is about 34 light-minutes, or 377 million miles, away. Jupiter was in the news in July, a once-in-a-lifetime event, when a broken-up comet smashed into it. I was able to get a picture shortly afterwards which shows a black smudge on the planet. . # 7 Jupiter almost by itself. This image differs from the last one because the magnification used was larger and the exposure time was shorter. Notice that you can see the bands circling the planet (about 45 degrees running from the SW side to the NE side), yet the moons (the very small, very dim points of light above, below, and around) barely show up. . # 8 Saturn. Probably the most widely known planet, probably because of its most excellent rings. The other outer planets (Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune) also have rings, but not of Saturn's magnitude. The rings are closing up; that is, based on the orbit of us & the planet relative to the Sun, the rings are slowly "merging". In a short while, a small telescope will not be able to see them. But then, a few years later, it'll be easier. Saturn is about twice as far away as Jupiter. Taken in 8/93. . # 9 (green for the Milky Way) The Pleiades, M45, also known as the 7 sisters. Now we have left the Solar System and traveled VERY far away (almost 1/2 million times farther than Pluto, the last known planet in our Solar System, and the only planet yet to be explored). This is a star cluster of relatively new stars that apparently drifted away from the Orion nebulae (see M42 later on). In order to see the gas around the stars, this image was computer-enhanced (see M1 later on). Taken in 12/92, it is about 410 light-YEARS, or almost 2 1/2 quadrillion(!) miles away. . # 10 The Dumb-bell nebulae, M27. If you use your imagination, it appears to look like a hand barbell. It can also be an hourglass. See the small, white point in the center? This is the star that the gases making up the dumbbell shape came from. It's one of the hottest stars in our Galaxy. It's very old, and near the end of its life. It's "shedding" its gases slowly, getting ready to settle down into retirement. Taken in 9/93, it's about twice as far away as M45. . # 11 The Horsehead nebulae, B33. The small dark spot near the center (to the right and down) is a dark protrusion into the brighter nebulae IC 434. Bettter pictures show this as a horse's head, but that's just because the gases are arranged that way. As with M45, this was computer- enhanced; otherwise, IC 434 and the Horsehead would not be easily visible. This is part of the Orion constellation, and is about 1200 light-years away. . # 12 The Ring nebulae, M57. Similar to the Dumb-bell, its ghostly doughnut shape of gases appear like a "wedding ring". Also taken in 9/93, it's about 1400 light-years away. Unfortunately, the central star in my image is extremely hard to see. . # 13 The Orion nebulae, M42. Even Kelly Bundy has heard of Orion the Hunter. During early winter, Orion rises in the East on his back around 8 PM Central Time. In his sword lies a glowing mass of gases where stars are born. In the center of the image is the Trapezium, at least 4 stars only about 1 million years old (as opposed to our Sun, which is a few BILLION years old). Taken in 12/92, it's about 1600 light-years away. . # 14 The Owl nebulae, M97. Similar to M27. Also computer-enhanced. It is about 3000 light-years away. . # 15 The Crab nebulae, M1. This is the first object listed by Charles Messier almost 250 years ago. He was looking for comets, and found comet-like objects that didn't move. He listed them in a catalog, which has since become known as Messier objects. His original catalog had almost 100 of these objects. Most all objects in my album, except for Solar System objects, are from Messier's catalog, because these objects are the most impressive for amateur astronomers with relatively small telescopes. Unlike the other nebulaes, the Crab was a party animal; it lived fast & died hard. The red-white gas-like object in the center of the image is the remains of a Supernovae that occured in the year 1054 A.D. Chinese astronomers listed it in their records, saying that it was even visible during the day for about 20 days. These stars are so heavy that gravity collaspes the star; the resulting energy is like comparing a flea to an elephant. Guess what's the elephant! The central star, un-detectable in this image, is known as a pulsar. This image appears "weird" because my original negative's image was so washed out that it would just barely print! Another computer software program analyzed the image, found the dimmest bits of light, and then enhanced them compared to the rest of the image. The "streaking" of the other light sources are just other normal stars; I still haven't been able to PRECISELY counter the speed of Earth's rotation (about 1000 mph) for the 7 minutes of exposure time needed just to get anything, before light pollution fogs my film! Taken in 3/94, the Crab is over 6000 light-years away. . # 16 The Hercules cluster, M13. Now we'll move out of our Galaxy and then look back at it. The Hercules Globular star cluster is a group of about 1 million very old stars (about 10 billion years old; twice the Sun and maybe half the Universe) that orbits our Galaxy once every 1/4 billion years. It's about 25,000 light-years away, and is just one of about a hundred star clusters, though it's the most prominent one in the Northern sky. . # 17 (yellow for the Local Group) The Andromeda galaxy, M31, and one of its satellite galaxies, M32. Now we have to leave our Galaxy and proceed to the ones near us. Our sister galaxy, Andromeda, consists of about 3 billion stars like our Milky Way, and is about 2 million light-years away. As with the Crab, the objects are so faint that they had to be enhanced by computer to better see them, even though, in apparent size, M31 is about the same size as the full Moon. . # 18 The Pinwheel galaxy, M33. If you use your imagination again (astronomers do that a lot), and put a stick vertically to the center of the galaxy, it may look like a small decoration you may see in someone's yard that turns around, like a pinwheel, when the wind blows. Even more so than M31, the image was computer-enhanced to see the spiral arms. M33 is about the same size and distance away from us as M31. . # 19 (orange for galaxies in the irregular Virgo Cluster/Supercluster) Two galaxies close to each other, M66 (left center) and M65 (right center). We have now left our Local Group of galaxies. These galaxies are much smaller than M31 or M33, but are about 15 times farther away. . # 20 The Whirlpool galaxy, M51, and a companion galaxy. Just like other major galaxies, this galaxy consists of billions of stars. Galaxies are the biggest single object we know of, other than groups (low density) and clusters (much higher density) of galaxies which are gravitationally bound, clouds, superclusters, walls encompassing bubble voids, and, of course, the Universe and whatever may be past that. The Whirlpool is almost 20 times farther than the Pinwheel galaxy, about 35 million light-years. Imagine: when you look at this image, the light that struck my negative and copied to the computer is light that left the galaxy over 35 million years ago. The 2 bright objects are individual galaxies; it's thought that the top one (NGC 5195) "sped" thru the bottom one. If you look close enough, you'll find that the bottom spiral arm is distorted and points to the top one. This completes our brief tour of the local Universe that you can see by just looking up on a clear night. For those of you that are interested, I used a 10" SCT as the lens for a normal 35mm SLR camera, took the film to a 1-hour photo lab to get negatives, then took the negatives to a photo lab that copied the images onto a Kodak Photo CD (res72, 5 sizes), which a computer can process. The software I used was mainly Photoshop, w/a few others to consolidate the images into albums, and to artificially enhance them. It took over 5 hours to print these 21 pages, which was perfect for overnight processing. I'm still working on getting the images better; they require a clear night, no wind, no vibrations from people or cars or trains, no or minimal lights, perfect alignment to the North star, perfect focus, no humidity, getting in the mood, etc. Lots to co-ordinate, and lots to go wrong. But these images are more than what someone could see with the naked eye; I hope you enjoyed them. . detailed specs of each image, as follows: #1 from IMG0004.pcd, taken 07/30/93, f/6.3, ASA 100, 1/500sec #2 from IMG0007.pcd, taken 08/24/93, f/6.3, ASA 100, 1sec, 26mm #3 from IMG0019.pcd, taken 04/22/94, f/6.3, ASA 100, 1sec, 12mm #4 from IMG0020.pcd, taken 04/22/94, f/6.3, ASA 100, 1sec, 12mm #5 from IMG0023.pcd, taken 05/21/94, f/6.3, ASA 100, 2sec, 20mm #6 from IMG0005.pcd, taken 06/05/93, f/6.3, ASA 400, 6sec, 26mm #7 from IMG0018.pcd, taken 04/01/94, f/6.3, ASA 100, 1sec, 12mm #8 from IMG0008.pcd, taken 08/24/93, f/6.3, ASA 100, 3sec, 12mm #9 from IMG0002.pcd, taken 12/19/92, f/10, ASA 400, 7min #10 from IMG0012.pcd, taken 09/10/93, f/6.3, ASA 100, 7min #11 from IMG0015.pcd, taken 03/04/94, f/6.3, ASA 100, 7min #12 from IMG0011.pcd, taken 09/10/93, f/6.3, ASA 100, 6min #13 from IMG0001.pcd, taken 12/05/92, f/10, ASA 400, 7min #14 from IMG0025.pcd, taken 05/21/94, f/6.3, ASA 100, 6min #15 from IMG0016.pcd, taken 03/11/94, f/6.3, ASA 100, 7min #16 from IMG0010.pcd, taken 09/10/93, f/6.3, ASA 100, 6min #17 from IMG0013.pcd, taken 09/10/93, f/6.3, ASA 100, 7min #18 from IMG0014.pcd, taken 09/10/93, f/6.3, ASA 100, 7min #19 from IMG0024.pcd, taken 05/21/94, f/6.3, ASA 100, 6min #20 from IMG0017.pcd, taken 04/01/94, f/6.3, ASA 100, 8min