I was out in the desert Friday night and took this picture of the Trifid Nebula, one of the best nebulas in the night sky. However, it's only really visible in the summer, so it was now or never (until next year, anyway).
My initial integration of the images was disappointing. The problem was that my focuser kept trying to kill itself. It first tried to commit suicide via software, but I managed to revive it via some Task Manager tough love. Then it tried to commit suicide via strangulation, when its USB cable got caught on something during a meridian flip and came apart. I figured the meridian flip shouldn't affect the focus, though, so I kept on going. But I guess I was wrong. I had to throw out all the images from after midnight or so.
(What's a meridian flip? An equatorial mount rotates to track the sky, and eventually it gets to a point where the counterweight is above the telescope and the telescope is in danger of banging into the tripod legs. So it flips 180 degrees on both axes and keeps going. It was while doing this that the focuser cable got stuck.)
In the end, I had only about 20 images left, but the finished stack looks OK. The detail seems a little weak, which might be for several reasons. The Trifid is low in the sky, which means a denser atmosphere and more haze. I was in a new spot, which has a higher altitude than my usual location but is slightly less dark. And I used a broadband filter. A narrowband would have been better for the main part of the Trifid (in red), which is an emission nebula, but would have blocked the blue part, which is a reflection nebula. So I compromised.
Note that it's the Trifid Nebula, not the Triffid. It means "three lobed," even though you can see that it really has four lobes. I suppose only three were visible in 18th century telescopes when it was discovered.
The Trifid is cataloged as M20, and I haven't cropped this image as much as I normally would. That's because I wanted to include the image of M21, a star cluster in the upper left. The Trifid is one of the closest star-forming regions to Earth, a mere 4,100 light years away.
That’s what the Triffids want us to think …
Or maybe the Tribbles?
This was the cover of the King Crimson album “Islands”.
Geez, nice pick up!!!
Looks like a pretty damn good picture to me. I don't know what a slightly better picture would show about our Universe that this one doesn't
I have come to a conclusion about the "Fermi Paradox" (if the Universe is teeming with life, then why are they not here?)
It is because, for multiple reasons, travel between stars is impossible. It would take too long and would require multiple generations to make the trip. There are potential mission-destroying hazards along the way. It would require far too many resources for any civilization to bear.
And why the hell would any rational person or alien want to be part of that nonsense?
Nice picture.
zaphod wrote, "I have come to a conclusion about the "Fermi Paradox" (if the Universe is teeming with life, then why are they not here?)
It is because, for multiple reasons, travel between stars is impossible. It would take too long and would require multiple generations to make the trip. There are potential mission-destroying hazards along the way. It would require far too many resources for any civilization to bear.
And why the hell would any rational person or alien want to be part of that nonsense?"
I can think of three reasons off the top of my head, but rather than speculate on the motives of aliens, I'll just say that the Pacific Islands were populated by people in hollowed-out logs.