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Lunchtime Photo

When I was out in the desert last week taking a picture of the Heart Nebula, I also did another test run of the Milky Way with my regular camera. To give you an idea of what I photographed, here's a diagram of our galaxy:

During the summer, Earth is pointed toward the galactic core at night. That's when you can take a picture of the bright core of the Milky Way. In winter, Earth is pointed toward the outside universe where there's not a lot to see. But as you can tell from the diagram, if you look toward the horizon in winter you can see the Perseus Arm, one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way. It's not as bright as the core, and it's barely visible to the naked eye even under dark skies, but you can take a picture of it.

My method was the same as last month. I can't get my little mount to point precisely at the north pole, so I just aim it as close to Polaris as I can via eyeball and then set the altitude to 34° since that's the latitude around here. This time I set the camera for three-minute exposures, and that was a little too much. If you click on the picture you can see that the stars are a little streaky toward the top. In the future I'll stick to two minutes.

December 29, 2024 — Desert Center, California

6 thoughts on “Lunchtime Photo

    1. ConradsGhost

      Beat me to it. Especially when I click on the picture - the stars and galaxies look like pixie dust, thousands of them. I need to do some night sky viewing soon.

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