Chris Howard's Blog, page 54

trasemc:The American artist Mike Stilkey was summoned by a bookstore in Seoul to design large-scale...

trasemc:

The American artist Mike Stilkey was summoned by a bookstore in Seoul to design large-scale mosaics created with books.

You want to live forever

The star is called Gliese 710, and it’s why you want to live forever–or at least a very long time. Let’s say a million years or so. The Gaia Mission, the Milky Way galaxy mapping project launched in 2013 by ESA (European Space Agency) has surveyed over a billion stars with their position, motion, and distance from earth. The night sky seems pretty still, only affected by earth’s rotation (1 degree every 4 minutes), but when we speed things up a bit–say thousands or millions of times faster, you can see that our galactic neighborhood is pretty damn active, with whole star systems flying past us, away from us, and toward us. Scientists have taken this data and created projections of future motion, and some of the most incredible findings show which stars will come very close to our solar system, some of them passing through the Oort Cloud, the cloud of ice and rocky debris that defines the cosmographical boundary of our Solar System.  A star named Gliese 710 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_710) is an especially interesting one, because it will pass so close that it will be within the Oort Cloud–within our solar system–in a bit more than a million years. I don’t know about you, but I want to see that. I want to look up in the daytime sky and see another star burning there–much smaller and farther away, but still, a second star.

I did some snow shovelling and Alice kicked ass with the snow...

I did some snow shovelling and Alice kicked ass with the snow blower…and then I took some long exposure shots from the roof of my car with the Nikon. I managed to catch the Pleiades (M45) and the constellation Cassiopeia in the upper left.

Out with the dogs and the D750 on a beautiful snowy night....

Out with the dogs and the D750 on a beautiful snowy night. https://SaltwaterWitch.com

rdjm1969:

rdjm1969:

Soulful Friday–more importantly it was a cloudless Friday...

Soulful Friday–more importantly it was a cloudless Friday on the 10th. I’m going to have to do a mosaic for the whole thing, but for now here’s the southern end of IC 1848, the Soul Nebula in Ha and OIII (Soul is also identified as Westerhout 5 and Sh 2-199). IC 1848 is in the constellation Cassiopeia, and what you see here is about half the 100 lightyears in length of the whole nebula–so what is that, something like 587 quadrillion miles? At 6,500 light-years away, that will make a nice four panel mosaic. (Notes: 40 x 240 seconds in Ha, 28 x 600 sec. in OIII. Atik 414EX mono CCD, Astronomik 12nm Ha, OIII filters, William Optics ZS61 + WO Flat F6A f/4.7, CEM25P EQ mount, Orion OAG + ZWO ASI120MM-Mini guide cam, Stellarmate OS (INDI/KStars/Ekos) running on Raspberry Pi 3b+) https://saltwaterwitch.com/blog 

Several years ago one of my essays on creative writing and...

Several years ago one of my essays on creative writing and world-building was published in Now Write! Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, part of the Penguin-Random House series on fiction writing and screen writing, edited by Laurie Lamson. I recently heard that Penguin sold the rights to publishers in Korea and China, and I have tracked down the Korean edition. My essay is titled, “How to Build Worlds Without Boring Your Reader Or Becoming the Minister For Tourism”. I ran the title in the Korean edition through Google translate and it ended up a bit more to the point: 지루하지 않게 신세계 만들기 - “Creating a new world not boring”. That’s exactly what I was going for.

http://book.interpark.com/bookPark/preview/skin.html?code=245648248&skinUrl=&site=gmarket#

https://www.aladin.co.kr/shop/wproduct.aspx?start=short&ISBN=K382434370

And check out the shark on the cover!

This is the first time I’ve captured any frames of NGC...

This is the first time I’ve captured any frames of NGC 2264, the Cone Nebula, about 2600 light-years away (800 Parsecs) in the constellation Monoceros. NGC 2264 includes the nebula and the Christmas Tree Cluster of stars at its core. (Notes: 61 x 300 seconds in Ha, 48 x 300 sec. in OIII. Atik 414EX mono CCD, Astronomik 12nm Ha, OIII filters, William Optics ZS61 + WO Flat F6A f/4.7, CEM25P EQ mount, Orion OAG + ZWO ASI120MM-Mini guide cam, Stellarmate OS (INDI/KStars/Ekos) running on Raspberry Pi 3b+) https://SaltwaterWitch/blog

First shot of the season in the constellation Orion! The 1000+...

First shot of the season in the constellation Orion! The 1000+ focal length did get me wonderfully close to the Horsehead Nebula (B33) in the constellation Orion. This is what 46 stacked 600 second hydrogen-alpha frames will get you if you stretch things a bit too much and don’t use any calibration frames. That would reduce the noise/graininess somewhat. Anyway, pretty happy with this.

I set up the AstroTech RC scope (6"/152mm aperture f/9) with my narrowband imaging train, Atik 414EX, ZWO filter wheel with Clear, Ha, OIII, SII & IR685, William Optics 0.8x field flattener/reducer that brings the AT6RC to f/7.2 at 1080mm focal length.  With the Atik’s 6.45μ pixels, this has my resolution at 1.23 arcseconds per pixel, and a field of view of .48° x .36°.

I took some shots of my astro imaging set up last night–before nightfall, and in the middle of the narrowband run with 40 600-second exposures. https://SaltwaterWitch.com

I Voted!

I Voted!