[AZ-Observing] A Winter View of the Summer Milky Way

As the nighttime temperatures in Flagstaff hover in the teens and  
dabble in the single digits, I find myself retreating to my cozy home  
and thinking about those warmer nights of early summer. What a  
pleasure it is to recall evenings of observing without the rigors of  
donning an environmental suit. As I've surrendered to the frailties  
of my wimpy winter constitution, I finally had an indoor opportunity  
to work on a set of wide photos of the summer Milky Way from wayyy  
back in June. During the summer CAS barbecue and star party at the  
Frisk's home in Williams, I let my camera churn out some piggyback  
exposures of Scutum and Sagittarius while I let my binoculars float  
from Cygnus to Scorpius.

The sky above the Frisk's home observatory is excellent, but the  
lights of Williams to the south still threw that signature sodium  
yellow into the bottom fourth of my shots. Trying to process that  
gradient out was a maze of dead-ends, but I finally managed to shake  
hands with it and come up with a reasonable compromise. After the  
processing, I took a journey through all the flecks, speckles and  
spots that section of Milky Way has to offer, and tried to identify  
as many deep sky objects as I could. I quickly realized I couldn't  
come close to labeling everything the image picked up but I did  
manage to mark 65 deep sky objects and 41 Barnard dark nebulae. The  
photo and links to the labeled images can be found here:

http://www.perezmedia.net/beltofvenus/archives/000769.html

Something interesting that I noticed while picking the image apart  
was a subtle, but long stream of stars that peels away from the Great  
Rift in Serpens Cauda, through IC 4665 in Ophiuchus, and continues on  
up toward Hercules. It looks like some well-placed swirls of dust may  
be helping to convey that appearance. I'll be interested to see if I  
can pick it up visually when this part of the sky comes back in  
season. I put together another marked up graphic to show what I'm  
seeing / (hallucinating) --

http://www.perezmedia.net/beltofvenus/archives/000772.html

I hope you're all having fun with Mars, Tuttle, Holmes and the winter  
Milky Way!

Jeremy
http://beltofvenus.perezmedia.net
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