[AZ-Observing] A Winter View of the Summer Milky Way
- From: Jeremy Perez <jeremy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 25 Dec 2007 00:57:46 -0700
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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