Another clear sky early on Monday morning offered an opportunity to experiment some more with the Sony a200. After some mild processing I thought I’d post up two of the better images that I managed to take. The first one is a return to the constellations Cygnus, Lyra and Draco. Unlike the Sunday morning image, both Cygnus and Lyra are fully visible. The double star Albireo in Cygnus as well as Vega in Lyra can both be seen floating above the roof tops. Again, if you take a closer look at Cygnus you can see part of the milky way running downwards from Deneb throughout the constellation.
The second image shot, shows the constellation Auriga and Taurus. Capella1 is clearly visible as is The Pleiades just towards the upper right hand corner of the image. If you look carefully, you can make out some fantastic nebula detail that the camera has picked up. Moving to the bottom right of the image, just above the roof top behind Aldebaran you can also see the Hyades star cluster2
Unbelievably the clouds began to move in at around 02:30 UT. It happened so quickly that within ten minutes large parts of the sky were just blanketed in that ubiquitos orange and grey gloom that saw me forced to pack up and call it a night for another time.
- Capella is actually a non eclipsing binary system consisting of two yellow G class stars that are in the process of becoming red giants. ↩
- At a distance of 151 light years, The Hyades is the nearest star cluster to the solar system. Also known as Collinder 50, the cluster contains 300 to 400 stars that share the same chemical composition, motion through space and place of origin. ↩
Tags: Albireo, Auriga, Capella, Collinder 50, Cygnus, Deneb, Draco, DSLR, Lyra, M45, Taurus, The Hyades, The Pleiades, Vega