Astronomy Picture of the Day -- Lick Observatory Moonrise

NASA ^ | March 10, 2012 | (see photo credit)

[dragnet2]

Welcome, and thanks for posting this APoD thread

I always try to stop by..

[dragnet2]

Thanks. As I mentioned earlier, the scope/camera was not setup for planetary/lunar, but for more distant deep space objects, like this below. I was surprised and happy with this shot after processing out the image data.

Eastern Vail Nebula NGC6960

Veil Nebula is an old supernova remnant in the constellation Cygnus. It is the remains of cataclysmic explosion of star which exploded between 5,000 and 8,000 years ago.

This nebula is about 1,860 light-years distance.

16x150 seconds @ISO800- CLS filter w6.3 Focal reducer SCT/10"

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Thanks for posting! Great photo. The history of James Lick and the Observatory are really fascinating. He was quite the entrepreneur and became very wealthy. The drive up to Lick is spectacular and it's a lot of fun going the 50 miles from Lick over to Livermore -- it's like you stepped back 150 years with the remote high plateau ranches and miles between houses. All within spitting distance of Silicon Valley.

[Utilizer]

Bewdy, mate.

[Monkey Face]

Whoa! Thanks! Awesome stuff...

[shorty_harris]

Very nice! I used to work at Lick, as an observing assistant. I operated the 120” Shane telescope.

[KoRn]

Wow! That’s an incredible image. I wish you were my next door neighbor! LOL

(you could make a small fortune charging admission for this stuff)

[dragnet2]

Thanks!

It's a lot of fun, but with a rather steep learning curve regarding obtaining the images, maintaining precise tracking and processing the raw data. In fact processing the data is a field unto itself and is really addictive trying to squeeze all the existing data.

BTW, I find galaxies fascinating. Here is one of the more recent shots of M51. I'm still learning techniques to shoot these objects, as they are extreme low light objects, and not easy for me to process the data.

M-51 Whirlpool Galaxy and NGC 5195 - Estimated at about 37 million light years from Earth. It's diameter is about 100 thousand light years.

In 2005 a star exploded into a supernova within the galaxy. The total mass of M51 is estimated the equivalent of 160 billion suns.

By all accounts, it's believed a black hole exists at the core of this galaxy.

To put things in perspective, most of the stars seen in the image, those that are not part of the galaxy, seen surrounding the galaxy, are much closer to us. The Galaxy itself is unbelievably further away than most of those surrounding stars...Deep back in time, so to speak.

35x120 second exposures @ISO 800-6.3 focal reducer, w/Astonomik LP filter.