Terry recently got a new camera especially designed for astrophotography, and he has just taken his first pictures. He still has quite a learning curve - for one thing, he was using the wrong file format - but he is already beaming because "This is the best picture I've ever taken of M57!"
M57 is also known as the Ring Nebula, and it is Terry's favorite deep sky object. The ring is made of heated gasses ejected from a dying star. You can see a nicer picture of it here.
6 comments:
Congrats Terry!
Errrrm, which one is it??
Don't say that - he'll be crushed!
It's the blotchy spot in the south-central portion of the picture.
I terribly sorry, my astronomy is probably worse than the worst astronomer that there can me (which would probably be me?) Ok, I guess I didn't get that quite right. But as a fact, I'm dumb (as you'd have already figured) when it gets to identifying these things.
Anyway now that you mentioned it, I realised!
EUREKA!
M57 is in the constellation Lyra. Read http://www.pikerpress.com/article.cfm?form.id=464 to learn how to find Lyra. It's brightest star, Vega, is probably visible even in most light-polluted skies.
BTW, I know it should be "its" brightest star and not "it's". I was in a hurry.
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