An incredibly sharp image of Copernicus Crater on the Moon, as seen from the Alps. Credit and copyright: Thierry Legault. Used by permission.
Who doesn’t love to gaze at the Moon on a clear night? But astrophotographer Thierry Legault now taken Moon-gazing to new heights. Legault traveled to the Alps in August and set up his Celestron C14 Edge HD and ZWO ASI1600MM camera. The results are absolutely stunning.
“These are the largest and sharpest quarters ever,” Legault said via email, adding that he created mosaic images of 10 fields for a definition of 150 million pixels!
Above you can see incredible detail in the 58 mile-wide (93 km) impact crater Copernicus.
Below is a lunar quarter taken on August 24, 2016:
Image of the Moon taken on August 24, 2016 from the Alps. Credit and copyright: Thierry Legault. Used by permission.
In his book, “Astrophotography,” Legault said that for clear close-ups of the Moon, good atmospheric conditions are a must, as well as having a finely tuned or collimated telescope. Below is a close-up view of Triesnecker crater and the surrounding region near the central part of the Moon’s near side, including sharp view of the rilles.
Triesnecker crater in the central part of the Moon’s near side is 26 km in diameter and 2.7 km deep. A system of rilles can also be seen. Credit and copyright: Thierry Legault. Used by permission.
For processing these images Legault used AutoStakkert!2 (AS!2), PTGui stitching software and Photoshop.
You can see more of these stunning shots at Legault’s website, where he says he’ll have posters of these images available soon.
Of course, you can try seeing these features on the Moon yourself. Even binoculars or a small telescope can provide wonderful views of our closest companion in space. An upcoming full Moon (Super Moon!) on November 14, 2016, will feature the closest full Moon (356,509 kilometers away) until November 25, 2034 (356,448 kilometers away.)
Our thanks to Thierry Legault for sharing these wonderful new images of the Moon!
Mars as seen from Earth on June 13, 2016. Credit and copyright: Damian Peach.
What did you do during your summer this year? Award-winning astrophotographer Damian Peach spent much of his 2016 summer capturing incredibly clear images of Mars during opposition, when the Red Planet was closest to Earth. Peach has now compiled a wonderful “rotating planet” movie of images taken between June 4th – 18th, 2016, showing amazing detail of the planet.
At its closest point this year, Mars was about 46.8 million miles (75.3 million kilometers) from Earth.
Peach has said this summer held “excellent seeing,” both from his home in the UK and from a photography trip to Barbados. He even captured a fleeting localized dust storm on Mars during mid-June over Mare Erythraeum, one of the prominent dark areas on the planet that were once thought to be seas. In the image below of the dust storm, Peach also pointed out the “linear cloud streak in the southern hemisphere – clearly those Martian flying saucer pilots have been having fun!”
Images of Mars from Earth on Jun 15, 2016. Credit and copyright: Damian Peach.
See more of Peach’s excellent astrophotography work at his website , or on Twitter. See a larger version of the lead image here.
Mars is still visible in the night sky, but if you missed seeing this planet at its brightest in 2016, the next time Mars will be at opposition will be in 2018, with close approach on July 31, 2018.
The pursuit of the night sky is ongoing for amateur astronomers. Credit and copyright: Ben Canales.
Obviously, you’ve seen timelapse videos of the night sky because we share them here on Universe Today all the time. But you’ve probably not seen a video like this one before. This one isn’t a timelapse, and you’ll see the night sky in all its splendor, in real time.
“I think this one may be the beginning of something damn interesting,” said filmmaker Ben Canales, who along with cohort John Waller of Uncage The Soul Productions, shot this video with new low-light technology. Using the new Canon MH20f-SH, which has the capability of shooting at 400,000 ISO, they were able to “film in the quiet moments that have been impossible to capture until now.”
“Since 2013, I’ve been tinkering with all sorts of camera/lens/software combinations trying to move beyond a long exposure still to real time video of the stars,” Canales said on Facebook. “Sooner or later, we have to move beyond a frozen photo of the stars to hear, see, feel what it is really like being out there!”
In addition to showcasing this wonderful new low-light shooting, Infinity² really captures the emotional side of amateur astronomy and the beauty of being under the night sky. He took a group of high school students out to witness the Perseid Meteor Shower in Oregon, and the students got together with the Oregon Star Party. Together, they answer the simple question “What do you feel?”
As Canales says, “Something internal and personal draws us out to the night sky.”
Wow, my first acceptable image of the Milky Way. Credit: Me/Cory & Tanja Schmitz
Wow, my first acceptable image of the Milky Way. Credit: Me/Cory & Tanja Schmitz
I’m really fortunate to live in a region of the world with pretty dark skies. And, I’ve got pretty nice camera gear that we use to make all our YouTube videos. But for some reason, I’ve never been able to take an acceptable photo of the Milky Way, and I wasn’t exactly sure where I was going wrong. Turns out… I was going wrong everywhere; wrong exposure, aperture, ISO, JPG vs RAW.
I finally reached out to two of the best astrophotographers I know, Cory and Tanja Schmitz from PhotographingSpace.com. Both are world-class astrophotographers, with amazing shots of the Milky Way, galaxies, star clusters, nebulae and other deep space objects. And you should see their timelapses. They generously agreed to give me direct advice using the gear I have available, and then helped turn the raw photos into something usable through Photoshop (which is another area of dark wizardry).
I ended up using my Canon 5D MkII camera, which we shoot all our Guide to Space videos on. I tried taking pictures with its regular lens, and then got better results with a Rokinon 14mm lens that I actually don’t really use very often. It’s the wide angle lens we use in the car driving up to Comox Lake.
I captured the image at f/2.8, 30 second exposure, ISO 3200. Our shooting location had pretty dark skies, but it was earlier in the evening, and there was some light pollution off to the southern skies.
Here’s the final collaboration video, where Tanja and Cory give me their advice on which gear to use, how to set up and take the picture, and then how to clean it all up in Photoshop afterwards.
This is just the beginning of a whole new rabbit hole hobby for me, so hopefully you’ll see me improve over time as I learn to get more out of my gear, and find darker and darker skies.
Of course, you should check out Cory and Tanja’s PhotographingSpace.com, follow them on Instagram, and begin your own journey of learning how to shoot the night sky.
A still from the timelapse video 'Hades Exhales,' a timelapse journey through several of Yellowstone National Park's geyser basins. Credit and copyright: Harun Mehmedinovic/Skyglow Productions.
Tomorrow, August 25, 2016, the US National Park Service celebrates its 100th anniversary, and the NPS has been celebrating all year with their “Find Your Park” promotion. But the first national park, Yellowstone National Park, was created 144 years ago. Yellowstone is known for its dramatic canyons, lush forests, and flowing rivers, but might be most famous for its hot springs and gushing geysers.
This new timelapse offers you a chance to “find your dark skies” at Yellowstone, and features the many geysers there, showing the dramatic geothermal features under both day and night skies. But the night skies over these geyser explosions steal the show! It was filmed by Harun Mehmedinovicas part of the Skyglow Project, an ongoing crowdfunded project that explores the effects and dangers of urban light pollution in contrast with some of the most incredible dark sky areas in North America.
The Skyglow Project works in collaboration with International Dark-Sky Association, a nonprofit organization fighting to educate the public about light pollution and to preserve the dark skies around the world.
Coming up this weekend, you can enjoy free admission to all 412 national parks from August 25-28, 2016. You can “find your park” and read about special events happening all around the country at FindYourPark.com
A still from the timelapse video ‘Hades Exhales,’ a timelapse journey through several of Yellowstone National Park’s geyser basins. Credit: Harun Mehmedinovic/Skyglow Productions.
Many thanks to Harun Mehmedinovic and Gavin Heffernan of Sunchaser Pictures for continuing their great work with the Skyglow Project and for sharing their incredible videos with Universe Today. Consider supporting their work, as all donations go towards the creation of more videos and images.
A still from the video ‘Hades Exhales,’ a timelapse journey through several of Yellowstone National Park’s geyser basins. Credit and copyright: Harun Mehmedinovic/Skyglow Productions.
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory has captured images of a growing dark region on the surface of the Sun. Called a coronal hole, it produces high-speed solar winds that can disrupt satellite communications. Image: Solar Dynamics Observatory / NASA
NASA has spotted an enormous black blotch growing on the surface of the Sun. It looks eerie, but this dark region is nothing to fear, though it does signal potential disruption to satellite communications.
The dark region is called a coronal hole, an area on the surface of the Sun that is cooler and less dense than the surrounding areas. The magnetic fields in these holes are open to space, which allows high density plasma to flow out into space. The lack of plasma in these holes is what makes them appear dark. Coronal holes are the origin of high-speed solar winds, which can cause problems for satellite communications.
The images were captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) on July 11th. Tom Yulsman at Discover’s ImaGeo blog created a gif from several of NASA’s images.
High-speed solar winds are made up of solar particles which are travelling up to three times faster than the solar wind normally does. Though satellites are protected from the solar wind, extremes like this can still cause problems.
Coronal holes may look like a doomsday warning; an enormous black hole on the surface of our otherwise placid looking Sun is strange looking. But these holes are a part of the natural life of the Sun. And anyway, they only appear in extreme ultraviolet and x-ray wavelengths.
The holes tend to appear at the poles, due to the structure of the Sun’s magnetosphere. But when they appear in more equatorial regions of the Sun, they can cause intermittent problems, as the high-speed solar wind they generate is pointed at the Earth as the Sun rotates.
In June 2012, a coronal hole appeared that looked Big Bird from Sesame Street.
The “Big Bird” coronal hole appeared on the Sun in June 2012. It was the precursor to a powerful storm that was considered a near miss for Earth. Image: NASA/AIA
The Big Bird hole was the precursor to an extremely powerful solar storm, the most powerful one in 150 years. Daniel Baker, of the University of Colorado’s Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics, said of that storm, “If it had hit, we would still be picking up the pieces.” We were fortunate that it missed us, as these enormous storms have the potential to damage power grids on the surface of the Earth.
It seems unlikely that any solar wind that reaches Earth as a result of this current coronal hole will cause any disruption to us here on Earth. But it’s not out of the question. In 1989 a solar storm struck Earth and knocked out power in the province of Quebec in Canada.
It may be that the only result of this coronal hole, and any geomagnetic storms it creates, are more vivid auroras.
Those are something everyone can appreciate and marvel at. And you don’t need an x-ray satellite to see them.
'Northern Lights above Lofoten,' a photo taken by Alex Conu, won first prize in the 'Against the Lights' category in the 2016 International Earth & Sky Photo Contest. The image was taken from a mountaintop in Lofoten Islands, Norway. Credit and copyright: Alex Conu.
The winners of the 7th annual Earth & Sky Photo Contest have been announced, and wow, these images are absolutely stunning! The contest really highlights the beauty of the night sky, and its mission is to spread the message to cut down on light pollution while helping to preserve the last remaining natural night environments and night skies in the world. The contest was organized by The World at Night (TWAN) and other sister organizations.
“The sky above us is an essential part of our nature, a heritage for us and other species on this planet,” said TWAN founder and contest chair, Babak Tafreshi.”The contest main goal is to present the night sky in this broader context that helps preserving the natural night sky by reconnect it with our modern life.”
See more winning photos below:
The second place winner in the ‘Against the Light’ category is Carlo Zanandrea from Italy for “All that Glitters is not Gold” taken in December 2015 showing constellation Orion rising over lights and fog in the province of Treviso in northeastern Italy. Credit and copyright: Carlo Zanandrea.
Just last week, a group of Italian and American scientists unveiled a new global atlas of light pollution, and sadly, they said the results show the Milky Way is “but a faded memory to one-third of humanity and 80 percent of Americans.”
“We’ve got whole generations of people in the United States who have never seen the Milky Way,” said Chris Elvidge, a scientist with NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. “It’s a big part of our connection to the cosmos — and it’s been lost.”
These photos from Earth & Sky Contest really display that important connection, with people and places on Earth being a big part of many of the images – the classic definition of “TWAN-style” photography. According to the contest theme of “Dark Skies Importance,” the submitted photos were judged in two categories: “Beauty of The Night Sky” and “Against the Lights.”
“The selected images are those most effective in impressing public on both how important and delicate the starry sky is as an affecting part of our nature, and also how bad the problem of light pollution has become,” TWAN said in their press release. “Today, most city skies are virtually devoid of stars. Light pollution (excessive light that scatters to the sky instead of illuminating the ground) not only is a major waste of energy, it also obscures the stars, disrupts ecosystems and has adverse health effects.”
“The Photographer” by Nicholas Roemmelt from Austria is the second place winner in the ‘Beauty of the Night Sky category, taken in March 2015 in Stockiness, Iceland. Credit and copyright: Nicholas Roemmelt
The winning images were chosen on their “aesthetic merit and technical excellence,” said David Malin of the judging panel, who is well-known pioneer in scientific astrophotography. “We believe they accurately reflect the state of the art in TWAN-style photography. The competition encourages photographers with imagination to push their cameras to their technical limits, and to produce eye-catching images that appear perfectly natural and are aesthetically pleasing.”
This photo, “Viking Lights” by Adam Woodworth from USA, won in the composite section of the ‘Beauty of the Night Sky’ category, where frames of various exposure or focus settings are blended. This image was captured in Newfoundland, Canada in June, 2015. Credit and copyright: Adam Woodworth.In the photo sequence submissions, the winner in the Beauty category is “Total Solar Eclipse from Svalbard” by Thanakrit Santikunaporn from Thailand. He captured the eclipse phases every 3 minutes over frozen landscape of Svalbard, Norway on March 20, 2015. Credit and copyright: Thanakrit Santikunaporn.
The contest was open to anyone of any age, anywhere in the world; to both professional and amateur/hobby photographers. It has been an annual event since 2009 (initially for the International Year of Astronomy) by TWAN, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, and Global Astronomy Month from Astronomers Without Borders. The contest supports efforts of the International Dark Sky Association (IDA) and other organizations that seek to preserve the night sky.
The images were taken in 57 countries and territories including Algeria, Antarctica, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Egypt, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Guam, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Lithuania, Madagascar, Malaysia, Malta, Morocco, Norway, New Zealand, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Reunion (France), Romania, Russia, Scotland, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Spain, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, Ukraine, and USA.
See all the images and more information about them at TWAN. Click on each image for larger versions. A larger version of the lead image can be found here.
You can see the global atlas of light pollution here, which was created from data from the NOAA/NASA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite and calibrated by thousands of ground observations.
And here’s a video that includes all the winning images:
When it comes to my style of photography, preparation is a key element in getting the shot I want.
On this specific day, we were actually planning on only shooting the low Atlantic clouds coming into the city of Cape Town. This in itself takes a lot of preparation as we had to keep a close eye on the weather forecasts for weeks using Yr.no, and the conditions are still unpredictable at best even with the latest weather forecasting technology.
We set out with cameras and camping gear with the purpose of setting up camp high up on Table Mountain so as to get a clear view over the city. The hike is extremely challenging at night, especially with a 15kg backpack on your back! We reached our campsite at about 11pm, and then started setting up our cameras for the low clouds predicted to move into the city at about 3am the next morning. For the next 2 hours or so we scouted for the best locations and compositions, and then tried to get a few hours of sleep in before the clouds arrived.
At about 3am I was woken up by fellow photographer Brendon Wainwright. I realised that he had been up all night shooting timelapses, and getting pretty impressive astro shots even though we were in the middle of the city. I noticed that the clouds had rolled in a bit earlier than predicted and had created a thick blanket over the city, which was acting as a natural light pollution filter.
I looked up at the skies and for the first time in my life I was able to see the core of the Milky Way in the middle of the city! This is when everything changed, the mission immediately became an astrophotography mission, as these kind of conditions are extremely rare in the city.
Learn how to shoot the Milky Way at PhotographingSpace.com!
Composition
After shooting the city and clouds for a while, I turned my focus to the Milky Way. I knew I was only going to have this one opportunity to capture an arching Milky Way over a city covered with clouds, so I had to work fast to get the perfect composition before the clouds changed or faded away.
I set my tripod on top of a large rock that gave me a bit of extra height so that I could get as much of the city lights in the shot as possible. The idea I had in my mind was to shoot a panorama from the center of the city to the Twelve Apostles Mountains in the southwest. This was a pretty large area to cover, plus the Milky Way was pretty much straight above us which meant I had to shoot a massive field of view in order to get both the city and the Milky Way.
The final hurdle was to get myself into the shot, which meant that I had to stand on a 200m high sheer cliff edge! Luckily this was only necessary for one frame in the entire panorama.
Gear and settings
I usually shoot with a Canon 70D with an 18mm f/3.5 lens and a Hahnel Triad 40Lite tripod. This particular night I forgot to bring a spare battery for my Canon and by the time I wanted to shoot this photo, my one battery had already died!
Luckily I had a backup camera with me, an Olympus OMD EM10 mirrorless camera. I had no choice but to use this camera for the shot. The lens on that camera was an Olympus M.Zuiko 14-42mm f/3.5 kit lens, which was not ideal, but I just had to make it work.
I think this photo is a testament to the fact that your gear is not nearly as important as your technique and knowledge of your surroundings and your camera.
I started off by shooting the first horizontal line of photos, in landscape orientation, to form the bottom edge of the final stitched photo. From there I ended up shooting 6 rows of 7 photos each in order to capture the whole view I wanted. This gave me 42 photos in total.
For the most part, my settings were 25 seconds, f/3.5, ISO 2000, with the ISO dropped on a few of the pictures where the city light was too bright. I shot all the photos in raw as to get as much data out of each frame as possible.
Editing
Astrophotography is all about the editing techniques.
In this scenario I had to stitch 42 photos into one photo. Normally I would just use the built-in function in Lightroom, but in this case I had to use software called PTGui Pro, which is made for stitching difficult panoramas. This software enables me to choose control points on the overlapping images in order to line up the photos perfectly.
After creating the panorama in PTGui Pro, I exported it as a TIFF file and then imported that file into Lightroom again. Keep in mind that this one file is now 3GB as it is made up of 42 RAW files!
In Lightroom I went through my normal workflow to bring out the detail in the Milky Way by boosting the highlights a bit, adding contrast, a bit of clarity, and bringing out some shadows in the landscape. The most difficult part was to clear up the distortion that was caused by the faint clouds in the sky between individual images. Unfortunately it is almost impossible to blend so many images together perfectly when you have faint clouds in the sky that form and disappear within minutes, but I think I did the best job I could to even out the bad areas.
Photo: Janik Alheit
A special event
After the final touches were made and the photo was complete, I realized that I had captured something really unique. It’s not every day that you see low clouds hanging over the city, and you almost never see the Milky Way so bright above the city, and I managed to capture both in one image!
The response to the image after posting it to my Instagram account was extremely overwhelming. I got people from all over the world wanting to purchase the image and it got shared hundreds of time across all social media.
It just shows you that planning and dedication does pay off!
What is a treasure? A pirate’s hoard of gold coins safely locked up in a chest would certainly fit. But would you say that something is a treasure when it’s freely available to anyone who wants to take the time? Seems unlikely, doesn’t it. Yet you may change your mind once you take in André van der Hoeven’s book “Treasures of the Universe – Amateur and Professional Visions of the Cosmos”. Within it are striking images that display the natural wealth and beauty that constantly surrounds us and that no chest could ever lock up.
Astrophotography at its core is quite simple; at night, take a camera outside, point the lens up and snap the shutter release. Anyone can do it. However, putting reason to what one captures in the lens is quite a different story. And to add further complexity, consider combining your captured image with someone else’s who’s taken a picture while on another continent or while in space. Last, after taking thousands of images, identify those with artistic as well as scientific merit.
Yes, this is a more complete way of considering astrophotography. And many people are partaking in it. So here’s a book that’s selling its version of night sky images. For anyone who enjoys the night skies, there’s a lot to like. The contents are divided into four groups; galaxies, clusters, nebulae and our solar system. Most images from beyond our solar system are well known, whether of entries in the Messier catalogue or the New General Catalogue (NGC). A few are of farther afield, such as from the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field.
The image presentation is often on a double page spread and has complementary text adjoining. The text provides the scientific merit usually by identifying how the subject of the image fits into the scheme of things, such as the supernova SN2011fe in the Galactic Wheel. The text also provides the photographic particulars, such as that of the Andromeda galaxy that resulted from the compilation of 11 000 separate snapshots. The selection of images makes for a fairly well known set and won’t lead to surprises. Given this, van der Hoeven’s book is a comfortable, complete treatise of his astrophotography.
Now views of space are everywhere on the Internet and other publications so you’re probably wondering “What’s this book bring to the table?” so to speak. After all, a lot of its images come from other government sources like the Hubble space telescope. That’s data free for anyone to peruse. And, the subject of the images, the universe, remains in place for anyone else to capture if they so desire. Both of these are true, but what isn’t obvious is the time and effort to create the images as well as the talent to engender a sense of artistry. Can you imagine the time to compile 11,000 pictures into one? Or spending over 27 night-time hours to collect data for one image? That’s the sort of time and effort involved.
Measuring artistry is another skill altogether and one of which I lay no great claim. Yet, looking at the composition of the spread of the Wizard Nebula warmly shrouded by a complex hydrogen cloud makes me pause. Yes, I know I’m looking at the result of the random arrangement of matter and energy. But there’s something just so darn compelling about the shapes and textures that makes me wonder. And I realize my wonder comes from the skill of the author in composing the shape. I’m impressed. This doesn’t mean that the author has claimed any predominance. Rather, throughout the book he provides encouragement and incitements for bigger and better. Whether it calls for astrophotography from the next-generation telescopes or for beginner astrophotographers to develop their skill, it pushes for more and better imagery. Yes, this book is more than just pretty pictures. It’s also instructive and telling. Another unusual aspect is that the book was funded through a Kickstarter.
As with a few other marvelous books with vistas of the universe, this book’s pages are in in a wide format (almost landscape size). The pages have matte-black background with clear white font text. The text for each image is usually clear, except for some with underlying images of light colours. These are few. For the selection of images, I find ones of galaxies and nebulae most rewarding. Finding shapes and patterns from clusters is more challenging.
And, after seeing the depth and expanse of the universe, I find the images from our solar system almost ordinary, though I know I shouldn’t. I like the section at the book’s end that describes the image details including the telescope, the camera and the exposures for various filters. Perhaps I can use these to dabble at my own artistry. I also appreciate the credits that list all the data sources and perhaps the people who processed the data, though these aren’t always obvious. I don’t like that the book had to eventually come to an end. I could have kept looking at many more pages.
Treasures are a measure of worth. For those who like gold, a pirate’s chest may be the ultimate high. For those who are drawn to the night, to the limitlessness of space, then the jewels of the night sky are the only ones worth viewing. For you who like the night, let André van der Hoeven’s book “Treasures of the Universe – Amateur and Professional Visions of the Cosmos” spirit you away to a viewing pleasure. With it in your hands you will hold more than any pirate’s chest could ever contain.
Here’s an amazing photograph of the Milky Way by astrophotographer Matt Dieterich. He took the image a step further, however, and identified all the constellations you can see close to the Milky Way.
You’ll want to click this image and see a bigger version.
Full panoramic view of the constellations near the Milky Way by Matt Dieterich
Right down near the horizon is Sagittarius – it looks like a teapot, with the Milky Way rising like steam from its spout. Many of the brightest, most spectacular nebulae in the night sky are located around this constellation: the Lagoon Nebula, Trifid Nebula, and the Omega Nebula. The 4 million solar mass supermassive black hole located at the center of the Milky Way is located in this region too.
Further up the Milky Way you can see the three constellations that form the Summer Triangle: Lyra, Cygnus and Aquila.
And right on the left side of the photograph is Cassiopeia, with its familiar “W” shape.
In the lower-right of the image are a few constellations from the zodiac: Scorpio, Libra and Virgo. And if you look closely you can see Saturn making its way across the sky, in the plane of the ecliptic.
If you’re interested in learning about the night sky, I highly recommend you take your time and learn your constellations. These are your wayposts, navigational aides that help you find your way across the Universe, to the wonders right there in the sky above you.
Matt used a Nikon D750 camera with a 24mm f/1.4 lens. The whole image is made up of 20 separate exposures of 15 seconds each, stitched together to make this amazing mosaic. He captured this image from Glacier National Park in Northern Montana.
Here’s the original version, without the highlighted constellations. Once again, you’ll want to click to see the full resolution goodness.
Milky Way (without the constellations) by Matt Dieterich
A big thanks to Matt for contributing this picture to the Universe Today Flickr pool. If you’re an astrophotographer, you’ll be in good company, with thousands of other photographers who share their pictures. We’ve got more than 33,000 pictures there now.
