Order by: Trending (past 30 days)Date
Community photo entitled  by Garth Battista on 05/13/2020 at Halcottsville, NY

On 05/13/2020 10:00 pm by Garth Battista| Halcottsville, NY

The North America Nebula rising two nights ago, along with the tail end of Cygnus the Swan (flying off from left to right). These spectacular magenta regions of hydrogen-alpha radiation are too faint to be seen by the naked eye, but show themselves in long exposure. The golden light emanating from the woods show where cabins are tucked away up on the hillside.
This was shot between 10:00 and 11:00PM, starting just as astronomical dark was beginning. I lay in the grass gazing at the starry night sky as the camera clicked away. The camera can show us all kinds of wild invisible wonders, but nothing beats seeing the whole night sky all at once, live and in person.
This image shows the actual size and position of the nebula as it rose over our Catskill Mountains landscape. It's four times larger than the full moon!

Sony a6000 with Infrared+Visible spectrum mod
~ H-alpha + visible on-lens filter from Kolari
~ Zonlai 50mm f/1.4 lens at f/2.0
~ ISO 200
~ 2 minutes per frame, tracked by Sky Watcher Star Adventurer. 12 frames for sky, 2 for foreground.

The frames were aligned and stacked in Sequator, and the sky was then run through Starnet++ to reduce stars and enhance the nebulosity. Then the sky and foreground were blended in Photoshop.