By Mario Rana | 2025-12-30
All the colors of Vega
On 12/29/2025 10:02 pm by Paolo Bardelli | Sumirago (Varese), Italy
The other evening, while leaving my house, I saw a low flashing light in the northwest. I thought it was a plane, but it was Vega, with colors I'd never seen before. Vega is a blue-white star, but due to scintillation, caused by a thermal inversion, its light is split into 1,000 colors. On the left, an image of Vega taken with an equivalent exposure time of 25 seconds at ISO 6400; the star appears white. To capture the colors, I quickly panned the DSLR with an exposure time of 2 seconds at ISO 1000, resulting in a colorful streak. I blurred and stretched this to better highlight the hues, without affecting the saturation. If you know how to observe the sky, it always has some surprises in store...
Canon 6D + Canon lens 200 mm., tripod.
PS CC (contrast, blur)