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“The Hubble space telescope has taken the most detailed photograph yet of a fading star that’s beaming twin searchlights through its dusty grave.
The Egg Nebula, as astronomers call the object they discovered 37 years ago, is a cocoon of dust and gas illuminated like a lantern by an aging central star.”
Picture of the Day: Star Trails From the International Space Station
“Astronaut Don Pettit created this image of star trails as seen from the International Space Station approximately 240 miles above Earth. He explains, “My star trail images are made by taking a time exposure of about 10 to 15 minutes. However, with modern digital cameras, 30 seconds is about the longest exposure possible, due to electronic detector noise effectively snowing out the image. To achieve the longer exposures I do what many amateur astronomers do. I take multiple 30-second exposures, then ‘stack’ them using imaging software, thus producing the longer exposure.” The above picture combines 18 such exposures.”
My whole weekend was worth it for this shot. I’ve always wanted to take a picture like this of the moon.
It rose in an inconvenient part of the sky, and nowhere near the city. And it was way too high by the time it was dark to get a good silhouette of anything in front of it. So all of the people parked on the same hill as me were grumbling about how all we could hope for was a clearly-shot moon in a sea of boring black. Which is what I got.
And I love it.
