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 The Moon near the end of totality. JISHOU, HUNAN — I had to Photoshop this one a bit to clean it up. I mistakenly had the Tamron’s vibration control on, and the resulting movement smeared the Moon’s image, but left the star images intact.
This is a 10-second exposure with the lens zoomed to 230 mm, taken near the end of totality around 11:00 pm local time. Everything else is the same: Nikon D60 on tripod, Tamron 70-300 zoom lens, f5.6, ASA 200.
The stars surrounding the Moon are fainter members of Taurus: from top left going clockwise, 13 Tau/HIP23900A, iota Tau/HIP23497, HIP23589, 15 Tau/HIP23883 (closest apparently to Moon here), and L Tau/HIP 23871. Iota Tau is a member of the Hyades star cluster, whose V-shape outlines the horns of the bull. The stars of the Hyades are about 150-160 light-years away from Earth.
How do I know which star is which? It’s not an encyclopedic memory or fancy astronomy equipment. I used Stellarium, a free planetarium application for your computer. Here’s a screen shot of Stellarium showing the same view on my desktop.
 Screenshot of Stellarium view of Moon at 11:00 pm Dec 10, 2001 Stellarium will give you details about any object you click on.
Interestingly enough, 15 Tau, which in this photo appears closest to the Moon, is actually the farthest star of the five from us. It’s 1032 light-years away. That’s some old light there.
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 Alnath (β Tau) and the eclipsed Moon -1 sec exposure JISHOU, HUNAN — I caught the total lunar eclipse about halfway through totality. I didn’t do all the good stuff, like wait for the equipment to cool to ambient temperature (0°C here), because I almost forgot to go out. So, out of 25 shots I got three halfway decent ones. The focus seems to be a bit off, I fear.
The three images here are of the Moon toward the end of totality. You can just barely see it brighten on the lower right edge as it leaves the Earth’s shadow. The star to the left is Alnath (β Tauri), the second brightest star in Taurus. Alnath is a bluish-white B-class star, about 700 times brighter than the Sun, 4.5 times heavier and 5 times bigger. It’s 131 light-years away.
I used a tripod-mounted Nikon D60 with a 70-300 Tamron zoom lens at 70 mm, f5.6, ASA 200. The three exposures are 1.0 sec (above), 1.6 sec and 2.5 sec (below).
 Alnath (β Tau) and eclipsed Moon - 1.6 sec exposure  Alnath (β Tau) and eclipsed Moon - 2.6 sec exposure Totality ended around 11:00 pm here.
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The Royal Observatory at Greenwich and Sky at Night magazine sponsor an astrophotography contest each year. The 2011 winners are highlighted in a slide show at the BBC website.
This is the overall winner, a mosaic of Jupiter with two of its moons, Io (left) and Ganymede. The details on all three images in this composite are amazing, and that’s what impressed the judges, too. Damien Peach used a Celestron 14-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope with a Point Grey Flea3 CCD camera to capture these images.
 The overall winner of the 2011 Astronomy Photographer contest, by D. Peach I want to highlight this one at left, too, because it shows a feature of our solar system not commonly seen.  The zodiacal light by Harley Grady It was the winner in the Newcomer category, and shows the zodiacal light from a farm in Texas. You have to have exceptionally clear, dark skies to capture the zodiacal light, which is the very faint reflection of sunlight from the gas and dust within our own solar system.
Harley Grady took this image with a Canon EOS 5D Mk II DSLR camera with a 16-35mm lens, which shows what you can do with fairly simple equipment. All you need is a good tripod, or some other sturdy support, clear skies and some patience. Long exposure times bring out details our naked eyes cannot see.
You can also see the winners, picked from nearly 800 entries, at the Sky at Night website.
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Don’t you just hate it when the star you wish on explodes?
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JISHOU, HUNAN — This Jan. 3 photo is by New Mexico photographer Joseph Brimacombe. The tick marks at 12:00 and 3:00 mark Supernova 2010lt, which was discovered a few days ago by 10-year-old Kathryn Aurora Gray of New Brunswick, Canada. I have made a close-up of SN2010lt from his photo, which appears after the full photo.
 Supernova 2010lt (detail) Photo by Joseph Brimacombe The detail shows the “fuzziness” typical of a galaxy, in this case UGC 3378, which is 240 million light-years away from us. The supernova is within the fuzziness (and the same distance from Earth), so it’s part of the galaxy.
Here’s a news report of the discovery I found online.
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 Kathryn Gray, discoverer of SN2010lt Kathryn Gray, 10, was studying starfield photos on her computer at her home in Birdton, New Brunswick, Canada, when she spotted something that looked like a supernova. It was, and she’s the youngest person ever to find one.
A supernova is the last gasp of a massive star that’s run out of nuclear fuel to “burn.” The star collapses in seconds, and the falling material gets very hot, very fast and explodes. UPDATED TO CORRECT AN ERROR.
In this case, Supernova 2010lt (Kathryn’s Supernova?) exploded because it was unable to regulate nuclear fusion. There was a runaway reaction, leading to a sudden, catastrophic explosion. The pre-supernova star may be quite dim, but the explosion makes it thousands of times brighter — for a very short time.
Astronomers looking for supernovas compare recent photos of the sky with older ones, to see if anything has changed. Kathryn hit paydirt. Here’s an animation to show what she saw.
 Supernovas happen when a large star explodes The star in question is in the galaxy UGC 3378, the bright spot at 8 o’clock relative to the supernova, in the constellation Camelopardalis. It’s 240 million light-years away, so that should give you an idea how bright that supernova is. Or was, since it happened 240 million years in our past and the light has only just now reached us.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — I snapped this from my balcony window this morning around 6:50. It was misty here, as it is usually early in the day, but the moon looked so good hanging just above the mountains to the west that I grabbed my camera and squeezed off a few shots. These were two of the best.
 The full moon at winter solstice Technical details: Shot with a Nikon D60 with manual Nikkor 200 mm lens, ASA 400, f5.6, 1/100 sec
 Solstice moon over the hills Technical details: Shot with a Nikon D60 with Nikkor 18-55 AF-S DX lens, ASA 400, f5.6, 1/13 sec (braced against window frame)
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