Throughout the ages, Orion has played a prominent role in astronomy. The Pyramids are said to be aligned with its belt, though most Astropotamuses don’t believe this. The Orion Nebula (the middle “star” of his belt”) has been a form of eye test for thousands of years. And my favorite, it signifies the return of cold, dark, clear winter skies.
Nov 222011
Oct 032011
When its time to change, you’e got to rearrange.
-The Brady Bunch
Mrs. Astropotamus has changed. And she’s rearranging. Luckily, the change is a good one and the rearranging is for the best.
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Sep 262011
gran·ite/ˈgranit/
Noun: A very hard, granular, crystalline, intrusive igneous rock consisting mainly of quartz, mica, and feldspar and often used as a building stone.
gap/gap/
Noun: A break or hole in an object or between two objects: “he came through the gap in the hedge”
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Sep 252011
Just a quick post about the faster than light neutrinos discovered at CERN. I love it when topics discussed on Astropotamus are used to compare and contrast things in the real world. You can see why SN1987A is useful for determining if neutrinos really do travel faster than light at this link.
It’s official: it’s autumn in the Northern Hemisphere (which is where Astropotamus lives). And as everyone knows, on the equinox, there are equal parts day and night, right? Oh, and that you can balance an egg on its end, too. Surely this is all true?
Sep 212011
We take a break from astroimaging for a moment to talk about things that go bang. We all know about fireworks, smash-em-up derbies, and an obscure rock group from the early 70s. But I’m talking about things that go bang in the sky.
Sep 142011
Today, we’re going to pretend we are a photon of light, rather than looking at photons of light. This lets us take a break from time traveling for a minute and spend some time talking about what happens to light when it goes through the Time Machine and ends up on the sensor of our camera. Continue reading »
Sep 082011
Traveling back in time billions of years is fun, but sometimes it’s also fun to be in the present. Especially when it involves Mrs. Astropotamus. Continue reading »
Aug 312011
Cassiopeia
Famous all summer long (and into the winter), Casseopeia is one of my favorites. I will just show off this picture and then let it speak for itself. This is the resulting stacked and color-adjusted image of 50+ images taken over the course of about 20 minutes. Again, no tracking was used so the individual pictures were pretty short.
Next time, I am going to get the Time Machine out and see what we can do while actually tracking something up there…
Aug 302011
Sometimes, I just aim the camera and take a picture. Sometimes, the picture is great. Sometimes, it’s trash. This is one of those times. Continue reading »