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Anyone get some cool photos of spaaaaace lately?

15:22 / 01.09.07

So last night/this morning I got up before it was even an a.m. to speak of to go out with a friend and find someplace dark and minimally foggy to look at the sky in search of meteors. I brought my crap digital camera hoping against hope that it had a shutter time that would be useful, but no. Did anyone get any photos of the Aurigids? If you did, you may be the first person ever to photograph this meteor shower successfully.

I did see some great streaks, even meteors that showed through clouds, leaving a bright trail in the sky for a breath after they faded (not an afterimage). Who can tell me what causes that streak to linger?

Some of the meteors were reddish, but I didn't see any bluish ones like they claimed.

Spaniel

22:48 / 01.09.07

Photos?

01:06 / 02.09.07

As I said, my camera was inadequate.

grant

01:43 / 02.09.07

Not I, but I gotta plug NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day site.

Many seem to be by amateurs, although they're all awful pretty.

astrojax69

05:41 / 02.09.07

didn't get photos, but saw a fantastic eclipse of the moon (or, as a young boy somewhere beyond my back fence yelled, a 'ca-lipse'. noice) in a perfectly clear sky, early evening, just above the horizon - a 'blood red' moon. i'm always stunned by the large sphere hanging like a discarded tennis ball in the sky during a full lunar eclipse.

beautiful.

sorry i didn't snap it...

Mug Chum

13:37 / 02.09.07

I found this one particularly pretty.

(from a article saying NASA discovered a system [NGC 1333-IRAS 4B] on the Milky Way exceding 5 times more water than Earth, as vapor and ice)
(I'd link the article, but it's in portuguese)

Mug Chum

13:38 / 02.09.07

Really, I'm a bit hipnotized by that picture (the blue background added a even more cool contrast).

15:12 / 02.09.07

I know NASA takes good pictures of space; that's what they're for, right? Some other folks are doing pretty well with home equipment. Here's a few Aurigid photos from flickr:
One single bright trail
One faint colored trail
One bright distant trail
This person can't tell if this is a meteor or a meteorite or a lens flare. I'm pretty sure it's just a case of pointing a camera set for long exposure at an artificial light source.

15:20 / 02.09.07

And here's some more from the pros.

A shot of some aurigids from a plane
A long, bright, colored streak
A page from an observatory with some stats and video clips of meteors

Tsuga

16:04 / 02.09.07

I've used Nasa shots for wallpaper before, besides grant's link above, there's this jet propulsion lab site, as well.
I think it would be difficult to take good shots of night skies without some good equipment, but I've never tried. I know many consumer model telescopes have fittings for cameras, but that's a bit pricey. Maybe when the cold, clear air comes in soon, I'll give it a shot and post here. There's not much light pollution here, might make something visible, anyway.

grant

12:21 / 06.09.07

Actually, what interests me about that NASA site is how many images are from architects and whatnot - people other than NASA employees.

gridley

13:23 / 06.09.07

This is probably one for the stupid science questions thread, but in those pictures of the nebulae and things, are those vivid colors real or just added in photoshop to make things more distinctive?

grant

14:02 / 06.09.07

I think they're at the very least tweaked, and often "amplified" digitally.

But I have a vague memory that the Hubble stuff was a lot more "real" than previous, because it's an optical telescope (that is, it uses a big-assed mirror to make images from available visual light rather than converting infrared or X-rays into colors we can see).

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