Strongly Celestial

Looking outward; looking backward in time...

About | Launchpad | Gallery | Contact

Star Gallery

These are my pictures of stars and star groupings. Because pictures of stars themselves are not so interesting (they're just pinpoints of light), I will include in the description what I found interesting and why I took the photo. As with all of my galleries, click on the picture itself to bring up a larger, scaleable copy of the picture in a separate window; be sure to expand that window to see the full size of the image!

Subject: The Pleiades - open star cluster (M45)
Date Taken: 12/3/2011

Equipment:
Orion Short Tube 80-A refractor
Canon T2i DSLR

Comments
Pictured here is The Pleiades, one of the closest star clusters to earth at about 130 light years distant, and easily visible to the naked eye as a smudge in the sky. This cluster consists of 1,000's of individual stars in a formation that is on the order of 10 light years in radius. What dominates The Pleiades visually (and are clearly seen in this image) are the young, hot, blue stars which give this formation its nickname: "Seven Sisters". The largest star, Alcyone, is seen near the center of this image. It is 6x our sun's mass, ~10x its diameter, and has a temperature of 13,000K, giving it (and its sisters) the distinctive blue color.

Subject: Epsilon 1 & 2 - "the double double"
Date Taken: 9/2/2011

Equipment:
Orion Mak-Cassegrain 180mm
Canon T2i DSLRw/ 2x barlows

Comments
One evening, I stumbled into what appeared to be a double star completely by accident and snapped a picture. The next day I discovered that it was in fact Epsilon 1 & 2 in Lyra, commonly known as "the double double". Epsilon 1 & 2 is a binary star formation 162 light years from earth, and the stars are almost the exact same size, each being ~2.3x the diameter of our sun. The fascinating thing is that each of the two main stars is itself a double star; they both have companions which orbit them at a distance of 100-150 AU! The next evening I went back to this formation and took this picture using a 2x barlow lens to boost the mag to try to achieve separation. Although not perfect, this image clearly shows the 4 star system.

Subject: Polaris (North Star) - double star
Date Taken: 5/9/2011

Equipment:
Orion Mak-Cassegrain 180mm
Canon T2i DSLR

Comments
Polaris, commonly known as the North Star, is 434 light years from earth and has a radius 30x our sun's, with 6x more mass. Polaris was discovered in 1780 to be a double star, and this picture clearly shows its companion. It is about 1.5x bigger than our sun and orbits Polaris at a distance of 2,400 AU (about 60x the radius of our solar system. Although not visible here (only Hubble has picked it up visually), spectral analysis in 1929 revealed that there is in fact another, dwarf star orbiting Polaris at a distance of 18.5 AU, making it in reality a 3-star system!