This amazing picture of stars being born inside a nebula was taken by Daniel Lopez using Grantecan. Near the centre of the picture is a dark red spot – that’s the new star which shines mostly in the infrared. The butterfly shape is a large disk of dust and gas orbiting the star. The gas near the star shines because it is ionized (like the inside of a flourescent…
Every year La Palma holds an astrophotography contest, and the winning entries from the 2013 contest are now on display in the island’s museum. The inauguration was held on Friday night, and the winners received their prizes. It’s well worth a visit, because the photos are wonderful, and the rest of the museum is interesting too. The museum (and the exhibition) is open from 10 am – 8 pm…
On Wednesday night in Santa Cruz there will be a talk on astrophotography by Babak Tafreshi and Christoph Malin (two of the most prestigious astrophotographers in the world). They’re on La Palma to teach at Astromaster LA PALMA 2013, an advanced course on image processing and landscape photography timelapse and night which will be held in Los Cancajos this week, between July 26 and September 30. The talk will…
Partial Lunar eclipses are quite common. Photos like this aren’t. It was taken by Ana Garcia of AstroLaPalma.com, who offer observations (tours or private), telescope rental, the “Los Indianos” tour in Santa Cruz de La Palma and tailored astronomy travel packages.
I’m glad I woke up early today. These were taken from my balcony in Breña Baja at 6:30 am. For the top one I used a compact camera (Canan SX220) and tripod. For the bottom one, a Pentax DSLR (K 10D) and tripod. On La Palma, you can get results like this with very modest equipment and skill.
Thierry Legault is a Frenchman who travelled to Queensland, Australia for the Venus transit. He captured both Venus and the Hubble Space Telescope as they passed in front of the sun. This is a composite photograph – 9 exposures taken in under a second, during which the HST zipped in front of the sun. I’m not going to steal his photo. You can see it at: http://legault.perso.sfr.fr/venus_hst_transit.html I’m jealous.