Orion's Belt

Orion's belt consists of three stars.

• Mintaka - which is a double star, is 915 light years from Earth and is a double star.  The stars orbit around each other every 5.73 days.  In this photo you can see the double star.  Mintaka comes from an Arabic word meaning "the belt".
• Alnilam  - this star is 1340 light years away from the Earth. Alnilam is a blue-white supergiant and is related to an Arabic word meaning "string of pearls".
• Alnitak  - this star is 736 light years away from the Earth.  This is a triple star although the other stars in the system cannot be seen in this photo.  Alnitak comes from an Arabic word meaning "the girdle".

For a great photo from NASA of Orion's belt and the surrounding area go here.

Photos from the New Camera

I made an incremental upgrade to my camera last night. I was using the Canon PowerShot SX40 HS and now have the Canon PowerShot SX50 HS.  The detail in some of the images I took is much better than with the older camera.  The greatest improvement I noticed was my photo of the Orion Nebula I took tonight.  I superimposed the old image on the new one for comparison.  The image on the left side was the old, and the right side is the new photo taken tonight.

It is still very grainy but it now shows a lot more color and more of the nebula itself than the previous image.

I also took another picture of the Pleiades tonight and could actually label all of the stars that comprise it using the photo I took and then going into Stellarium for comparison.  The labeled photo is below.

The Pleiades nine brightest stars are named for the Seven Sisters in Greek Mythology and their parents, Atlas and Pleione. Sterope/Asterope are actually one sister however the name is spelled both ways. The names are shared by 22 Tauri (labelled Sterope) and 21 Tauri (labelled Asterope).  The Seven Sisters were Nymphs.

This photo is just a random one I decided to add of the red supergiant star Betelgeuse in the constellation of Orion.

The last photo for tonight will be of Jupiter and its moons.  The reddish colored 'moon' northwest of Jupiter is actually a star (HIP 20417A) the three moons visible moving southeast away from Jupiter are: Io, Ganymede and Callisto.

Also HIP 20417A is about 1753 light years away form Earth.

Halo Around the Moon

I walked outside tonight and noticed the halo around the Moon and tried to get a picture of it. The focus isn't that great but the halo did come out okay I thought.  There was a halo around it a few nights ago as well but I didn't have my camera with me at the time to try to get a picture of it.

Here is tonight's picture of Jupiter and its moons.  The dot off the the right that is a little further away than the rest is actually a star.  When I took the picture I thought it was a moon until I looked it Stellarium and was proven otherwise.  Io is just to the bottom right of Jupiter's disk barely visible.

And the last picture for this post is another attempt to photograph the Orion Nebula.  I eventually want to be able to get the proper equipment to really get into Astrophotography but I don't really have the money for that yet, so for now I make do with that I can accomplish just using my digital camera.