psychohistorian.org
Wednesday
2009 July 29
The Swan Nebula
Subject
Messier 17, Bennett 108, ASSA 87
Tagged as
Astronomy, astrophotography, Lucas Ferreira.
Contributor
Lucas Ferreira
Homepage
The Swan Nebula, discovered by de Cheseaux in 1764. "It has a shape quite different from the others," he wrote, "it has the perfect form of a ray or the tail of a comet, 7' long and 2' wide. Its sides are exactly parallel and well terminated."
A few weeks later, Messier discovered it, calling it "a train of light without stars … in the shape of a spindle, a little like that in Andromeda's belt, but the light is very faint."
Lucas' photo was taken with an 8-inch Sky-Watcher Newtonian and a Pentax K110D SLR camera. The total exposure time was just 10 minutes, and consisted of 21 light frames (30s each), 10 dark frames (30s each) and 5 bias frames (1/4000s each).
The image above has been cropped to be web-friendly.
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Southern skies
- Find out about the Moon, stars, planets and constellations visible in the southern skies this month.
ASSA Symposium
- Eighth Biennial ASSA Symposium will be held in Pretoria on 2010 October 07/08.
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