[Bluearrowll]

What's in the sky tonight?
May 29, 2013

-Here it is not even June yet, and the Big Dipper after dusk is already turning around to hang down by its handle. Look for it high in the northwest.

-The planet dance is on its way to form a line tonight. Venus and Jupiter are vertically aligned depending on your point of view.

Astro Picture of the Day:
May 29, 2013

Source: My Camera
How bright is nebulosity in Algonquin Park? The answer is its about as bright as it ever gets from the vantage point of this planet. Today's picture is a shot of a pair of nebulae that to my eyes only appeared to be dark fuzzy patches in the sky - I wasn't originally targetting the pair that can be found at the top and bottom of the image but rather I happened to point my camera in this direction while making a larger panorama sized picture. The human eye can't see more than visible light, so many of the nebulae will appear as gray patches. The other reason for this is that they are simply too faint to show colour as well, but a decent camera today will be able to pick them up. A nebula that comes out as a fluorescent violet is likely to have more colour spectra with a wavelength shorter than that of the violet colour spectrum. For this particular nebula, if you had a filter that blocked out all light except ultra Violet, you'd actually get a better picture than one that allows visible light! The following picture highlights the striking difference between infrared, visible and UV filters. Note how the colours of the orion nebula are more vibrant in UV, however the flame nebula near the top left of the image appears invisible in UV - This is because the flame nebula is orange-reddish in colour and is nowhere near the UV spectrum.