Welcome back everyone! Last week I wrapped up my series of images from my time out west this past Spring, but I wanted to continue the night theme for the next few weeks. This Milky Way season has been unfortunately wrought with bad weather, but I have managed to snag a handful of images this year from here in the east.
This year there have been two main things I have fixated on: Zeta Ophiuchus, and the light pollution here in the Smokies. I’ll talk more about light pollution next week, but suffice it to say, I’ve been asking myself how I can illustrate the light pollution in my scenes, with a juxtaposition of the beautiful night sky objects that we’re missing because of it. Zeta Ophiuchus, on the other hand, has been a fascination of discovery really. Zeta Oph., or more accurately the nebulosity around the Zeta Oph. star, is the big red blob that is visible in the image above, and all my other more recent images of the Milky Way. What has captivated me about it is the fact that it really just the interesting structure that it has to it, and also the challenging nature of the object (it’s extremely faint). Hardly any one in the scientific community images it because it’s so huge – rather the scopes that do look at it only focus on one tiny detail of it (more on that in the coming weeks as well) or another.
In any case, I started down the road of capturing Zeta Oph. more intimately (this scene is 50mm) later in the year, subsequently missing the best opportunities, so I’m sure you’ll see more of it in the coming years. 🙂 This did, however, give me the opportunity to capture it in its setting position, as you see above, as the body of the Milky Way leans out over Townsend.
More next week!
–Dan Thompson