# 59 | Saturn
Truly one of the most beautiful objects in the nightsky to view, Saturn is slowly but surely becoming a more convenient target time-wise to observe. Rising high in the East in the early evening, many an observer will be glad the early morning and middle-of-the-night Saturn observing sessions are now over.
Luis Eguren, a member of the Montreal RASC, took this image of Saturn on November 27, 2002. Luis used a 7" Meade Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope and attached a Toucam Pro webcam and a 1.6X Antares barlow. He took 20 of the best frames and combined them with Adobe Photoshop.
# 58 | Sun Pillar
When conditions are just right at sunrise or sunset, you may see a pillar of light extending into the sky from the horizon. Called "Sun pillars", they are caused by ice crystals falling from clouds reflecting sunlight. Occasionally you may see this phenomenon when the Moon or, although rare, when Venus is near the horizon.
Carl MacDonald writes "I was amazed at how quickly the pillar changed even in the time it took me to grab my camera. The camera also picked up a lot of cloud detail which was too faint for me to see by eye."
Carl took this shot in Stockdale, Ontario on November 27th at 7:30am. He used a 28mm lens at f8, a Pentax K1000 camera loaded with Kodak 800 speed film and took a 1/500th of a second exposure.
# 57 | A Colourful Conjunction
When taken at just the right moment, a simple twilight shot can be a thing of beauty.
Shaun Lowe took this richly coloured shot of Jupiter and Venus setting at dusk on July 23, 2002 from Grand Lake, Nova Scotia.
Shaun mounted his Kodak DX3900 digital camera on a tripod, set it at f2.8 and the 400 ISO setting and took a 12 second exposure.
# 56 | The Double Cluster
Appearing to the naked eye as a fuzzy patch to the west of the "W" shaped constellation Cassiopeia, NGC 869 and NGC 884, commonly known as the "double cluster", are two 5th magnitude star clusters that are jewels in the nightsky.
Steve Barnes took this beautiful image at Starfest 2002.
Photo details: LRGB composite: L - 10minutes with FLI IMG1300 CCD camera through a TeleVue 101 @ f/5.4. RGB - 20 minutes on Fuji 100F with 8" Celestron Schmidt Camera @f/1.5. Afterwards the images were processed with RegiStar and Photoshop
# 55 | Fire and Ice
Sometimes the beauty of an aurora photograph can be dramatically altered by the appearance of an object in the foreground or by something as simple as a few clouds.
Rod Ines took this shot on March 23, 2002 from Powell River, B.C. and was surprised when he saw how the clouds affected the shot. He decided to call his shot "Fire and Ice".
Rod used a 28mm lens and 400 Fuji Provia film with an exposure of 30 seconds for this shot.
# 54 | Jupiter
Jupiter, the largest of all the planets in our solar system, is now easily seen shining in the east after midnight. Those that wish to view Jupiter at a more convenient time may try waking at 5:00am, when the gas giant is high in the southern sky and better placed for observing through a telescope.
Gerald Stelmack took this composite image of Jupiter on February 16, 2002, from Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Gerald used the afocal method with a 2x barlow and a 17mm Plossl through a Celestron C9.25 SCT. After shooting with a Sony Digital 8 DCR-TRV103 video camera, he processed, aligned and stacked 512 video frames with Registax and then did some final touches with Photoshop.
# 53 | The Eagle Nebula
The Eagle Nebula is a hazy patch found that can be seen in binoculars from a moderately dark location. Located in the constellation Sagittarius, it is one of the many jewels of the night found in that part of the sky.
Paul Zelichowski used a 10" f4.5 reflector mounted on a Losmandy G11 and a Starlight Xpress HX916 ccd camera to take this image from his observatory in Tiverton, Ontario.
# 52 | The California Nebula
The California Nebula, aptly named because of it's shape, is an emission nebula found in the constellation Perseus. Although it is primarily known as a photographic target, some observers report that it can be observed from a very dark location.
While at Starfest in August, 2002, Rob Lenz imaged the nebula with a Takahashi E130 f3.3 astrograph. Rob used Kodak E200 slide film (which was pushed 2x during developing) with an exposure time of 15 minutes and guided his shot with a C5 on a Super Polaris mount.
# 51 | Globular Cluster M13
Messier 13, a globular cluster in the constellation Hercules, is one of the showpieces of the night sky. In a large telescope, the stars appear as a beehive of activity.
On June 28, 2002, Les Marczi imaged M13 using a Meade 10" LX-200 GPS Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. Les used the afocal method with a 35mm eyepiece and a 2x barlow, shooting three 40-second images with a Nikon Coolpix 995 digital camera set at 800 ISO. Les then stacked and combined the images using Adobe Photoshop 7.0.
# 50 | Analemma
Astrophotography certainly can be a test of patience, but nothing tries one's patience like an analemma photo.
Every ten days over the course of an entire year, Steve Irvine took his camera to Keppel Henge, a monument built to commemorate the year 2000, in Big Bay, Ontario, locked his tripod into a specially made rig, covered his 28mm lens with a #12 welder's filter and took a 1/250 of a second image.
Analemma shows the path of the Sun in the sky and how it's motion changes over the course of a year.
Steve used a Canon A-1 camera and Kodak Gold Select 100 print film for this 36 exposure shot which was taken on one negative.