2007 Live Astronomy - Kitt Peak
The Moon - Mare Imbrium
Most of this view is the vast lava-covered basin of Mare Imbrium, the result of one of the most titanic impact events recorded on the lunar surface. Off its northern edge are the similarly lava-covered crater Plato and the great radial gash known as the Alpine Valley (which sports a meandering collapsed laval tube too small to see here). Just south of the gap on the right side of the mare walls is the landing site of Apollo 15, and off to the lower left the majestic crater Copernicus.
The Moon - Hyginus Rille
Looking south, we cross the center of the lunar nearside. At right center is the Hyginus rille, a collapsed volcanic feature. The cratered highlands to its south show gouges pointing back to Mare Imbrium, testimony to the violence of its formation. At bottom center is the crater Alphonsus with its several interior dark-haloed craterlets, possibly among the last active lunar volcanos. Apollo 14 landed at lower left, in a location selected so the astronauts could sample material blown out from Mare Imbrium to provide a time baseline of lunar history.
The Moon - The Crater Chain Davy Catena
Moving south again, we see Alphonsus and its kin again. To its left is the squarish crater Davy Y crossed by the crater chain Davy Catena. This is the kind of thing that would result if a comet passed close to Earth and broke apart under tidal forces, as Shoemaker-Levy 9 did in 1993 on passing Jupiter, and the pieces slammed into the lunar surface one after the other. South of this, we see the illuminated face of the Straight Wall, a sloping fault which is one of the many surface structures produced by the enormous weight of the lava sheets covering the low-lying areas these 3.5 billion years ago.
The Moon - Tycho Crater, The Surveyor 7 Landing Site
This view gets almost to the south pole, covering the heavily-cratered highlands that were not flooded by the great lava plains. It includes craters of historical and pseudohistorical interest - Tycho was the landing site of Surveyor 7, and (according to 2001: A Space Odyssey), the site of the uncovering of the first known extraterrestrial artifact. Nearby is the enormous crater Clavius, where Clarke envisioned a lunar outpost. Near the very pole may be the "Mountains of Eternal Light", which (if they actually exist) always see the sun around the horizon. This is a very useful feature for powering a base with solar arrays, especially if there is ice at the permanently shadowed bottom of adjacent craters.
Uranus and 4 Moons - Umbriel, Titania, Ariel & Oberon
This 10-second exposure shows the four largest moons of Uranus, oddly lined up because we just (weeks earlier) passed through the plane of the planet's equator and rings and the orbits of the moon. If I have this right, from bottom to top they are Umbriel, Titania, Ariel, and Oberon. Even this short time greatly overexposed the planet, leading to the ragged white area on its edge.
Messier 13 - The Great Hercules Cluster
This is the best of several 1-minute exposures with a red filter. The Great Hercules cluster is one of the nearest globular clusters, enormous balls of ancient stars that are among the oldest pieces of our galaxy that remain easy to identify. There may be a million stars in this cluster. All are about 12 billion years old, so that stars like the Sun have finished their active lives and remain only as very dim white dwarfs. The brightest stars here are red giants, each perhaps 100 times as luminous as the Sun.
Messier 16 - Eagle or Star Queen Nebula
This is the Star Queen or Eagle nebula, made famous by the Hubble "Pillars of Creation" image. For that one, Jeff Hester and collaborators set up the pointing so that the WFPC2 camera's "batwing" field of view neatly encompassed the three dust-rich pillars at the center. This star-forming region shows the dynamic interaction between massive and luminous young stars and the surrounding gas, as the stars' intense ultraviolet radiation rips apart molecules and blows away the gas that would otherwise build up some of the surrounding stars. Starbirth is no game for the faint of heart. This picture is a sum of 30 minutes' exposure through a narrowband H-alpha filter, emphasizing ionized gas.
Cygnus Loop - NGC 6995
This is a small part of an immense supernova remnant, several tens of thousands of years old, in Cygnus. This piece, catalogued as NGC 6995, shows intricate loops and sheets as the expanding blast wave still impinges on surrounding interstellar gas, ionizing the gas and powering the visible light we see. ("See" being just barely literally correct with a telescope from a dark site). This image includes 20 minutes' worth of exposure through a narrow filter emphasizing the red emission of hydrogen.
Messier 11 - The Wild Duck Star Cluster
The "Wild Duck" star cluster in the rich star clouds of the summer Milky Way. We had to keep the exposure time down to 60 seconds so the bright stars wouldn't leave annoying afterglows on an hour's worth of subsequent images.
NGC 185 - Galaxy Companion to Andromeda
One of the dwarf-galaxy companions of the great spiral M31 in Andromeda. Oddly for a little elliptical, NGC 185 has a little patch of gas and dust near its core.
NGC 206 - Young Stars in Andromeda
This is the brightest association of young stars in the Andromeda Galaxy - you can also see some of the dust lanes which outline the spiral arms. This is also one of the regions where Edwin Hubble found Cepheid variable stars in the Andromeda Galaxy, demonstrating that it was indeed another galaxy comparable to our own.
The Ring Nebula - H-Alpha Filter
This is the poster example of a planetary nebula, cast off from the outer layers of a red giant star as it runs out of nuclear fuel and leaves its core to contract to a white dwarf. This image, taken through an H-alpha filter, emphasized the nebular gas.
The Ring Nebula - Blue Filter
This is the poster example of a planetary nebula, cast off from the outer layers of a red giant star as it runs out of nuclear fuel and leaves its core to contract to a white dwarf. This image, taken through a blue filter, shows the central star clearly.
The Einstein Cross- Gravitational Lensing
This 15-minute exposure in red light (unfortunately after the Moon rose) shows the lens galaxy of the 4-image gravitational lens Q2237+030. The air was not steady enough to make out the central cross pattern (see the Hubble image), but we do see the bright blended light of the quasar images amplified by the curvature of spacetime. (Makes my skin tingle just thinking about it).
