#local arm

[thorsenmark]

Milky Way Stretching Across the Night Skies at Petrified Forest National Park by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: A last image captured while standing one evening outside the main north entrance to Petrified Forest National Park. This was with a Nikkor 20mm f/1.8G that I bought just for these starry night conditions and capturing images. I did some initial processing of the RAW/NEF image in ViewNXi Edited, export that to Viveza 2 and finished any image edits in DxO PhotoLab 4.

[zespaceblog]

NGC 2129

Despite the colouring of the image, this open cluster in the constellation of Gemini are young bright hot blue B type stars, as young as around 10 million years old. 

The cluster is in the same local arm of the galaxy as our sun, but around 7,200 light years from Earth. 

Such star clusters are born in nebula, but over the time the nebula has diffused and left the stars born there. As they are large blue stars, it’s likely they will only last 20-50 million years before becoming a red giant and producing a new nebula as they explode in a supernova.

[fieriframes]

[A man standing in front of a building. Caption: THIS REGION OF THE MILKY WAY GALAXY IS NOW USUALLY CALLED THE LOCAL ARM...]

[thorsenmark]

I Came to Petrified Forest (Petrified Forest National Park) by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: I Came to Petrified Forest National Park to See the Trees, Fallen from a time many millions of years ago But the first thing I saw was above in the night skies So dark and overflowing with an unimagined number of stars The Milky Way filled the night almost from west to east Moments like that can give thought to so much more The wonders of life and the need to share with others. Another work of short poetry or prose to complement the image captured one evening while standing at the north main entrance gate to Petrified Forest National Park. The view is looking to the southwest just above the interstate highway that passes through the national park. Metering the image was a matter of opening up the aperture on this Nikkor 20mm lens as wide as I could and finding the right ISO that I could bring in enough light while avoiding any ISO noise. I kept the shutter speed open only long enough to work with the other setups and minimize any star trails. As for focusing the image, I tried a number of techniques, including using nearby car lights as well as LiveView and zooming into a star to focus. I could then keep that focus and move the camera with the RSS L-bracket and tripod to where I wanted it to capture this portion of a spiral arm of the Milky Way. This night, the images I captured were all landscape orientation; the next night I would use a portrait orientation. The night skies at this main entrance to Petrified Forest National Park were some of the darkest skies I've seen in a long time! The spiral arms of the Milky Way I was viewing went all the way from the western horizon, across most of the sky to almost to eastern horizon. Amazing!