Comments on: Milky Way Down Under

By: Robert Burns

Robert Burns — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 07:16:38 +0000

The picture itself is awesome. It is like an out of this world…thing. If you didn’t tell me it was the Milky Way, I would think of it as one photographic effect. Absolutely stunning.

By: Duane

Duane — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 02:05:38 +0000

@13 Alicali, @22 jearley,

Thanks for your responses. I’m definitely not an astronomy neophyte, but it’s a question I’ve never thought to ask until now!

I found this diagram on wikipedia that definitely answers some questions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Milky_Way_Arms.svg

That explains why the Milky Way is so bright during the winter when we are facing away from the galactic center: the Perseus Arm is a monster!

By: Ken Hays

Ken Hays — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 16:39:22 +0000

A wonderful photo of what has been called the great rift, but Newspapers? Film? I sang Paul Simon’s ‘kodachrome’, at karaoke one night, and a young man actually asked me what that was. I guess I’m just getting old along with the rest of the galaxy.

By: jearley

jearley — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 00:01:02 +0000

Duane,
The usual figure that is given for how much of the Milky Way can we see is about 10%. Being in the galaxy, we can’t really see the arms very well- ‘can’t see the forest for the trees’ . We can see the arms that are closest to us fairly well- the Orion Spur, the Sagittarius arm, etc. The positions of all of the arms were mapped out using radio telescopes. The details of how they did it- using the different Doppler shifts of the arms- are fascinating.

By: Alan Harris

Alan Harris — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 23:35:28 +0000

Nice picture, from an unusual location. Wellington, AU, as opposed to Wellington, NZ, is a tiny little town of a few thousand population, at most, out in the bush of NSW, about half way between Canberra and Siding Spring. I’ve actually been there, and in fact that was the location where I got my best view of the galactic center, looking a lot like Brown’s photo. How I happened to end up there was in 1983, about this time of year, when my astronomer friends Dave Morrison and Ted Bowell decided to spend the weekend in the middle of the Sydney IAU General Assembly visiting a small wine district around Mudgee, in that area (also not far from Parkes). Well, it turned out that weekend was also the annual county fair, and no hotels were to be had, so we drove further into the bush and ended up in Wellington, a town with only one motel that we saw, but fortunately one that had three rooms open, quite cheap and nice. After a pleasant dinner of Oz lamb and Mudgee wines (byob — free corkage), Dave Morrison and I drove out of town to a totally dark spot and sat out for half an hour or so to get fully dark adapted and admire the southern Milky Way. The galactic center was pretty much dead overhead, and blazed brilliantly as in Russ Brown’s picture. The only thing less than perfect with this orientation is that when the galactic center is overhead, the Magellanic Clouds are on the horizon. But there they were! The sky was so clear and dark that they were clearly visible only a few degrees off the horizon. The view from the south is indeed striking, so much so that I have often speculated that if western civilization had originated in the southern hemisphere, we wouldn’t have had to wait for Hubble et al. to figure out galaxies, Aristotle and his friends would have deduced it all for us just by looking up.

By: Daniel J. Andrews

Daniel J. Andrews — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 13:27:45 +0000

I used to develop film and pics for the yearbook. Just black and white. We sent out the colour ones to a proper lab. I didn’t do developing at home, but I did budget my allowance money for film and processing. You were extra careful when you took shots back then as it cost money. Seems like an age ago although there were no onions on belts at the time so it can’t be ancient history (on the other hand, there were no Simpsons either so…..).

Gorgeous picture from Russ. Thank you for sharing.

By: MadScientist

MadScientist — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 03:55:26 +0000

I wish my proofs looked that good – but then again I either photographed in B/W or with color positive film. I hadn’t done any serious photography for about 20 years now, but I’m hoping I have enough money one day to cobble something together from a few E2V frame transfer detectors and a filtered beam combiner out of an old Barco LCD projector.

By: Larry Heilman

Larry Heilman — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 03:35:51 +0000

Bathroom photography ! yes I got started that way too, b&w 35mm. went on to work for a great photographer while in college. We mixed our own developers and fixers from bags of chemicals (commercial pre mix not good enough) Did some astro photos (film) while at workshops out at McDonald Observatory.

By: Brian Too

Brian Too — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 03:20:56 +0000

I tried some night-time photography years ago. I had ultrasonic lenses and auto-focus so that part was taken care of. However the big remaining problem was my viewfinder was so dark, it was hard to frame the shot or even know if your subject was entirely in frame!

By: Russ Brown

Russ Brown — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 00:09:30 +0000

Thanks Phil, for your kind praise!

@kevin

The building is the old Wellington hospital, built in 1903. (You can just see the year if you look closely!) Now converted to function rooms and accomodation. (Hence the nice opportunity for a cool picture!) FWIW, the light on the building is from some fairly distant street lighting.