Pleiades Seven Sisters or Hen with Chicks pictures by astronomical telescope

If there is a beautiful view seen by the naked eye in astronomy, the Pleiades are certainly the ones, located approximately 400 light-years from us.

Pleiades is one of the most beautiful scenery in astronomy: the dispersion stars of Pleiades or Seven Sisters. In Romania (my country), is known as Hen with chicks. The main stars of the Pleiades form a small dipper that is much richer than the Hyades, and are most easily recognized of all the stars in the heaven.
Almost every culture throughout history, imagined this cluster as something delicate, like a group of virgins, a flock of doves, or a hen and chicks. This swarm is best known in Greek as the Seven Sisters.

The Pleiades were important in legends, poetry, and even as a timekeeping throughout history.
Pleiades are located on the shoulder of the imaginary Taurus constellation.

Anyone can look at the Pleiades with binoculars or a small telescope under dark skies. It is important, however, to look through a wide field telescope to fit the entire stellar group in the image.

Telescope: Celestron 8 inch Newtonian
C5/EQ5 motorized mount
Camera: Nikon D80 ring T
Eyepiece: no (focal)
Filter: no
Date: October 21, 2012
Time: 05:00
Mode: manual
ISO: 640
Exposure time: 10 sec
Location: Baia Mare, Romania

Articles about Pleiades:
Pleiades star group arrangement. Images through the telescope.
Video Pleiades (Messier 45 or M45), by astronomical telescope
The Pleiades astronomical images
My first Pleiades

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Islamic names of the stars

Many of the star names in the sky comes from Arabic and Latin names. In this article I will list celestial bodies that have Arabic names, and some connoisseurs, or those who have only heard of those bodies may not have imagined how they've got their names.
Ptolemy, who lived in Egypt around the years 100-180, in Alexandria, collected Greek descriptions of 1022 stars, in the book "The System of Astronomy" ("Almagest") . His book was translated into Arabic twice in the ninth century. Many Arab names in this book remained used as "default" names.

Aldebaran - Al-Dabaran - "survivor" Pleiades
Altair - (Al-Nasr) La-Ta'ir - flying (eagle)
Betelgeuse - Yad al-Jauza - hand of Orion
Deneb - Dhanab ad-Dajajah - bird tail
Porter - Al-Hamal - ram
Mirak - Al-Mi'zar - loin-cloth
Mizar -  Miʾzar - apron
Rigel - Ar-Rijl - the foot
Saiph - As-Saif - sword
Vega - Al-Waqi '- "prone" Eagle
Milky Way - Kahkashan - is the Persian word for Milky Way
Andromeda Galaxy - "small cloud" - was the Arabic name for the modern name of the Andromeda Galaxy, which was first discovered by Al-Sufi, and mentioned it in his book of fixed stars.

Above: Betelgeuse through my telescope. Date: October 21. 2012

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Betelgeuse a supernova in the near future

For a long time, observers noted that the brightest stars in the constellation Orion forms a nearly symmetrical model together. This huge geometric group is sometimes called Winter Hexagon composed of straight lines from Sirius to Procyon to Pollux, Capella, Aldebaran and Rigel, and within the geometric model, is Betelgeuse.
The most famous star of the constellation Orion is not Rigel, but Betelgeuse for its strange name and its orange color. It is a red giant . This star is compared with the color of Mars and its brightness varies because some years it shines much more than others. From this fact we are assuming for this star to become a supernova soon.

A region of the sky that I do not recognize because I pointed the telescope at random in the sky, but in the galactic plane.

Telescope: Celestron 8 inch Newtonian
C5/EQ5 motorized mount
Camera: Nikon D80 ring T
Eye: not (focal)
Filter: no
Date: October 21, 2012
Time: 06:26
Mode: manual
ISO: 1250
Exposure time: 30 sec
Location: Baia Mare, Romania

LinkedIn comments to this post:

Sharon Xuesong Wang •Hi Lupu,
Pretty plots! Would you mind sharing about how you've become an astronomy photographer with the group? Please forgive my ignorance, but I'm wondering if how one can become an professional astronomy photographer for a living... Are you currently doing that?
I think that would be of more interest to the group. ;)
Thanks!
Sharon

Lupu Victor •I work in military. I like astronomy and this is my second job in my life. And this second job takes all of my free time, but I like that. Thanks for your question.


Megan Donahue •Interesting fact : when Betelgeuse has its supernova, it will be visible to us on Earth night ...or day (as long as it is above the horizon). The supernova will not give much warning, though. Once it has an iron core (invisible to us) it will only have a few short hours of life left.
Sharon - professional astrophotographers' best bets are to take large-angle images of the sky and request royalties for their use or sell as posters. With targeted images of small things, they are in competition with free images available from the Hubble Space Telescope or others. For most, it has to be a labor of love at least at first.

Harold Henderson •For a Red Supergiant like Betelguese 100 milion years is a "lifetime". But still, an imminent supernova might be thousands of years (plus 1500 years for light to travel here) away. Keep watching and good luck!

David Windschitl •If it should happen in our lifetimes, I will mourn my red winter 'friend' - both the color and the name made it one of my favorites when I started out stargazing.

Leela Kalyanaraman •But Richard, I thought a fair estimate would be from yesterday to 10,000 years? And Harold, Betelgeuse isn't that many light years away, is it?
David, Orion would be himself without a shoulder, would he??:-(

Gregory Roberts •direct parallax measurements put Betelgeuse as close as 495 ly, others at about 640 ly - but the accepted average is about 570 ly

Personally I think it would be pretty cool to see it nova, I look at it every clear night when its up wondering if the flash is just a few hours away

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Images of blue Star Rigel in Orion

In the brightest constellation Orion are bright stars, as blue-white Rigel and Betelgeuse a golden orange (pictured below), but none surpasses Sirius .
Rigel is a blue star, which is part of the constellation Orion, located in the bottom right of the Hunter.
Slightly lower in brightness than Capella, Rigel is a classic example of a blue giant, very hot, blue, and bright. Rigel was once considered to be brighter than any of the other giants that populate the Orion region. Now we think that is a little closer to us, about 800 light-years away, than previously estimated.
So maybe Rigel is just one of the brightest stars in the winter sky. Even so, its brightness is thousands of times greater than that of our sun.

Telescope: Celestron 8 inch Newtonian
C5/EQ5 motorized mount
Camera: Nikon D80 ring T
Eyepiece: no (focal)
Filter: no
Date: October 21, 2012
Time: 05:50
Mode: manual
ISO: 1250
Exposure time: 20, 25 sec
Location: Baia Mare, Romania

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Sirius B pictures through the telescope Observational astronomy

Above, optical aberration or misscollimation causing the elongation of the star observed on the left.

I ran the video presented in the article with Sirius - Sirius the brightest star in the sky Video through telescope , to catch some pictures with the partner star, Sirius B. The video captures were made with Sony Vegas 10, and edited in FastStone.

In the pictures above, binary star system Sirius, is filmed with exposure to 'auto' combined with 'low lux', on the CX130 Sony video camera. On 'auto' mode, the camera could not detect the second star, Sirius B, because of the brightness of the host star, but in the pictures below, I've set the camera to a small exposure to reduce the amount of light of the star Sirius A that blocks the detection of all that is around it, and finally, Sirius B, has appeared in the images. I dont think we can observe with the naked eye through the eyepiece Sirius B, but only with a camcorder or camera to adjust the exposure.

In the pictures above, we find some images of the telescope's optical aberration. On the left side of the star A, we see an extension of it, and at first sight it made ​​me think that there, Sirius B is hiding. But when I continued to study the video, I saw that when I reduced the exposure, Sirius B was actually on the right side of Sirius A.

The atmosphere was loaded and of course the stars spectrum in each photo is different, but that big bright spot on the right star, has always been there, and so, undoubtedly, in the images below, are catched Sirius both stars.

The video of these video captures are here: Sirius the brightest star in the sky Video through telescope .

Above, Sirius binary system, with Sirius A in the center, and Sirius B smaller right.

Telescope that I use to shoot through it, is a netonian reflector from Celestron, with a mirror of 203 mm, or 8 ". I never managed to look through another reflector with the same mirror size, such as Meade 8-inch telescope LS with LightSwitch Technology telescope, which is lining up by a single push of a button.
In astronomical observations is difficult to achieve high quality astroimaging if not put continuous effort to enjoy the results.

Photographer: Victor Lupu
Optical Telescope Celestron C8" Newtonian, super plossl 20mm, 2x Barlow
Mount: CG5 (EQ5)
Camera: Sony CX130
Video mode: 1920x1080 progressive
Filter: no
Date: 27/02/2012
Location: Baia Mare, Romania
Processing and Editing - Sony Vegas 10, Faststone

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Sirius the brightest star in the sky Video through telescope

Sirius is the brightest star in the sky. Has an apparent magnitude of -1.46 visually, and is almost two times brighter than Canopus, the second in brightness. Sirius is part of Big Dog constellation, is from 8.60 ± 0.04 light years from us, and has a rotation of 16 km / s

The name "Sirius" is derived from ancient Greek Seirios ("brightness"). What our eye perceives as a single star is actually a binary star: Sirius A and Sirius B A1V (A) / DA2 (B). These two stars are visible in the video below. In my video, I think the B star is on the left side of the A, because the elongation is repetitive on the same spot, over and over.
Distance that separates the two stars, varies between 8.1 and 31.5 AU.
Sirius appears brighter, because its proximity to Earth. Sirius binary system is one of Earth's closest neighbors. Sirius A is about twice as massive as the Sun and has an absolute visual magnitude of 1.42. Is 25 times brighter than the Sun, but has a lower luminosity than other bright stars such as Canopus or Rigel.

The system is old, between 200 and 300 million years. It was originally composed of two bright bluish stars. Sirius B, consumed its resources, and has become a red giant and threw up its outer layers becoming a white dwarf around 120 million years ago.

Sirius can be seen from almost every inhabited region of the Earth's surface. The best time of year to see it, is around 1 January.

The two stars, Sirius A and Sirius B, revolve around each other are constantly exchanging particles between them. Due to higher density and magnetic field, Sirius B takes the lion's part, taking gases and materials from her host star.

Every 49.9 years, Sirius A and B, come as close together as their orbits allow, and creating huge magnetic storms between them. The more closer to each other, the more they begin to rotate faster around each other, and eventually change places.

The video captures of this video can be seen here: Sirius B pictures through the telescope Observational astronomy .



Video: Victor Lupu
Optical Telescope Celestron C8" Newtonian, super plossl 20mm, 2x Barlow
Mount: CG5 (EQ5)
Camera: Sony CX130
Video mode: 1920x1080 progressive
Filter: no
Date: 27/02/2012
Location: Baia Mare, Romania
Processing and Editing - Sony Vegas 10

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Arcturus Star in Registax 6 images

The name Arcturus comes from ancient greek Αρκτοῦρος (Arktouros) and means "Bear Guardian", ultimately from ἄρκτος (arktos), "bear" + οὖρος (ouros), "overseer, guardian". This refers to as the brightest star in the constellation Boötes (which forms the left foot), which is next to Ursa Major and Minor.

These are the Registax 6 pictures, resulted from the  clips of Arcturus star.

          In photographs above: the star Arcturus in Registax, 257 frames at 75% Lowest Quality.

              In photographs above: the star Arcturus in Registax, 16 frames at 85% Lowest Quality.

           In photographs above: the star Arcturus in Registax, 257 frames at 75% Lowest Quality.

Below are only video captures.

Video: Victor Lupu
Optics: Celestron C8 "-Newtonian telescope, plossl 20mm, 2x Barlow
Mount: CG5 (EQ5)
Device: Sony CX105 at 7x optical zoom
Total Magnification: 700x
Filter: no
Date: 23/03/2011
Location: Baia Mare, Romania
Processing and editing: Registax 6, FastStone

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