ASTRO PHOTOS

As it turned out to be a fairly clear  night sky yesterday evening I thought I'd take a few snaps of the Moon and stars.

The waning gibbous Moon dominated the sky, and here's a shot I took. Sadly where I live has a fair amount of light pollution. I'm close to two car parking areas which remain lighted until the early hours, so I accept I'm never going to get the sharpest photos, but in spite of that it's always satisfying to get a real time image of an object millions of miles away.

 Here's a shot I took of the Sword of Orion which includes M42 aka The Orion Nebula, which is around 1,350 light years away. Even with the light pollution, it's still easy to spot.

The first photo of the Orion Nebula was taken by the American, and pioneer of astrophotography, Henry Draper in 1880, using an 11 inch refracting telescope. He took a 51 minute exposure, while my attempt had an exposure of less than a second. (I'd love to do a longer exposure but it would  start to show star trails) 

Here's a link to a site dedicated to the Orion Nebula. https://orion2nebula.net/the-orion-nebula-region

Finally, a photo I took of  another group of objects in the night sky, which are easily seen by the naked  eye; The Pleiades, or Seven Sisters, an open star cluster , and only a mere 444 light years away!