Below are some pictures I took of stars at Joshua Tree National Park on March 30, 1997.
Each picture was made with just an ordinary Canon AE-1 camera with the standard 50 mm lens. I used very fast film (1600 ASA Fuji print film) with a 30 second exposure.
Orion. The three stars in a row in the middle are Orion's famous belt. The red star at top is Betelgeuse, representing Orion's shoulder. The bright star at the bottom is Rigel, representing Orion's foot. The red blob below the belt is the famous Orion Nebula. A little bit of nebulosity can also be seen near the left-most star of Orion's belt (easier to see in the original print than in this scan).
This is a blow-up of the previous picture showing the Orion Nebula (lower-left) and the Horsehead Nebula (top).
This is the area of the Milky Way around the constellations Perseus and Cassiopeia. The Milky Way runs from lower right to upper left. Comet Hale-Bopp was just below the bottom of this picture. Below the center of the picture is the Double Cluster of Perseus. Above it is a series of diffuse nebulae. Toward the lower left is the cluster, M34. At the left is the star, Algol. The name means "the demon". This is because of its periodic changes in brightness caused by a dimmer star that orbits it and eclipses it (see the finder chart).
This is the area of the Milky Way in Gemini. The Milky way runs across the bottom half of the picture. The brightest stars of Gemini, Pollux and Castor, would be just off the top of this picture (don't you hate it when photographers cut off people's heads:-). The brightest star in the picture, at the bottom right, is Beta Tauri. The fuzzy area down and right from center is the cluster M35. Two other smaller clusters, M36 and M37, are at the right of the picture (see the finder chart). At the lower right are the Rosette Cluster and Nebula and NGC2264, another small cluster. Down and to the left of M35 is the planetary nebula, NGC2174.
This is a blow-up of the previous picture showing the Rosette Nebula and Cluster. Red contrast is exaggerated to bring out the nebula. Thanks to Brian Horn for scanning this for me.
Last updated: Mon Apr 14 13:03:45 PDT 1997
