For faster browsing, click on the underlined text legend below any of the thumbnail images in the galleries. Use your browser BACK button to return you to the gallery. If you find a picture you like, you can download the image at full original resolution (mostly between 24-45 Mpixels; with some panoramas >100 Mpix) by clicking on the thumbnail itself. To save a downloaded image, right click on it and scroll to 'save picture as...'. To use an image as your desktop background, right click and scroll to 'set as background...'. Visitors are welcome to download images for personal use (e.g. as computer desktop wallpaper). Click HERE to order prints online. Please contact Ian Parker at evanescentlightphotography@gmail.com regarding possible commercial use.Details of copyright, image use and licensing are HERE.
The Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) is a planetary nebula in the constellation Aquarius. Of all of the known planetary nebulae in the night sky, the Helix Nebula is one of the brightest, and closest to Earth. Planetary nebulae are created when a star (similar to our own Sun) nears the end of its life. They are formed when the star sheds its outer layers near the end of its evolution and expells the gases into space. The remnant stellar core (the planetary nebula nucleus) will eventually become a white dwarf star. In the meantime (tens of thousands of years - a fleeting instant on the cosmic scale) the glow of the central star is so energetic that it causes the previously expelled gases (primarily ionized Hydrogen (red) and oxygen (teal) to brightly fluoresce.
The Polaris Nebula is a very faint section of nebulosity in the apparent direction of Polaris, the North Star. The nebula is an example of an Integrated Flux Nebula. These type of nebulae lie in the outer regions of our galaxy and consist of fine dust particles illuminated by reflecting light from the entire Milky Way Galaxy. These clouds are very subtle and present quite challenging targets to photograph.
Pinwheel galaxy with added Ha
OSC no filter 6hrs at Bortle 2 site in Mojave Desert with added Ha using dual narrowband (7 nm Ha) filiter, 3 hrs in our driveway (Bortle 9).
After looping around the sun the comet displayed an anti-tail, made from dust that has recently been left behind by the comet in its orbital plane around the sun. When the Earth passed through this plane on October 14 this residual debris was illuminated by the sun and reflected back to Earth, giving the impression of a second, fainer tail.
An interesting aspect of an annular eclipse is the appearance of Baily’s beads. These are beads of sunlight either disappearing or reappearing through deep lunar valleys along the limb of the Moon. Although Baily’s beads can be seen at the centerline of the eclipse path, they appear for only for a few seconds. In contrast, at the edge of the path is it possible to see the beads speed up and slow down for a few minutes before and after peak obscuration. This is the so-called “grazing zone”. Whereas eclipse maps show straight lines representing the edges of a path, it is actually an irregular shape defined by the Moon's bumpy terrain. High-resolution data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) now make it possible to plot the “grazing zone” on Earth, a region roughly 3 km wide. I used Xavier Jubier’s wonderful interactive Google eclipse maps to select a location in the Black Rock desert about 3 miles north of Fly Gyser,. a site I had long wanted to photograph and which was conveniently accessible later on the same day through a tour organized by the Friends of the Black Rock Desert. The eclipse would peak at 9.31 am, but the prospects of seeing it seemed poor when we crawled out from our tent at dawn to find the sky completely overcast with dark clouds. Over a few hours, however, the clouds started to thin. With only ten minutes to go we began to make out the largely eclipsed sun through the cloud, and a patch of blue sky drifted in the right direction to give a clear view at exactly the right time.
