Monday, February 3, 2014

the colors of orion

i've been talking to david malin quite a bit recently about archiving his incredible photography collection within the AAO database.  david is a legendary astrophotographer - having developed several photographic processing techniques, including making the gorgeous true-color astronomical images from combining black and white photographics plates taken in three separate colors.

i have just come across this fascinating image of the orion constellation.  you can vividly see how different stars have different colors!

Orion star colours revealed by defocusing during successive images as earth rotates under the stars, 1985. (Credit: David Malin)
(still hoping for the bright orange betelgeuse to explode as a supernova **any time now!)

here is a normal view of orion in the sky with lines connecting the constituent stars - you can always look for the three stars that line up in orion's belt to find this constellation!




** in astronomical terms, "any time now" is somewhere between tomorrow and the next ten thousand years or so!   still hoping....

3 comments:

Kenny A. Chaffin said...

I like it!

Anonymous said...

How about a southern hemisphere image of Orion doing handstands !

StuntTrader said...

Good job Dirty Space News wasn't around when Orion was drawn or the sword might have been called something else!
"The Pot" as it is known in Australia & NZ is the belt & sword of an up-side-down Orion!