# 19 | Jupiter Meets the Moon
On the night of Friday, February 22, 2002, anyone who looked up at the Moon would have noticed a bright "star" slightly below it. The "star" was actually the planet Jupiter and came within 1/4 of a degree of the Moon.
Les Welgan of St. Catherines, Ontario noticed a break in the clouds around 9:00pm that night and quickly set up his equipment to take this image which shows both the brighter North Equatorial Belt and the more faint South Equatorial Belt on Jupiter.
# 18 | Observatory Star Trails
The movement of the stars across our night sky can become apparent to those who spend even less than an hour outside.
In fact it is not the stars themselves that are moving, it is the rotation of the Earth that causes the apparent movement of the stars. We are the ones that are moving.
Star trail photos are one of the simplest photos to take.
Dominic Cantin took this photo at the observatory in St-Nérée, Quebec. He used Kodak Gold Max 800 film, set his 28mm lens to f2.8 and opened the shutter for an hour. For the last 30 seconds Dominic used a red lamp to illuminate the inside of the observatory.
# 17 | The Eskimo Nebula
NGC 2392, commonly known as the Eskimo nebula, is a planetary nebula located about 5000 light-years away in the constellation Gemini.
The central star illuminates the surrounding gases that are expanding in all directions, giving the appearance of a face covered with a parka.
Brian Lula imaged the nebula with a Finger Lakes IMG6303E ccd camera and 20" homebuilt Newtonian scope from his observatory in Princeton, Massachusetts.
# 16 | Saturn and the Moon
On February 20, 2002, skywatchers in eastern North America will be able to see an occultation of Saturn by our Moon.
Those in western Canada will witness Saturn just sliding by our Moon, quite similar to this image taken by Paul Greenhalgh on September 10, 2001 at 5:30am PST.
Paul used an 8" Skywatcher dobsonian telescope and a Hewlett Packard HP618 digital camera, which he just held by hand up to the eyepiece of his scope for approximately 4 seconds.
# 15 | The Large Magellanic Cloud
At mid-northern latitudes, we never see the Milky Way's bright nearby companion galaxy known as the Large Magellanic cloud (LMC), which is an easy naked-eye object from the southern hemisphere.
SkyNews Editor Terence Dickinson took this shot from a sparsely populated part of Australia, 500 kilometres inland from Sydney. He used an 85mm f/2 lens for this 5-minute guided exposure on Ektachrome 200 slide film in May, 2000.
# 14 | The Ring Nebula
The Ring Nebula, commonly known as M57, is an object that can be seen in most backyard telescopes.
Located 1400 light-years away in the constellation Lyra, through a telescope it looks like a small grey donut quite similiar to this image, albeit without the colour.
Sayuri Kubota and Richard Fortier used Fuji 100 ISO film for a 10 minute exposure through their10" f4.5 dobsonian reflector on an equatorial wedge in September of 1998 for this photo.
# 13 | Auroral Eye-Opener
The multiple auroras of Fall 2001 were a thrill to all who saw and photographed them.
Philippe Moussette of Cap-Rouge, Québec used a Nikon Coolpix 995 digital camera with a fish-eye lens to try something different: an all sky image of the October 28, 2001 aurora. The aurora appears to be a giant wave cresting the sky when in fact it ends slightly south of the zenith.
Note how the image covers the entire sky from north to south. The constellation Orion can be seen upside down in the upper right corner of the shot.
# 12 | IC 410
The advent of affordable ccd cameras enables astronomers the ability to shoot objects that appear very faint to the naked eye, yet reveal a plethora of detail when imaged with a ccd camera.
IC410 is a faint emission nebula near Messier objects 36 and 38 in the constellation Auriga.
Brian Lula took this colourful image with a Finger Lakes IMG6303E ccd camera and 20" homebuilt Newtonian scope from his observatory in Princeton, Massachusetts.
# 11 | L'hotel Lunar
On December 17th, 2001, the cresent Moon setting in the western sky overtop of Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City was captured in this pretty photo by Jay Ouellet.
Jay took his shot from over a mile away, using a Canon D30 camera and 200mm lens at f1.8 with a one second exposure and 100 speed film.
# 10 | King of the Planets
A telescope can discern a remarkable amount of detail on Jupiter. Astro-imagers using ccd cameras attached to their telescopes can gather even more detail that the eye cannot see.
Rémi Lacasse took this beautiful ccd image of Jupiter on December 10th from his observatory north of Montreal near Mont Tremblant in the Laurentians.
Rémi used an f10 16" SCT Meade LX200 telescope with an SBIG ST7E ccd camera.