GALLERY

Last November 21st from the balcony of his

suburban-Chicago home in Oak Park, Illinois, Werner Sabo took many images of the
waxing gibbous Moon with a 10-inch Meade
LX200 Schmidt- Cassegrain telescope and
SBIG ST-7 CCD camera. Since each 0.11-second exposure made at f/6.3 through a deep-red
filter captured only a portion of the lunar disk,
Sabo used image-processing software to piece together nine frames for this mosaic. North is approximately up; this is the way the Moon appears to
a Northern Hemisphere observer looking with the
naked eye and through binoculars.

Left: Italian amateur Giovanni Dal Lago prepared this view of M42, the
Orion Nebula (top), and its neighboring nebulous complex NGC 197375-77 from two tricolor CCD images made with a Starlight Xpress camera and 8.3-inch Takahashi Newtonian-Cassegrain reflector at f/3.9.
Each of the tricolor views was assembled from many averaged 60-second exposures made through red, green, and blue filters. South is up.
Above: Jason Ware of Frisco, Texas, obtained this close-up of NGC 197375-77 using an altazimuth-mounted 16-inch f/10 Meade LX200 SchmidtCassegrain reflector with a field derotator. Two 60-minute exposures on
120-format Fujicolor HG 400 film were combined in a three-step darkroom process to boost the images contrast and color saturation.

116 Sky & Telescope May 1997

1997 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Last October 9th, John McNeal captured Venus (top), the crescent Moon (overexposed), and Mercury (bottom) before dawn over the Yellowstone River near Pompeys Pillar, Montana, with a 28-millimeter lens and Fujichrome 100
film. You can take souvenir shots of the Moon and planets using a tripod-mounted camera with a wide-angle lens
and time-exposure capability, fine-grained film, and shutter-release cable. Exposure times can be a few seconds.
Comet Hale-Bopp
(above center) is set
against the rich star
clouds and dark
lanes of the Scutum
Milky Way in this
view by Chris Schur
of Payson, Arizona.
It was obtained last
July 20th with a 135mm f/4 lens and
Fujicolor Super G
400 Plus film. The
exposure time was
15 minutes. The reddish glow at the bottom of the frame is
M17, the Omega
Nebula, in Sagittarius, while the one
directly above it is
M16, the Eagle Nebula, in Serpens.

1997 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

May 1997 Sky & Telescope 117

Above: The Crab Nebula, M1, in Taurus was the target of Dale E. Mais of
Valley Center, California, last November 30th. His 7'-wide tricolor view,
which includes the moving asteroid
237 Coelestina (bottom), was assembled from three 10-minute exposures
made through red, green, and blue filters with a 14-inch Celestron SchmidtCassegrain telescope working at f/7
and an SBIG ST-8 CCD camera.
Below: Situated about 2 northwest
of the Small Magellanic Cloud, the
great globular cluster NGC 104 is
also popularly known as 47 Tucanae. The 25'-wide stellar swarm is
the second-largest globular in the
sky after Omega Centauri. Michael
Stecker took this portrait last June
during the Astronomical Leagues
first annual Southern Skies Star
Party at Lake Titicaca (elevation
12,500 feet) in Bolivia. He used a 6inch f/7 Astro-Physics EDF refractor and Fujicolor Super G 800 Plus
film for this 20-minute exposure.

The Andromeda Galaxy, M31, is the largest and brightest such object north of the celestial equator. This detailed shot, made by Carl
and Christopher Weber from Tierra del Sol, California, includes
M32 (left) and M110 (far right). Using a 6-inch f/7 Astro-Physics refractor, the Webers made 60- and 45-minute exposures on Kodak
Pro 400 PPF film and combined them in the darkroom. North is to
the upper right in this 11/2-wide field.

118 Sky & Telescope May 1997

1997 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

For Luke Dodd of

Singleton Heights,
New South Wales,
Australia, the Eta
Carinae Nebula at
declination 60 is a
readily accessible
target for his 4.7inch f/8.5 AstroPhysics Star 12ED
refractor. Dodd
used a Pentax 67
camera loaded with
hypered Fujicolor
HG 400 film for this
exposure lasting 45
minutes. North is
up, and the field is
3 1/2 wide.

Above: French amateur Thierry Legault prepared this

two-frame mosaic of the craters Copernicus (right) and
Eratosthenes from CCD images made with a 9-inch
Takahashi Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope working at f/35
and Hi-SYS 22 camera. South is up.
Upper left: Melding photographic and digital technology,
James R. Foster created this portrait of NGC 7293, the
Helix Nebula, in Aquarius. This image is the culmination of 13.5 hours of total exposure time using 11- and
14-inch Celestron Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes and
several black-and-white and color emulsions. The exposures were scanned and combined digitally with imageprocessing software. North is to the upper right.
Left: At a dark-sky site near Chiefland, Florida, Jos G.
Torres captured this 25'-wide view of the Horsehead
Nebula in Orion using a 10-inch Meade LX200 SchmidtCassegrain telescope at f/3.3 with an Optec MAXfield
focal reducer. His 15-minute exposure with an SBIG ST7 camera was colorized during image processing.
1997 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

May 1997 Sky & Telescope 119