Lake Superior Night Sky

Posted on August 18, 2026 by RegenAxe

This crazy quilt of a picture is the photo that I took of last night’s sky. Let me try to decode it for you. The concentric arcs are star trails. They are caused by the earth’s rotation. This long exposure photo was shot for 33⅓ minutes. (It just happened to run that long.) The length of these arcs is the distance that these stars traveled in that time. On the righthand side is the north pole. All of the stars are circling that. The bright lines are jets, headed across the pole to Europe. They are pretty much headed in the same direction. The finer lines, going every which way are meteors. They are part of the Perseids.

Everyone’s Got One

Posted on August 17, 2026 by RegenAxe

James Webb’s Wider view of the Uranian system

This wider view of the Uranian system with Webb’s NIR camera features the planet Uranus as well as six of its 27 known moons (most of which are too small and faint to be seen in this short exposure). A handful of background objects, including many galaxies, are also seen. Image description: The planet Uranus is on a black background just right of center. Just below the planet at the 7 o’clock position is a faint blue point labeled Puck. Brighter blue points at 8 o’clock, 5 o’clock, and 3 o’clock are labeled Ariel, Miranda, and Umbriel, respectively. Two additional blue points at 7 o’clock and 5 o’clock are labeled Titania and Oberon.