"Orion's Sword" Mish

This is Orion's Sword.  Professor Kyran Mish sent me this picture.  He and his son took the picture on their own equipment on a starry night.  pl

Comments

[Maureen Lang]

Spectacular photo, Pat, thanks for posting it. Last night hubby & I were at the county line beach north of Malibu visiting friends when Orion rose over the horizon. His constellation comes into view horizontally this time of year around here with the three stars forming his belt perpendicular to the water. Gave the illusion of the giant rising from the waves ready to march across a darkening sky.

Kudos to Prof. Mish & son for this great shot.

[Kyran, aka Cieran]

Thanks for the unexpected publicity, Colonel!

What I like best about this image is that it was our first attempt at modern astrophotography, and it worked out better than any of my previous efforts, thanks to my son's talent and to modern camera technology.

Truth be told, I wasted long stretches of my youth in my basement laboratory, grinding mirrors and building various telescopes. Efforts at capturing the mysteries of the sky on film involved spending lots of time in the cold darkness turning worm gears by hand while hunched over a guide scope, and then waiting a week to get the developed film back to learn whether anything had worked or not (and generally, it was "or not").

So being able to plug an off-the-shelf DSLR onto one of my telescopes and actually find color in a nebula on the first attempt was quite a pleasant surprise. And having the whole enterprise take place about twenty feet from my back door sure adds a lot to the whole experience, especially given that Orion is a winter constellation, hence it's best observed from out underneath a very cold sky.

I could learn to like this!

[Cold War Zoomie]

Another astronomer appears out of the woodwork! Nice image. And what's even more fun is we finally get to know who "cieran" is.

Cheers...
Bob/CWZ

[Cieran]

CWZ:

I tried to make your work relatively straightforward, by using a nom de plume that is merely the proper spelling of my good Gaelic moniker. I figured that with all the intel folks who post here at SST, chasing down my identity would constitute about two minutes' worth of work!

And since you're a zoomie, you might enjoy the fact that both my son Sam (the M42 astrophotographer) and I are named after my late uncle SSG Samuel K. Moore, a B-17 tail-gunner killed in action in Dec, 1943. Sam is buried in the Ardennes American Cemetery in Belgium, and from what I hear, he was quite a guy.

My interest in the stars came from another 8th AAF crewmember, a B-17 navigator (my late dad Jim). He used to love showing me how to find my way around the night sky, and when I learned more about his role in WWII, his obvious affection for that sky started making more sense to me.

I guess when you're navigating a bomber over occupied Europe, the sky would seem like a friendlier place than would the ground.