Fran

Well, that's about the end of my parents garden for the year. A few more on the blog

Explanation: Last Thursday the view toward sunset from the 2.5 kilometer summit of Cerro Las Campanas in the remote Chilean Andes was amazing. Bright but fading Mercury stood very close to a two day old Moon. Both a sunlit lunar crescent and earthlit lunar nightside are captured with the fleeting innermost planet in this breathtaking mountainscape. Even below the conjunction of Moon and Mercury, a close pairing of brilliant Venus and bright star Regulus hangs in the sky, still above the colorful western horizon. Of course amazing skies above Las Campanas are not unexpected. The region is currently home to the twin Magellan telescopes of the Las Campanas Observatory and the summit location is the site of the future Giant Magellan Telescope.

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Explanation: As dawn approached on May 8, astronomer Stefan Seip carefully watched Fragment C of broken comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 approach M57 - the Ring Nebula, and faint spiral galaxy IC 1296. Of course, even though the trio seemed to come close together in a truly cosmic photo opportunity, the comet is in the inner part of our solar system, a mere 0.5 light-minutes or so from Seip's telescope located near Stuttgart, Germany, planet Earth. The Ring Nebula (upper right) is more like 2,000 light-years distant, well within our own Milky Way Galaxy. At a distance of 200 million light-years, IC 1296 (between comet and ring) is beyond even the Milky Way's boundaries. Because the comet is so close, it appears to move relatively rapidly against the distant stars. This dramatic telescopic view was composited from two sets of images; one compensating for the comet's apparent motion and one recording the background stars and nebulae.

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Explanation: Where will Gemini take us tonight? It is dusk and Gemini North, one of the largest telescopes on planet Earth, prepares to peer into the distant universe. Gemini's flexible 8.1-mirror has taken already effectively taken humanity to distant stars, nebulas, galaxies, and quasars, telling us about the geometry, composition, and evolution of our universe. The above picture is actually a composite of over 40 images taken while the Gemini dome rotated, later adding an image of the star field taken from the same location. The Gemini dome is not transparent -- it only appears so because it rotated during the exposures of this image. The constellations of Scorpius and Sagittarius can be seen above the dome, as well as the sweeping band of our Milky Way Galaxy, including the direction toward the Galactic center. Gemini North's twin, Gemini South, resides in Cerro Pachn, Chile. This night, 2003 August 19, Gemini North took us only into the outer Solar System, observing Pluto in an effort to better determine the composition of its thin atmosphere.

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