Summer Milky Way from Kitt Peak

The Summer Milky Way sets over the little Tohono O'Odham town of Sells as viewed from Kitt Peak.  The exposure was made with my Canon 70D using a 17-70mm Sigma lens at 17mm focal length with an exposure of 30 seconds at f/2.8, ISO 1600.

International Space Station and the Milky Way in twilight

While taking a timelapse of the summer Milky Way my sequence caught the International Space Station flying over in the morning twilight.  Some clouds are moving in from the left and the Milky Way with the Tea Kettle of Sagittarius at the bottom, just about to set.  The Tohono O'Odham town of Sells is just below the Milky Way in this view from the 90 inch Bok Telescope's Bok Walk on Kitt Peak.  This image was taken with my 17-70mm Sigma lens at 17mm focal length and an exposure of 30 seconds at f/2.8, ISO 1600.

Galaxys, stars, a meteor and a dome.

The beginning of morning twilight has started so the sky is very blue.  Near the top left of this image is a meteor streaking through the sky in the edge of our Milky Way Galaxy.  If you look closely just below the top of the dome and about halfway between the dome and the band of the Milky Way, you can see the most distant object visible to the unaided eye (in a dark sky, anyway) - the Andromeda Galaxy.  Watch out because the Andromeda Galaxy is on a collision course with the Milky Way and one day, our two galaxies will merge into a giant mess at least for a while.  Don't worry, it's still a few billion years in the future, but be sure to mark you calendars.....  This image was taken with my 10mm fisheye at f/2.8 with an exposure of 30 seconds and ISO 1600.  The dome houses our 1.8-meter Spacewatch Telescope on Kitt Peak.

A bonus image from a little earlier than the previous image.  The International Space Station is orbiting rather close to the terminator - the boundary between day and night on Earth so that it is visible longer after sunset and before sunrise.  Here is the ISS this morning over the 4-meter dome on Kitt Peak.  The trail starts above the north star, Polaris, and ends above the constellation of Cassiopeia in the Milky Way as it moved from left to right in this image.  This exposure was taken with my 10mm fisheye lens at f/2.8, ISO 800 and a 30 second exposure.  The domes, along the horizon left of the 4-meter dome are the Steward Observatory 90 inch Bok Telescope and the 36 inch Spacewatch Telescope.

Clouds and stars

The thin cirrus slowly thickened during the night while I've been observing at the 90 inch Bok telescope of Steward Observatory on Kitt Peak.  With these two photos, you can see lots of stars, but if the clouds weren't there, you'd see even more.  The first image shows a view towards the southeast from the "Bok Walk" on the south side of the 90 inch dome.  On the right you can see the McMath solar telescope with the lights of Nogales Arizona lighting up the clouds above that town.  On the left is Tucson doing an even better job of lighting the clouds overhead.  This image was taken with my 10mm fisheye lens and an exposure of 30 seconds at f/2.8, ISO 6400 on my Canon 70D.

This view is towards the south with the McMath solar telescope on the left and in the foreground are the two Spacewatch Telescopes.  The white dome on the right is our 36 inch telescope and the silver dome to its left is our 1.8-m telescope.  In the sky you can see the Milky Way rising from the central horizon towards the upper right with Orion and his faithful hunting dog Canis Major with the brightest star in the nighttime sky, Sirius, to his lower left and Jupiter is the brightest object in the sky at top just right of center.  This image was taken with my 10mm fisheye lens and an exposure of 30 seconds at f/2.8, ISO 6400.

Satellite, domes and Milky Way

A Satellite speeds along its orbit paralleling the summer Milky Way in this fisheye image of the sky taken at the end of June from Kitt Peak. The dome faintly lit by light from Tucson and from the sky near center is that of the Spacewatch 1.8-m telescope. This image was taken with my 10mm fisheye lens with an exposure of 30 seconds at f/2.8, ISO 400.