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Use the arrows to scan each album. Double click on any image to view. 

Milky Way                                                                                                                Deep sky

Solar system                                                                                                            Moon rise and sunset

Eclipse 2024

The grand conjunction

A quick tour of our neighbourhood

Complete Milky Way panorama

Full Milky Way panorama using images from Boris Haussler in Paranal Chile for the Southern Hemisphere

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One of my nerdly retirement projects involves getting pictures of the Milky Way, with help from Boris Haeussler who works at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. Boris took this panorama (I did some Photoshopping) of the section of the Milky Way that is only visible from the Southern Hemisphere. It shows the Southern Cross and the Magellanic Clouds. The Magellanic Clouds are small satellite Galaxies of the Milky Way.

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Milky Way from Marathon TX,  in March it rises in early morning parallel to the horizon. 
 

Milky Way from Junction TX in Jan.

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Aroura in late Sept 2023.                                                                                                             

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A tellurion is an astronomical mechanism that demonstrates the movement of the Earth around its axis and around the Sun, as well as the phenomena associated with this—the change of seasons, the length of day and night. The name of the mechanism (sometimes spelled tellurian) comes from the Latin "tellus," meaning "earth."

In a tellurion, a smaller ball representing the Earth moves around a larger ball representing the sun (sometimes a light source such as a lantern is used instead) as well as around its own axis. A third, even smaller ball represents the moon and rotates around the Earth ball.

Historians believe that the first tellurion was made by the German astronomer Wilhelm Schickard in the 1600s. And the oldest tellurion that has survived to this day is the model of the Dutch cartographer Willem Janszoon Blaeu.

 

 

 

 

 

A tellurion made in 1766, used by John Winthrop to teach astronomy at Harvard. Another mechanism similar to the tellurion is the orrery (also called a planetarium). Although orreries do not demonstrate the change of day and night or the change of seasons, they show the movement and interaction of all the planets of the Solar System, and in more advanced models, even include satellite moons.

The Orrery inside the Sphaera Copernicana, designed by Joseph of Gottorp and built by Andreas Bösch, 1653

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Time lapse with 300:1 time compression of 10 mins viewing of                                                                                                      

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