Distant Dawns

 

Planet Parade, June 26, 2022; 4:45 a.m.

The night of June 25^th, 2022, presented a rare opportunity for earthbound observers to view all the naked eye solar system planets at once. As a bonus, the crescent moon would be out close to the ecliptic making it a truly rare alignment. 

Up to three planets at a time are a relatively common sight I had recorded before but all five would be a personal first. In the run up to this day, the images poured in from various astro-photographers on social media. They looked beautiful, but also more similar than not. 

To change things up a bit, I planned to capture the event in two different ways. The first, would be a customary panoramic still as seen from the east facing window of my bedroom. The second would be a timelapse which would catch all the action.

Brighter Than a Billion Suns

Source: Sky and Telescope Credit: Purnendu Gupta

What kind of “explosion” lasts for months and outshines a billion suns? If you haven’t guessed it, it’s the average garden variety supernova. 

Above is my first supernova image captured from my backyard on the night of May 11-12, 2022. Known as SN2022hrs, it shows up here as a white dot between two galaxies - the elliptical Messier 60 and smaller spiral NGC4647. This light from sixty three million light years away, is also sixty three million years old. Breaking news from a time when dinosaurs had just vanished from the earth.