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Stone Star Circles, Startrails above Stonehenge, by Till Credner, Germany
image
Created for the OAE
Caption: Second place in the IAU OAE Astrophotography Contest, category Star trails.
Astronomy is one of the oldest (if not the oldest) of the sciences, and as such has connection to various cultures over millennia. This image in a way conveys this relationship by being contextualised in Stonehenge. There is much research into what astronomers call archeoastronomy sites, and how they connect to the sky (for example, seasons, phases of the moon and much more). Civilizations across time and from all over the world have their own views and interpretations of what they see in the sky, and this has been tied not only to culture but also to the people’s day-to-day and seasonal activities. The “concentric circles” which are often referred to as “star trails”, are the result of the apparent motion of the sky, which is in reality due to the rotation of the Earth on its axis. The small dot appearing towards the top center of the image is Polaris – The North or Pole Star. Polaris is only visible to observers in the Northern latitudes. The height of the Pole Star can be used to infer the observer’s actual latitude. Stonehenge is located at around 51° North. This image is taken from one of the most notable ancient sites in the world, brings us back in time, and makes us wonder about the stories told by the people that lived in that place many millennia ago.
Credit: Till Credner/IAU OAE
Glossary Terms:
Circumpolar Stars , Star Trail
Categories:
Naked Eye Astronomy
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) icons
This file on Zenodo ( image 1.26 MB)
Star Trails And Lava Plume on Mount Etna February 2021, by Dario Giannobile, Italy
image
Created for the OAE
Caption: Third place in the IAU OAE Astrophotography Contest, category Star trails.
This spectacular image captures some of the most dramatic expressions of Nature, the eruption of a volcano and the night sky. The volcano in the foreground is Mount Etna, located in Sicily/Italy, during an eruption in February 2021. In the background, we can see the star trails resulting from the Earth's motion around its imaginary axis. As Mount Etna is located about 37° N, we can notice that the arcs are quite open, as this is far from the North Pole, from where the view from the sky would provide traces drawing circles. As we move to the Equator, either from the Southern or Northern Hemisphere, the star traces become more and more parallel, instead of circular, as the viewer moves away from the zenith pointing to one of the Earth's rotational axes. Therefore, the sky presents us with valuable information about location and time and was an important practice for ancient civilizations to follow the movement of the celestial bodies. The image also captures the varying colours of stars which result from differece in the temperature of stars: higher temperature stars are bluer, compared to the lower temperature white and red stars.
Credit: Dario Giannobile/IAU OAE
Glossary Terms:
Star Trail
Categories:
Naked Eye Astronomy
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) icons
This file on Zenodo ( image 12.61 MB)
Gemini meteor shower, by Hao Yin, China
image
Created for the OAE
Caption: Third place in the 2021 IAU OAE Astrophotography Contest, category Meteor showers.
As the Earth travels around the Sun, it may cross the path of debris left behind by a comet or, more rarely, by an asteroid. These debris enter the atmosphere at high speed, producing beautiful tracks as they burn in the sky due to friction with the atmosphere. The image captures the Geminid meteor shower, named because the radiant point is located on the sky in the constellation Gemini. The particles composing the meteor shower travel at similar speed and in parallel trajectories, which causes a perspective effect like if the stream radiates from one single point in the sky, which is known as the radiant point. This image, taken in December 2020 in China, clearly shows this perspective. This is a very prolific shower, in such a way that over one hundred meteorites could be seen per hour in recent appearances. This meteor shower is one of the few associated not with a comet, but with an asteroid – 3200 Phaeton, which might be a comet that lost all its volatile material. This image shows the large number of meteors that can be observed in this shower, which always happens in December every year. The image also shows one of the most prominent constellations in the night sky, Orion, easily seen by the three stars in a diagonal making up Orion’s Belt, and the red-orange star Betelgeuse. Right above the dish is a bright point and that is the Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky and part of the constellation Canis Major. The fuzzy bluish smudge at around 2 ‘o’ clock is the Pleiades star cluster.
Credit: Hao Yin/IAU OAE
Glossary Terms:
Shooting Star
Categories:
Naked Eye Astronomy
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) icons
This file on Zenodo ( image 9.78 MB)
The Geminid Fireball
image
Created for the OAE
Caption: Honorable mention in the 2023 IAU OAE Astrophotography Contest, category of Still images taken exclusively with smartphones/mobile devices.
Captured with a smartphone on 13 December 2022, a Geminid meteor illuminated the sky above Blue Moon Valley in Yunnan, China, casting a breathtaking display against the serene backdrop of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. Renowned for their dazzling brightness and vivid hues, the Geminids are among the most vibrant meteor showers, originating from the asteroid 3200 Phaethon. Each year, as our planet traverses Phaethon’s debris trail, fragments of dust and rock vaporise in the atmosphere, creating the stunning phenomenon of the Geminid meteor shower. In this stunning night sky image, the twin stars of Gemini (Castor and Pollux) are obscured by the silhouetted trees on the left. Mirrored in the calm waters are the stars that make up the constellation of Orion, which can be seen rising towards the bottom-centre of the image, while the radiant Mars retains its brilliance as the foremost celestial beacon in the scene, all before the moonrise takes over.
Credit: Jianfeng Dai/IAU OAE (CC BY 4.0)
Glossary Terms:
Gemini , Shooting Star
Categories:
Naked Eye Astronomy
, Solar System
Tags:
astrophotography
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) icons
This file on Zenodo ( image 15.06 MB)
Flowing Night Sky
video
Created for the OAE
Caption: Honourable mention in the 2022 IAU OAE Astrophotography Contest, category Time lapses of celestial patterns.
This time-lapse was shot from Slovakia in August 2020. By fixing the relative movement of the sky to Earth's rotation in some of the frames, we can experience a different perspective as a viewer.
The Milky Way, our home galaxy, is visible throughout the whole video. The bright objects near the Milky Way are Jupiter and Saturn, close together, Jupiter being the brighter one.
This video also shows the interaction of amateur astronomers observing the Perseids meteor shower with their telescopes pointed towards the sky. An unfortunate aspect of the art of astronomical observing, clouds can suddenly cover the whole sky. The fog occurs mostly because of the higher humidity after the rain.
Most of the light trails in the sky are made by satellites, but some of them, appearing just very briefly and not very noticeably, are meteors, as the video was shot around the peak of Perseids meteor shower.
Credit: Robert Barsa/IAU OAE
Glossary Terms:
Jupiter , Milky Way , Saturn , Shooting Star
Categories:
Milky Way and Interstellar Medium
, Naked Eye Astronomy
, Stars
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) icons
This file on Zenodo ( video 254.11 MB)
