Night Sky

This was the night sky around 9PM in Schweinfurt, Germany facing South-East. We had clear skies for the first time this year so I took the opportunity to borrow my dads camera. The images are a bit blurred unfortunately but good enough to make out major stars, planet mars and constellations. (update: 20110716, I've made copied the mouseover code from nasa's APOD and it can be looked at by keeping the mouse over the image (takes a few seconds)).

Mars, Gemini, Auriga

Heavenly bodies found in this photograph Mars, Pollux, Castor, Procyon, Capella, Aldebaran, Pleiades, Constellation Gemini, Constellation Auriga, Constellation Taurus, Constellation Perseus, Constellation Canis Minor

I used the program Xephem to see what planet that was after being told by Figz on IRC that it was Mars. He was right.

Sirius, Orion and Aldebaran

Winter Triangle, Orion and Aldebaran

Sirius, Rigel.

Betelgeuse, Gemini, Auriga

A blurry picture of Orion, with Betelgeuse in orange hue.

Here is a stitched together composite (fisheye view) of two images, I think it turned out pretty well actually, seen are sirius, orion, procyon, aldebaran, gemini, mars, auriga, capella, perseus, taurus and pleiades. After looking at this and counting the sides I realise now there is the Winter Hexagon in this picture which is comprised of the 6 stars Sirius, Rigel, Aldebaran, Capella, Pollux, and Procyon. See if you can make them out. Winter Hexagon I used hugin (open source software) to stitch these two together.

Check out the originals.