The Milky Way and its core region in Sagittarius and Scorpius is here low over the Badlands landscape of Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta. This was t
The Milky Way and its core region in Sagittarius and Scorpius is here low over the Badlands landscape of Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta. This was the night of May 31/June 1, 2024, when from this latitude of 50° 45' N the sky is not fully dark even in the middle of the night, here about 2:30 MDT. So the sky retains a blue tint. Adding to the sky colours are bands of green oxygen airglow and perhaps yellow sodium airglow. Plus some light pollution from nearby Brooks, Alberta. The mass of stars toward the galactic centre also glow with a combined yellow light, in part due to absorption of shorter wavelengths of starlight by interstellar dust in the spiral arms of the Galaxy. But the most striking colours are the red and magenta from glowing hydrogen gas in star-forming nebulas toward the galactic core. I emphasized those through the use of a filter that isolates that red wavelength of "hydrogen-alpha." The most obvious H-alpha feature is the large round nebula, Sharpless 2-27, around the star Zeta Ophiuchi above Scorpius. The red nebulas in the Milky Way to the left are mostly Messier objects (M8, M16 and M17), but the little Cat's Paw Nebula, NGC 6334, just sneaks in an appearance above the horizon, in the tail of Scorpius, as do the star clusters Messier 6 and 7. They all scrape the southern horizon from this latitude. The bright mass of stars below the main collection of red nebulas is the Sagittarius Starcloud. The actual direction of the galactic centre is just to the right (west) of the Starcloud. Above it is the smaller, whiter Small Sagittarius Starcloud (aka M24), and above it is the Scutum StarCloud. Yellow Antares in Scorpius just peaks out to the right of the hoodoo. The Dark Horse of interstellar dust prances at centre. So this is a particularly colourful sky, constrasting with the earth tones of the Badlands landscape of eroded bentonite clay hoodoos, iron-rich rocks, and sagebrush. However, it takes long exposures and special techn
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Photo credit: © Alan Dyer / VWPics / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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