Drawing of a star in the sky. The most beautiful objects of the night sky that are worth seeing (12 photos). When it's completely dark


The night sky is full of incredible beauty objects that can be seen even with the naked eye. If you don't have a special technique to look at the sky, it doesn't matter, some amazing things can be seen without it.

Spectacular comets, bright planets, distant nebulae, twinkling stars and constellations can all be found in the night sky.

The only thing to remember is light pollution in big cities. In the city, the light from lanterns and windows of knowledge is so strong that all the most interesting in the night sky is hidden, so to see these amazing things, you should go out of town.

Light pollution

The brightest planet

A very hot neighbor of the Earth - Venus can rightfully be proud of the title of the brightest planet in the firmament. The brightness of the planet is due to the highly reflective clouds, as well as the fact that it is close to the Earth. Venus is about 6 times brighter than Earth's other neighbors Mars and Jupiter.

Venus is brighter than any other object in the night sky, except, of course, the Moon. Its maximum apparent magnitude is about -5. For comparison: apparent magnitude full moon is -13, that is, it is about 1600 times brighter than Venus.

February 2012 saw a unique combination of three of the brightest objects in the night sky: Venus, Jupiter and the Moon, which could be seen just after sunset.

The brightest star

In 1997, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope found that the brightest star known is a star located 25,000 light-years away. This star emits 10 million times more energy than the Sun. This star is also much larger than our star in size. If you place it in the center of the solar system, it will occupy the Earth's orbit.
Scientists have suggested that this large star, located in the constellation of Sagittarius, is creating a cloud of gas around itself, which is called the Pistol Nebula. Thanks to this nebula, the star also received the name Pistol Star.

Unfortunately, this amazing star is not visible from Earth due to the fact that it is hidden by the dust clouds of the Milky Way. The brightest star in the night sky is the star Sirius, located in the constellation Big Dog... The magnitude of Sirius is -1.44.

You can watch Sirius from anywhere on Earth, except in the northern regions. The brightness of the star is explained not only by its high luminosity, but also by its relatively close distance. Sirius is located about 8.6 light years from the solar system.

The most beautiful star in the sky

Many stars are known for their brilliance in different colors, for example, the system of blue and orange stars Albireo, or the bright red giant star Antares. However, the most beautiful of all stars visible to the naked eye can be called the red-orange star Mu Cephei, which is also called "Herschel's garnet star" in honor of its first explorer, British astronomer William Herschel.

The red giant Mu Cephei is located in the constellation Cepheus. It is a pulsating variable star and its maximum brightness varies from 3.7 to 5.0. The color of the star also changes. Much of the time, Mu Cephei is deep orange-red, but sometimes it takes on a strange purple hue.

Although Mu Cephei is a little dull, its reddish tint can be seen even with the naked eye, and if you use simple binoculars, the sight will be more impressive.

The farthest space object

The farthest object visible to the naked eye is the Andromeda galaxy, which includes about 400 billion stars and was noticed back in the 10th century by the ancient Persian astronomer Al Sufi. He described this object as a "little cloud".

Even when armed with binoculars or an amateur telescope, Andromeda will still look like a slightly elongated blurry speck. But still it is very impressive, especially if you know that the light from it reaches us in 2.5 million years!

By the way, the Andromeda galaxy is approaching our Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers estimate that the two galaxies will connect in about 4 billion years, and Andromeda can be observed as a bright disk in the night sky. However, it is not yet known whether those who wish to look at the sky will remain on Earth in so many years.

With a sky with thousands of stars visible, I immediately wanted to learn how to shoot in the same way. I took a camera, went out into the street ... and, naturally, nothing came of it the first time. I had to read a little, practice. But everything turned out to be many times easier than I thought. In my article I will give several simple tips, which will help happy owners of DSLRs to understand the issue. I must say right away that shooting other galaxies and spectacular nebulae will not be described here: the technique of such shooting is too complicated.

What do you need?

We will start, by the way, not with technology. It is not an end in itself for me to capture a piece of the night sky. This is an occupation for an astronomer, not a photographer. For me, stars are an effective way to decorate a landscape. And landscape photography always starts with choosing a place and time. Over time, everything is very simple: you need a cloudless night. Summer or winter outside - the difference is not that great. Of course, in cold weather the matrix heats up less at long exposures, there is less noise in photographs. But the photographer freezes too quickly. As a result, I would not prioritize summer or winter.

The place should not only look spectacular, but also be as far away from villages and cities illuminated by lanterns. They give a glare in the sky, against the background of which the stars are simply not visible. So it is best to take such filming somewhere in a country house in the suburbs, and ideally - to leave a hundred kilometers from civilization.

Now we come to the question of technology. Better if you have a DSLR. But even with a mirrorless camera, you can achieve good results, you just have to face the problems of focusing in the dark. Wide-angle optics are most often needed. I often use 14mm and 16mm lenses on full frame... But the whale lens that comes with your amateur camera is also fine. One thing you definitely can't do without is a tripod. The shutter speeds will be long and the camera needs to be held securely. The release cable will not be superfluous. Although for the first time it will be possible to do without it. It is enough to use the shutter lag so that the vibrations of the camera from touching have time to calm down by the moment the shutter opens. Don't forget to dress for the weather and also get a flashlight - the more powerful the better. We charge the batteries and set off into the night ...

Exposure parameters

This is where beginners have the most questions. Let's start with the simplest case - shooting landscape on a cloudless moonlit night. We put the camera on a tripod, lower the ISO to 200 units (more often than not, this is just enough). Try not to close the aperture too much, not more than f / 4-f / 5.6. And experimentally choose the shutter speed manually so that the brightness of the photo matches your creative idea. Attention: the shutter speed may be too slow! If your camera cannot handle this slow shutter speed in manual mode (some models are limited to 30 seconds), increase the ISO carefully.

Focusing

The next problem is focusing. It is not automatically possible to focus on a dark sky at night. And in the viewfinder, most likely, nothing is visible at all. We do this: we find distant lights on the horizon (they are almost always and everywhere) and try to manually focus on them. You can take several control frames and, if necessary, correct the focusing. If the foreground appears in the frame (what kind of landscape is it without a foreground?), Then it makes sense to focus on it, having previously illuminated it with a flashlight.

She's spinning!

In the stream of endless affairs and everyday worries, we often forget about such simple things as the rotation of the earth. The stars in the sky never stand in one place. They are constantly moving relative to the ground. Although there are exceptions to each rule. The North Star is still the least displaced during the day. And approximately we can say that it stands still. And all the rest revolve around her. At short exposures this is not visible, but at long exposures it is perfectly noticeable! If you want to get star-points in the picture, then try to shoot at relatively fast shutter speeds. If you want dashes instead of dots, increase the shutter speed.

The Rule of Six Hundred

There is a rule of thumb that allows you to determine the shutter speed at which the stars in the frame, due to the rotation of the earth, will begin to turn from dots to dashes. It's called the Six Hundred Rule. Divide 600 by its equivalent focal length your lens and you will get the corresponding shutter speed in seconds. For 16mm fish eye for example, shutter speeds up to 37 s can be used. And for a kit lens with a wide-angle position of 18 mm, it is better not to exceed a value of 20 seconds.

When it's completely dark

In some cases, we manage to move away from civilization to such a distance that the light of its cities is not visible at all in the sky. In this case, we have a chance to capture the spectacular Milky Way. Feel free to set the maximum allowable shutter speed, open the aperture a little wider and try to increase the ISO. Where the human eye just saw a dark sky, the camera sees a lot more!

Add light

Have you forgotten about the flashlight yet? You can use it to highlight the details of the foreground. You can use color filters to achieve multi-colored backlighting.

Star Tracks

A little higher, I wrote that a long exposure can capture the movement of the stars. And if you make the shutter speed very long? In fact, this will cause many problems: from overheating of the matrix to the need to tightly close the diaphragm. And if you want to shoot the movement of stars across the sky, it is better to take several dozen frames from one place with a shutter speed of about 15-30 seconds, and then merge them automatically into one picture using a simple and free software Startrails.


Astronomy day in 2015 fell on April 25 (or rather, on the night of 25 to 26). For this day, astronomers try to timed various exhibitions, and also share their photographs of the starry sky. This is exactly what Kulturologiya.RF will do today - for your attention there are wonderful pictures of the night sky full of shining stars, which are simply breathtaking.






Astronomy day began to celebrate in the United States in 1973, combining disparate events that had previously been timed to coincide with eclipses, the appearance of comets and other similar phenomena. This day is not a stable date, it changes every year, but in any case, the day of astronomy is held from Saturday to Sunday from April to May, when the moon enters the first quarter phase.






Recently, it has been increasingly discussed light pollution problem environment... If for an ordinary resident this does not pose a particular problem, then for astronomers every year it becomes more and more difficult to work in such conditions. At the moment, only the brightest stars can be seen from observatories located within the boundaries of large cities (for example, in universities or research centers), while the rest become "invisible" no matter how good the telescope is.






It is because of light pollution (street lighting, disco floodlights, light on industrial complexes) to create a truly beautiful picture of the starry sky, it is advised to leave as far away from cities as possible. Of course, you need to take into account that you will need a tripod and, at least, learn in advance how to use the shutter speed on the camera. Depending on the desired result, the shutter speed can be set from 30 seconds to an hour. Of course, the first time you have to tinker and adjust to the settings before you get a decent result, but when it comes out it's akin to magic: stars appear in the picture that are invisible to the naked eye. As in the magical shots in our review.









From time immemorial, beautiful, mysterious and such distant stars have excited people's minds, forcing them to dream, create and seek the truth, helped to find the way for lost souls and ships, and predicted fate. One has only to look into the starry sky on a moonlit night, it seems, here they are, myriads of stars, directly overhead, but in fact the distance to the closest star to the Earth called the Sun is 150 million km.

Photo of the starry sky at night.
Photo: a man shines a flashlight into the starry sky.
Starry sky, photo from the USA.
Stars in the night sky and the Milky Way.
Starry sky, mountains and forest in winter.
Starry sky: panoramic photo in the forest.
The Milky Way against the background of the starry sky.
Starry sky: a photo above the village houses.
A rainbow of stars in the sky.
Mountains under the starry sky.
A beautiful photo under the starry sky.
Photo: lighthouse against the background of the starry sky.
Starry sky over the lake.

Photo from Mexico: the starry sky over the cacti.

Starry sky in the Mexican desert.
Cycle of stars in the sky.
Beautiful night photo of the starry sky.
Starry sky: a photo of a beautiful clear sky cycle at night.

Even with a telescope, contemplation of celestial bodies in a metropolis can be difficult and it is almost impossible to get a high-quality photo of the starry sky. But outside the city, for example, any resident of the northern hemisphere with good eyesight can admire the Andromeda nebula.

How many stars are there in the sky

Unsurprisingly, people began counting stars long before optical instruments were invented. So, in the 2nd century BC. NS. the ancient Greek astronomer Hipparchus began to compile a list of stars, which was later supplemented by the famous Ptolemy to 1022 pieces. In the 17th century, Polish astronomer Jan Hevelius added 511 more stars to the list and began building a telescope.

Thanks to the progressive technologies of modern civilization, scientists were able to calculate the approximate number of stars in our galaxy, there were a little more than 200 billion of them. This number in the literal sense of the word can be called astronomical, giving each star a name and cataloging it turned out to be unrealistic. Therefore, the current official list of astronomical objects includes only 0.01% of the stars visible with powerful telescopes.

Attention was paid to the closest, largest and brightest stars, which were combined into constellations for the convenience of classification.

How stars are born

The process of star formation in a nutshell: part of the interstellar gas begins to contract under the influence of its own gravity and takes the form of a red-hot ball inside. When the temperature reaches a certain value, a thermonuclear reaction starts, the gas stops compressing and a new star lights up in the sky.

The celestial body spends most of its life in this state, and then the fuel reserves are depleted and the star begins to "age". The lifespan of a star depends on its size: the largest ones live very little by astronomical standards - several million years and, due to their bright blue glow, are called blue supergiants.

Each star occupies a certain place in outer space, and the largest cluster of objects that are clearly visible in the starry sky are called stellar associations.

The most famous representatives of the starry sky

Scientists have long noticed how different these points glowing in the night sky are and have tried to study the most interesting ones.

The North Star from the constellation Ursa Minor is known to all sailors as the most important landmark indicating the northern direction. In reality, the North Star consists of 3 stars, the middle of which is 2 thousand times brighter than the Sun.

The red supergiant Antares from the constellation Scorpio shines especially brightly in May, when it opposes the Sun in the firmament. Due to its brightness and color, Antares played important role in the religious rites of ancient peoples, and in medieval Rome, the star was considered a fallen angel.

Sirius is the brightest binary star in the southern hemisphere in the constellation Canis Major, estimated at 230 million years old. Today, the star can be observed in the northern hemisphere, although scientists predict that in 11 thousand years it will become impossible to see Sirius over Europe.

Zeta Kormy is the most powerful and hottest blue supergiant that can be seen without a telescope on a clear night at the latitude of Sochi and Vladivostok.

In the warm season, a triangle is clearly visible in the sky of the Northern Hemisphere, one of the peaks of which burns especially brightly. This is Altair - the brightest diamond in the constellation Eagle and the 12th brightest celestial body.

Scientists and pragmatists consider the distance to the stars and their age, and romantics, dreaming under a starry sky, are sure: if the stars are lit, someone needs it.

 

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