A portrait of most of the constellation of Lyra the Harp, taking in all its bright stars. Vega is at top right, with the famous Double-Double, Epsilon Lyrae, above it at top. The very orange star is Delta2 Lyrae paired with blue Delta1 Lyrae, amid the sparse star cluster Stephenson 1. The double star Zeta1 and Zeta2 Lyrae is below and to the left of Vega. At bottom left are the two stars at the bottom of Lyra, Gamma and Beta Lyrae, aka Sulafat and Sheliak respectively. Between them and just visible at this scale as a disk and not a star is the green planetary nebula Messier 57, the Ring Nebula. The field of view is about 8.3° by 5.5° degrees wide, similar to binoculars. This is a stack of eight 5-minute exposures with the William Optics RedCat 51 at f/4.9 and the Canon R5 at ISO 800. Taken May 25, 2022.
A montage of close-ups of the brightest stars of the winter season of the Northern Hemisphere, but also of the summer season of the southern hemisphere, as all these stars can be seen from southern latitudes, at least north of 35° South. However, if this were a collage of southern hemisphere “summer” stars (i.e. ones most prominent in December to February) I would have to include Canopus as well. Betelgeuse and Aldebaran, being cool red giants, are noticeably redder than the others, with Capella and Pollux being more yellow as they are cooler (in stellar terms) than the hot blue and blue-white stars such as Sirius and Rigel, buit not as cool in surface temperature as the red giants. If our yellow dwarf Sun were as far away as even nearby Sirius, it would be just magnitude 2, bright but not among the brightest stars in the sky, as seen from Sirius. Distances are as per Wikipedia, and may not reflect the latest measurements from the ESA Gaia satellite. All these stars are larger and more luminous than our Sun, but most appear very bright in our sky because they are relatively close, from 8.6 light years away for Sirius, to 65 light years away for Aldebaran. However, Betelgeuse and Rigel are truly luminous supergiants, being bright despite being much more distant at hundreds of light years away. I shot each of these on one night, November 19, 2018, using a 130mm Astro-Physics refractor at f/6 and a Canon 6D MkII at ISO 800 for a stack of 6 x 2-minute exposures blended with a stack of 3 x 30-second exposures to prevent the “core” of the star from brightening too much. I increased the vibrancy a lot to accentuate the stars’ colours. The sky is naturally deep blue as I shot these on a night with a waxing gibbous Moon in the sky. I applied similar processing steps to all the images to preserve the relative brightness of the stars, with Sirius the brightest, indeed the brightest star in the night sky. I added the diffraction spikes with the Astronomy Tools action, just for artistic effect.
Alya, Theta Serpentis, a double star in Serpens, not resolved here in this wide-field view. This is a stack of 4 x 4 minute exposures with the TMB 92mm apo refractor at f/4.4 with the Borg 0.85x field flattener/reducer and Canon 6D at ISO 800.
