NIGHT SKIES
Hello Kendall County readers. I’ve taken three months off but will occasionally submit articles hopefully of interest to you.
We are currently on Central Standard Time which will change to Central Daylight Time on March 9, when we “Spring Forward.” So set your clocks ahead one hour the night before.
The big thing this month occurs early Friday, March 14 — a total lunar eclipse, and it should be a dark red one. The deep red color is due to the Earth’s atmosphere filtering and refracting sunlight, allowing only the red wavelengths to reach the moon’s surface. That details why it’s red.
But the ecliptic, the apparent path the sun, moon and planets travel across the sky, are much further south in the winter and nearly overhead in the summer. Thus, we’ll be seeing the moon through a thicker layer of the Earth’s atmosphere, which also contributes to the deeper color.
You’ll note from below that the actual total eclipse will last somewhat longer than an hour. It will be at its darkest at about the 30-minute mark. If you’re taking photos, try to bracket several from just before, to just after, total eclipse.
Beginning of the partial eclipse phase, 12:09 a.m. CDT on March 14.
Beginning of the total eclipse phase, 1:26 a.m. CDT.
Ending of the total eclipse phase, 2:31 am CDT.
Now let’s talk about the Great Nebula in Orion which is prominently placed for viewing all night this time of year.
The constellation of Orion is probably the most recognizable that graces the northern hemisphere winter and early spring skies. The upper left-most bright star is Betelgeuse, which is an extremely large red giant star, supposedly near the end of its lifespan.
When it goes supernova, it will dominate the world news sources, even eclipsing politics. It’s far enough away, 642 light years, that the radiation won’t bother us here on Earth, thank goodness.
The right-most lower star is Rigel, a beautiful double star in backyard telescopes. There are three stars coming down vertically from the three bright stars comprising Orion’s “belt.” The middle of these “stars” isn’t a star at all; rather, it is where stars are still forming from a primordial nebula.
This is an often-photographed object called the Great Nebula in Orion or M (Messier) 42. I’ve personally taken dozens of images of this large object, in my mostly futile attempt to take the perfect photo.
I’m happy to say the attached photo, taken on Feb 1, 2025, is my M42 masterpiece. I can stop imaging this as I can do no better. Note the pretty pink colors. Note with this image, I was trying to capture the delicate outer whisps. They come out quite well in a photography print.
I enlarged this one to 11-by-14. I’m not sure if the newspaper printing process will capture all of that.
These are the natural colors you would see if the human eye could collect enough light. There are two types of cells in the retina, cones and rods. The cones are sensitive to the colors red, green and blue. All the other colors are combinations of those. The cones are at their best in bright light.
The rods are responsible for seeing in dim light, as at night. This is why you don’t see any color at night unless it’s “just” bright enough — every astronomical target is black and white as far as our eyes are concerned.
Now if our retinas were much larger, we would start to see the colors in my M42 image. This was a 10-minute exposure, with an image collected and stacked every 4 seconds. Then I post processed in Adobe Lightroom.
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