Sunday 2 January 2011

Giant Space Jellyfish!

I focused and tracked on the bright star Propus in Gemini (η Geminorum), and got a set of 1 minute exposures of the area to its left, as it was rising in the eastern sky. On the first night I got home, processed the image only to see intriguing, blobby strands of red across the picture like the tentacles of a giant jellyfish. I went even further to the left on my next observing session and this time picked up the jelly-like body. I had a lot of trouble combining the two pictures, and the overlap was at a strange angle, as the two images were taken at different times. I’ve cropped and rotated it so Propus glints beautifully as if lighting the jellyfish from below.

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