Kepler Passing Saturn

[sasykes]

Captured Kepler on the 18th of this month, before it got too far from earth, from the mountains of North Georgia. I was lucky enough to capture it going right past Saturn. Click on images for large version (best viewing).

20 second exposure (one dark frame), 6" reflector and Nikon D60 at prime focus:
http://www.astroslacker.com/static/images/medium_kepler-saturn-20090318-001.jpg (http://www.astroslacker.com/view_image/kepler-saturn-20090318-001.jpg)

Inverted:
http://www.astroslacker.com/static/images/medium_kepler-saturn-20090318-invert-001.jpg (http://www.astroslacker.com/view_image/kepler-saturn-20090318-invert-001.jpg)

[stephen]

[timthelder]

Nice shot Stephen,

I can't wait till they get all these scopes working together. Should be awesome!

Cheers, Tim:smile:

[Radar]

Awesome shot mate. I can't beleive they are sending Kepler so far away to work.

I imagine you get some nice skies from those mountains.

Ray

[sasykes]

Thanks. Yeah, I have some decent skies here. There are a couple towns near by though, so I get a bit of light pollution in the south west and a bit in the north west but it's nothing like living in the city. We just moved here specifically to get away from the city lights. My wife says the stars look fake, because she's used to seeing them from the city.

[Leinad]

Nice work! Must have been proud of that photo!

Its amazing that in less than a whole month Kepler has travelled:
2,275,000 km; 1,414,000 mi; 0.015 AU; 5.92 times the distance to the Moon.

[PeterP]

great photo mate. Where exactly is Kepler going?

Pete

[sasykes]

It's on an Earth-trailing (heliocentric) orbit, which means it's moving away from the Earth into it's own orbit around the sun.

Diagram here: http://kepler.nasa.gov/sci/design/orbit.html

Here's a great video on Kepler if you are interested: http://www.livescience.com/common/media/video/player.php?videoRef=SP_090226_Kepler_launch

[Radar]

That video was awesome mate. It's not until you see stuff like that, that I realise how sophisticated these things actually are.

Ray

[DarkSkyMan]

wow, very cool stuff. thanks

Brett