Wide Field Milky Way Southern Summer Sky From Keota, Colorado
August 2010
   This is 2-shot stitch taken from Keota Colorado, 65 miles east of Ft. Collins, taken on August 6, 2010. Very dark skies, warm night, no wind, using a Pentax MX 35 mm
with a 50mm lens set at f/5.6, ASA400 Kodak Gold film, this is a VERY wide field (~70*), but only a 7 minute image, piggybacked on my C-14 and tracking, not guided.
I love the Losmandy CG-11 tripod and mount!!

   These are images of the Southern Summer Sky showing star clusters, nebulae and even a star cloud in the Milky Way, Sagittarius on the left, Ophichus/Milky Way in the
middle and Scorpio on the right). The smudge at the left is the Comet McNaught C2009 R1.  At the bottom, the squiggly red line takes you to Gary's 12 foot ladder and some
of my other friends telescope setups.  Above the ladder is the light pollution dome of Ft. Lupton's, some 70 miles distant.  And to the right on the horizon, is the red taillight
of a vehicle on Hwy.14, three miles south.

                           .  .

 There were also a couple of scratches either from the processing or camera, which I removed with Photoshop (yeah, I know that's cheating).

 The dotted streak is a high flying trans-continental jet and I had to do a 'black hat trick' to obscure it.  The yellow streak at bottom right is: ATLAS CENTAUR 2, Fri Aug. 06,10
@22:39  00m20s 14 11 above SW  14 above SW. Friends have setup their telescopes in the foreground and use only red lights, which are 'THE LAW' during a star party.

 To find out what the long bright yellow streak at the bottom was, considering time,location and magnitude, I ran a satellite scan HERE:   and the best candidate  was:
ATLAS CENTAUR 2  Fri Aug. 06,10@22:39  00m20s  14* max elevation at S, 11* above SW.

Candidates  from the generated list:
IRIDIUM 55 [+] Fri Aug 06,10@22:18  00m20s 11 10 above WSW  11 above WSW
SL-16 R/B Fri Aug 06,10@22:27  01m00s 13 10 above WSW  13 above WSW
SL-3 R/B Fri Aug 06,10@21:18  01m00s 14 10 above  SW  14 above SW
ATLAS CENTAUR 2 Fri Aug 06,10@22:39  00m20s 14 11 above  SW  14 above SW

 SoapBox:  If there isn't a reversal in the trend of the encroaching light pollution,  we have no more than 10 more years before we run out of dark sky space between Ft. Collins
and Sterling. We are now at, Keota and it is 6 miles closer to Sterling than Ft. Collins.  Morn for the loss of the stars.

Single Image of Same location

Temp-  ~55*F
Wind- 0-3 mph
Humidity- Very low
Transparency- 7/10
Seeing- 6.5/10
Camera- Pentax MX SLR
Film- Kodak Gold ASA 400
Exposure time- 07 minutes
Platform- C-14 w/ Losmandy CG-11Tripod/mount                                                                                   Photo Home___TjT  Feb. 07, 2011
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