The Night Sky...
...is filled with millions of visual treasures and delights. For centuries, astronomers have gazed at the heavens and marveled in wonder at the stars, planets and faint fuzzies they found. In the last few decades, science has brought us unbelievable close-up images of distant galaxies, nebulae and star clusters. To a certain extent, perhaps this has spoiled the astronomer as the views through our telescopes often pale in comparison to the views provided by Hubble. However, many astronomers are gripped with the notion that the photons they are collecting and observing have travelled unimaginable distances to reach their eyes. Seeing the spiral arms of a galaxy or the tight knot of a globular cluster many thousands of light years away sparks the imagination.
The galleries of deep sky images provided here are all shown in a 5° by 3° setting, so that the apparent size and scale of these objects can truly be appreciated. Of much interest is the Globular Cluster gallery which will allow you to directly compare the great clusters of the sky such as Omega Centauri, 47 Tucanae, Hercules and Sagittarius. How much real difference is there between these clusters? As you will see, quite a lot! The images in these galleries are not the knock your socks off images that the Hubble Space Telescope provides – these images are much more representative of what an astronomer sees through the eyepiece. Enjoy!