If you can’t make it to Wairarapa or New Zealand, learn astronomy online with us and SLOOH.
Also check out our favourite astrophotography guide
For my birthday I received an image of NGC 4444, which turns out to be a spiral galaxy in Centaurus. I am, after all, 44 years old today. The image was taken using Skynet, which will also be the system to run the new Robotic Observatory at the Mars Desert Research Station at MDRS. However, the telescope used this time was a meter instrument at Cerro Tololo in Chile.
Peter said that unfortunately the calibration frames came back unreadable so there was quite a bit of noise, which he tried to clean up the best could. I say, who cares about the calibration frames, that is NGC 4444 and that’s all that matters to me.
It’s a rather faint galaxy, but remember, he said, that even in a galaxy far, far away there are always great things happening, sometimes unnoticed, but like life sometimes the small unnoticed things have a great impact for our lives and can keep us centered and on track.
Milky-Way.Kiwi is a social enterprise for quality and affordable access to the night sky run by professional space science communicators. We provide educational services for teachers and schools – Spaceward Bound NZ, stargazing and astronomy and space courses and programmes for the public – Star Safari and we write about space and astronomy with a New Zealand perspective.
At Star Safari, everyone 15 and younger is FREE because we believe that young people should not pay for inspiration.
