Hello All,
Rachel and I were in Chile during the last weeks of December 2011. We were often hiking for days inside a national park without internet, and therefore didn’t know about comet Lovejoy... but we took some pictures of the Southern Cross, Centaurus, Magellanic clouds, etc.
This photo shows the constellations of Crux (the Southern Cross) and Centaurus. It shows both Magellanic Clouds and the Celestial South Polar Region. The photo was taken at The location was 29d 00m 54s S, 70d 41m 32s W, Las Campanas Observatory, Chile. Taken on 2011 December 20th, at about 1:19am.
Sliding the mouse over the picture will show the prominent stars and constellations in the background.
The picture is not bright and therefore requires your monitor to be properly calibrated. While a proper calibration of the monitor is time consuming (and expensive), a quick (and dirty) way is to adjust your monitor so that you can see ALL the 17 different shades in the image below, in particular the darkest shades.
