Iceland - Part 8

Constellations

In this final post about Iceland I'll return to my astronomical interests. On the morning and evening of October 4th I saw beautiful, dark, cloudless skies from our window at the Hotel Ranga. No auroras were in progress, but the dark sky was too inviting to ignore. I couldn't sleep during the predawn hours of the 4th, so I went out into the dark at about 4 am to try photographing constellations. To get outside I walked down this quiet deserted hallway in the rustic hotel.

On the way to the front exit I passed the enormous 10 foot high polar bear in the hotel lobby.

When my images are manipulated into the blog format the image quality seems to diminish. Full sized images look better than the compressed shrunken images appearing below. So, please click on each image below to get a better view. In the cold and dark before dawn I took this image of Aries, Triangulum, and Andromeda. The Andromeda Galaxy is barely visible slightly to the right of center.  

Auriga, Perseus, and Cassiopeia are spread horizontally across the middle portion of the next image.

Next are Auriga, in the upper left, and the V-shape of Taurus, below center, including the star cluster called, The Pleiades, above and to the right of the "V".

By the time I swung around towards the south some clouds had begun to ruin the clear sky. The clouds have an orange glow in this picture of Orion and Taurus. Bright Jupiter appears on the extreme right edge of the image.

After a full day viewing waterfalls, a glacier, and a black sand beach on October 4th, the evening sky was dark and clear again. Once dinner ended I went out in front of the hotel to try capturing evening constellations. Our location at 64 degrees north latitude made Polaris, the North Star, 64 degrees above the horizon instead of 37.4 degrees above the horizon as it is at my home in Virginia. Here is a view looking north showing both dippers: Ursa Major, the Big Dipper, in the bottom center and Ursa Minor, the Little Dipper at top center. A dim companion of Polaris shows up in the image. Can you see it? Click on image for a larger view.

The dimmest stars in the image above are about magnitude 7.5. I expected to capture dimmer stars than that. The next image below shows Pegasus, the great square, on the right, and also Andromeda spread nearly horizontally across the center of the image. The Andromeda Galaxy is barely visible slightly above and slightly left of center.

All images above were captured with a tripod-mounted Nikon D40 camera with exposures of 30 seconds, ISO at 1600, and an 18 to 55 mm lens set at 18 mm.

We had a great time in Iceland!