Michael Brown's Astronomy Images

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Astronomy Images

Princeton Peyton Hall

Comet Hyakutake

A colour image of C/1996 B2 (Hyakutake) taken by Michael Brown (University of Melbourne) and Chris Fluke (University of Melbourne) using the 40 inch telescope at Siding Spring. The image was taken on the morning of Sunday 25 Feb 1996 (UT 24.77 Feb 96) after a night imaging for Kuiper Belt Objects. The ion tail is visible, stretching towards the top left of the image. The image is 28 arcmin by 17 arcmin and is a combination of a 60 second R band exposure, an 80 second V band exposure and a 100 second B band exposure. The magnitudes of the comet are approximately R=7.6, V=6.9 and B=7.5.

Eta Carinae Nebula

An image of the Eta Carinae nebula taken by Michael Brown with a CCD camera on the 40-inch telescope at Siding Spring Observatory. This image contains some of the brightest stars known in our galaxy. One of these stars, Eta Carinae, is the very bright star near the centre of the image. A cluster of young stars (Trumpler 14) can be seen at the top right of the image. Click here for a larger image of this nebula. Superb photographs of Eta Carinae can be found at David Malin's web site at the Anglo Australian Observatory.

Hale-Bopp Colour Movie (0.5Mb gif)

Click here or on the image to see a colour movie of Hale-Bopp. The images were taken by Michael Brown (University of Melbourne) on the evening of 2 March 98 with the Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories 40-inch Telescope. The 6 images were taken between 9:57 UT and 11:02 UT and clearly show the motion of the comet. The tail of the comet can be seen stretching towards a small group of galaxies near the top right of the image. Each colour image is a composite of 60 second R band, 90 second V band and 120 second B band images. The size of the image is 7 arcminutes by 10 arcminutes. The "donut" towards the top of the image is an artifact of the telescope. The bright coloured dots are cosmic rays detected by the CCD. Dust in the orbital plane of the comet is seen in the raw images but not in this animation.

The Optical Transient of Gamma Ray Burst 011121

The blue dot in the center of this image (highlighted by an arrow) is the optical light signature of Gamma Ray Burst 011121. The gamma ray burst briefly appeared brighter than the rest of the Universe in gamma rays, before rapidly fading away. The burst was also detected in X-rays by the BeppoSAX satellite, which provided the burst's position in the sky with sufficient accuracy for ground-based telescopes to detect and image the gamma ray burst in the ultraviolet, optical, infrared and radio.

This optical image, taken with the National Science Foundation's Blanco 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile during the morning of 23 November 2001, shows the optical transient a day and a half after the initial burst. The transient had faded in brightness from its peak by more than a factor of 100 in that period of time. The reddish dot adjoining the gamma ray burst, at its lower left, is probably the core of the galaxy in which the gamma ray burst occurred.

Partial Eclipse of the Moon

Images of the partial eclipse of the Moon of 28 July 1999. The first image was taken approximately 45 minutes before the middle of the eclipse which is shown the other two photographs. The curve of the shadow of the Earth can be seen in the photographs. All photographs were taken with a Celestron C-8 telescope at f/10 with an Olympus OM-1 camera body and 400 ASA film.

The Milky Way

A photograph of our galaxy, the Milky Way, by Michael Brown. The faintest stars visible in the image are 50 times fainter than what can be seen with the naked eye! The brown and grey clouds in the photo are actually millions of distant stars. The red blobs visible in the image are huge clouds of gas (nebulae). The most prominent of these is M7, the Lagoon Nebula, which is at the top-left of the photo. The photo is a 12 minute exposure using a Ricoh KR-5 Super camera with a 50mm lens and ASA 400, piggy back mounted on a Celestron C-8 telescope. Click here for a larger version of this image (61k).

Galaxy NGC 4945

Galaxy NGC 4945, an edge on spiral galaxy in the constellation Centarus. This galaxy contains more than one billion stars! The image was taken with a CCD camera on the 40-inch telescope at Siding Spring Observatory. The line running through the image is a flaw in the CCD camera. Click here for a larger image of this galaxy.