Contains:  Extremely wide field
Southern Cross region, Adri Vilba

Southern Cross region

Southern Cross region, Adri Vilba

Southern Cross region

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Description

A wide-field image of the region around the Southern Cross, home to many interesting objects. Alpha Centauri, our closest neighbouring star system, is the bright yellow star to the left of the image. On the right, the pink stain with a Y shape in it is the Eta Carinae nebula, a bright HII region.

Longer wide-field exposures reveal the colours of stars. You can clearly that Gacrux (top of the Southern Cross), unlike the other three bright stars of the asterism, is  a red giant. The colour difference of Alpha Centauri is also striking. Most stars visible to our naked eye are big and bright. These are either white-blue (main sequence) or red (red giants, at the end of their lives). Alpha Cen is neither isn't one of those. It's a lower mass star than most of what we see with your eye, and you can tell that by its colour, much yellower than other stars.

100 untracked/unguided frames of 10 seconds with a full-spectrum DSLR.

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Southern Cross region, Adri Vilba