Nearest Neighbour

Dark skies once more over the valley meant it was time to point the lens out into the void once more.

This is the view South South West from my bedroom window, with the two brightest stars, seen middle left of the image over the hills, being Alpha and Beta Centauri. These two star systems (also known as Rigel Kent and Hadar respectively) are two pointer stars to the Southern Cross, and some of the brightest objects in the night sky.

Alpha Centauri is also our nearest neighbour - the star closest to our own sun - at a mere 4.37 light years away. Want an idea of how that works in the real world? If you were to imagine Earth as a grain of sand, then Alpha Centauri would be over 10 kilometers away...

Yep, space just blows my mind.

For those who are interested in trying out some astrophotography, this was shot with a 50mm f1.8 lens, set to f2. On full frame I calculated the maximum exposure to ensure no star trails are viewable using the '500 rule'; 500/focal length = max time in seconds. In this case this meant a max of 10 seconds (500/50=10, but I chose 8s just to be sure). If you're using a crop sensor camera, don't forget to calculate your full frame equivalent in your sums (eg 50mm on Nikon DX is 75mm equivalent, meaning your max exposure is 500/75=6.666. Hope that helps ;-)