Framed Prints
Each example of our Telescope Astro Art is available in 3 different sizes:
Small = 18" x 12" (46cm x 32cm)
Medium = 24" x 15" (61cm x 39cm)
Large = 42" x 25" (107cm x 65cm)
Sizing includes frame. In some pieces dimension may vary due composition of the imagery
All imagery was captured, processed, and composed by real Dark Rangers. Each example of deep space astrophotography required hours of data collection per image, utilizing our same research-grade telescopes that we entertain our guest with nightly. Yes, you can even purchase images of our photogenic telescopes themselves.
Pricing includes shipping to any verifiable address in the USA. An additional 7.35% will be charged for Utah Sales Tax.
Galaxies
Hidden Galaxy Framed Print
The Hidden Galaxy is an average sized galaxy of 100 billion stars. A spiral galaxy with "Face-on" orientation, means that it appears as a pizza would if it was lying flat on a table and you were looking down at it from above. An "Edge-on" spiral galaxy is the orientation of lowering your eye to the edge of the table where the pizza visually becomes a line. In that latter orientation, the light from billions of stars accumulate to make a much stronger contrast, creating an easier to detect object. Due to that bias, it incorrectly appears that "Edge-on" spiral galaxies outnumber "Face-on" galaxies 10:1. In reality there's an entire spectrum of angles between Face-on" and "Edge-on" because the Universe has no preferred orientation.
Face-on orientation doesn’t alone explain why it wasn't until 1892, after 7,500 other deep space objects had been cataloged, that one of the most beautiful "Face-on" spirals in the known Universe was discovered. This would be like the Polynesians not finding Hawaii until flying there on Pan American Airlines. The reason this galaxy remained hidden from navigators of the Cosmic Ocean, aka astronomers, for so long, is that we have to look through the edge of the Winter Arm (aka The Orion Spur) of our own Milky Way to see this other galaxy some 11-million light years beyond. What’s more, even though the Hidden Galaxy is smaller and five times farther away than the mighty Andromeda Galaxy, it would be even brighter than Andromeda, if not for so much of our galaxy’s stars and dust clouds dimming its powerful golden light.
As with most deep space objects, you’ll only see the Hidden Galaxy as a gray spiral smudge through our biggest telescopes. An image like this requires several hours of photography to gather enough photons of light to create this true color depiction of this gorgeous galaxy.
Andromeda Galaxy and Companions
Andromeda, like all large galaxies, travels through space with an escort of smaller galaxies known as companion or satellite galaxies. An analogy might be how an aircraft carrier is flanked by cruisers, destroyers, frigates, and an unconfirmed submarine or two. Andromeda is the largest such fleet in our section of Universe, having at least 13 such "satellite" galaxies. While two are obvious in this image, most orbit much farther away from Andromeda's core, and thus are out of frame. More like those submarines, are probably there too, just extremely difficult to detect.
Our own Milky Way has somewhere between 18 and 60 satellite galaxies depending on whether you still count those that are already mostly digested like food in so many vacuoles of a giant amoeba that is our Milky Way Galaxy. It appears that galaxies grow as they engulf their satellite galaxies or merge with full-sized galaxies. The Andromeda Galaxy is the closest full-sized and independent galaxy to the Milky Way at only 2.5 million light years away.
In a BIG telescope with a wide field of view, you can see those two brightest satellite galaxies of Andromeda plainly. Also look for how the its core is surrounded with two ringlets of galactic arms, recognizable by their central black ribbons of lumpy darkness. Normally, galactic arms take on a spiral pattern as they extend into the core. It’s assumed that Andromeda lost her figure-skater figure after having adsorbed another large galaxy or two. What’s known for certain, and nobody can do anything about it, is that she is coming for us next.
She is even bigger than our galaxy and we are on a convergent course with a closing velocity of ~180,000 miles per hour. Don't worry, Andromeda will never in your lifetime appear as big in the sky as it will in this art hanging on your wall. That's because even at that phenomenal speed, it will be 4 billion years before our galaxies start to merge -- plenty of time to amass a collection of Dark Ranger Telescope Astro Art.
Triangulum Galaxy
The Triangulum Galaxy is named for the constellation by the same name for which it resides near. Triangulum an not its shape which is clearly pinwheel-like. Unfortunately one of it's unsanctioned nicknames is "The Pinwheel Galaxy", not to be confused with the actual Pinwheel Galaxy. Astronomers are exceptionally bad at naming things. This small spiral galaxy is 2.7 million light years away from our Milky Way Galaxy making it the 2nd closest independent galaxy. The Triangulum Galaxy is the only other non-satellite galaxy detectable to the unaided human eye, but unlike the Andromeda Galaxy, it is only visible without at telescope in the darkest possible sky, under ideal seeing conditions. Through a big telescope if looks vaguely like Superman's S or a monkey from the Barrel of Monkey's game.
Core-ward into the Milky Way
The exact center of this Dark Ranger Telescope Tour Astro Art is where you would see the core of our galaxy and a supermassive black hole that lurks there. The problem is that there are three galactic arms between us and the core that blocks our visible light view. Radio waves, X-ray, and gamma rays coming off that central black hole and other energetic stars that make up the core can pass through the arms but not regular light.
Try this visual: Imagine your friend's head is the core of the galaxy. Now Stretch your right arm out bending at the elbow so that your forearm blocks the view of their head. Take your left arm and do the same but from the other direction. Finally take your middle arm and hold it in front of the other two. See how hard it would be to see your friend's head or galactic core with all those arms in the way? NOTE: This is easier to simulate for denizens of the Betelgeuse star system, many of whom, like Zaphod Beeblebrox, apparently have three graspers.
Can you find the pink-purple cloud on the left edge of the frame? That's the Lagoon nebula. Next look below and left of center for the two blue stars very close together. They are Shaula and Lesath which represent the stinger at the end of the tail of the constellation known as Scorpius. The bright star right of center is not a star at all (but could have been if it was 40 times more massive) but is actually the planet Jupiter. What does it mean when Jupiter is in Scorpius?! Absolutely nothing! Because that would astrological "thinking" and as EVERY astronomer will tell you, astrology means absolutely nothing! While some people can afford to be ENTERTAINED by astrology, nobody can afford to be INFORMED by astrology, because astrology predicts absolutely nothing.
While most northern cultures visualize their constellations by connecting stars with imaginary lines, some who live in the southern hemisphere, where much more of the Sagittarius Arm of our galaxy is visible, made their constellations from the dark clouds of dusts that Dark Rangers (and other cool astronomers), call "lumpy darkness." The only dark-lane constellation visible from the northern hemisphere is called the Horse and Rider. See how there's a horse turned sideways with its four legs pointed horizontally to the right? Now imagine an exhausted native American warrior sleeping against his horse's neck as together they ride on through the night to warn that General Custer is coming.
When your guests gasp in awe at this image and ask "Was the Milky Way really that bright when you visited the Dark Ranger Observatory?" Please explain no and that this is a 15-minute long exposure capturing far more detail than the human eye ever could. Don't forget to add how you observed with your own eyes that the Milky Way is varying shades of grey and brown and that anybody else's art that shows blues, greens, or reds is faked -- merely jerking the color sliders around in their photo editing software. Because we the Dark Rangers provide an authentic telescope experience you can be certain our astrophotography is just as honest.
Andromeda Galaxy
Andromeda Galaxy is the closest independent galaxy to the Milky Way at only 2.5 million light years away. It is simultaneously the largest and most distant object any unaided human eye will ever see – unless you know somebody with exceptional good transportation. This means if your sky is dark enough, you don’t even need the assistance of a telescope to detect Andromeda. If you can find the constellation Cassiopeia which is almost always in the northern sky (while in the northern hemisphere) due to its circumpolar location (rotating close to the North Pole), you can find this gray disc-shaped smudge in a dark night sky. First note that Cassiopeia, the letter W or M looking constellation, depending on whether it’s above or below Polaris, is a little lopsided. Before we go looking for the galaxy you need to know some Hawaiian first. Make a fist but leave you thumb and little outstretched as far you can. This gesture is called the shaka and if you point it to the sky as far as you arm can reach, it measures 25 degrees, thumb-tip to “pinky”-tip. Say “Hang lose bruh!” if you need to, but now you are ready to find that galaxy. Start with the more symmetrical and deeper half of Cassiopeia and bisect that V-shape, drawing your line through the apex, continuing on for one hang-loose gesture. There you’ll find the little smudge of Andromeda.
That smudge is only the galaxy’s core. If you could see the whole galaxy, it would be six full moons in diameter across the sky. The “arms” that form the rest of Andromeda’s disc are too faint for the human eye. They are also invisible to most telescopes because they get hidden behind the glare of that bright core. This problem of contrast ratios is routinely experienced when driving on a dark highway (as they ALL should be). Nothing can be seen of an oncoming vehicle itself due to the brightness of their headlights shining in your eyes.
In a BIG telescope with a wide field of view, you have extra darkness on the margins of the eyepiece, creating a more gradual contrast, you can see the whole galaxy! Andromeda’s core is surrounded with two ringlets of galactic arms, recognizable by their central black ribbons of lumpy darkness. Normally, galactic arms take on a spiral pattern as they extend into the core. It’s assumed that Andromeda lost her figure-skater figure after having adsorbed another large galaxy or two. What’s known for certain, and nobody can do anything about it, is that she is coming for us next.
She is even bigger than our galaxy and we are on a convergent course with a closing velocity of ~180,000 miles per hour. Don't worry, Andromeda will never in your lifetime appear as big in the sky as it will in this art hanging on your wall. That's because even at that phenomenal speed, it will be 4 billion years before our galaxies start to merge -- plenty of time to amass a collection of Dark Ranger Telescope Astro Art.
Nebulae
Orion Star-birth Nebula
Few deep space objects are bright enough for human eyes to detect their true color even when using BIG telescopes. This leaves some neophytes to astronomy confused or even disappointed by the difference between what they see in pictures and what they see in our telescopes, which requires some explaining. Yet, the wispy-pale blue of the Orion Star-birth Nebula disappoints nobody, and it is almost self-explanatory. This immense space cloud, reminiscent of a pterodactyl, dragon, or some mythical flying creature, has a wingspan of 25 light years and soars through our galaxy some 1400 light years away. Here, newborn stars with their intense blue light are illuminating the cloud that gave them life, and also sculpting it with their stellar wind, powered by the fury of their nuclear fusion.
If the telescope is the second greatest tool of astronomy, math being the first, then astrophotography would be a close third. The Orion Nebula was a favorite subject of astronomy's first photographer, Andrew Ainslie Common. Using gelatin plate photography, he imaged the outer planets, their faint moons, and the Great Comet of 1881, but what won him the Royal Astronomical Society's gold medal in 1884 were his images of the Orion Nebula. Having perfected that early form of black and white photography, his BIG but nevertheless still backyard telescope, revealed more than any human eye had ever seen through Earth's largest research telescopes. Astrophotography has advanced the science of astronomy ever since.
Paradoxically, sometimes a human eye at an eyepiece can see more than astrophotography can reveal. Case in point is the Trapezium Star Cluster in the heart of the Orion Nebula. Almost every photograph taken shows an overexposed region without any detail where the flying creature's chest would be. The human eye is better at distinguishing a variety of different contrast ratios across the same view. When you get a perfect focus, you'll be able to see into that figurative chest cavity where sitting in a void of their own making, are 5 blazing bright newborn stars systems, all with companion stars and two being 5-star systems! That much energy not only overwhelms cameras, but their combined stellar wind will eventually clean out the entire nebula until only a star cluster remains. As a result of this stellar evolution, star-birth nebulae like the Orion nebula become star clusters like the Pleiades.
Until you attend the Dark Ranger Observatory in winter you won't get to see the original photons from Orion Nebula and its Trapezium Star Cluster, but you could own your own copy of this Dark Ranger Telescope Astro Art in the meantime.
Rosette Star-birth Nebula
Not everything in astronomy was named poorly. The only things this cosmic rose is missing is a stem, thorns, and leaves… But the color is good, right? However, if this nebula was gold in color as some astrophotographers color it, maybe we would have called it the “Glazed old-fashioned cake donut nebula”? And yes, roses come in yellow, but we don’t want you to be “in like” with astronomy. We want you to love astronomy!
Most nebulae are mostly brown, blue, or red. Research astronomers use filters to block those predominant colors and, if necessary, manipulate software saturation sliders to draw out the tiny amounts of yellow and green. The resulting rainbow of colors helps reveal details like the Bok Globules, which are the extra dense lumps of dust and gas from which newborn stars hatch. Of course, they are also visible in this authentically red image, you just have to study the photo a little more closely. Many astrophotographers, mimic this practice. Some might be hoping it lends scientific credibility to their work. Others probably just like making space as pretty as possible.
The Rosette Nebula is truly red, and yet at 5,000 light years away, the rate of photons that manage to land inside even a BIG telescope is so low that the red can only be accumulated enough to be revealed in long-exposure photography. Complicating matters, red is the hardest color for human eyes to detect, especially while in night-vision mode. Therefore, even when looking at this nebula through our biggest telescopes, it’s difficult to notice the contrast of dark gray against darker gray. Nobody would buy a framed print of a gray rose, so we present the authentic photography version rather than approximating the authentic human view.
If you think that’s pedantic, we are only getting started. Paradoxically, nebulae are only colorful from very far away. In fact, if you were inside a nebula, you would only see empty space. Even long exposure pictures would reveal nothing besides distant stars. Yet, stars in that night sky would be sharper and brighter than our view of space which is partially obscured by Earth’s super-dense nebula known as “our atmosphere”. In extreme contrast, space nebulae are as close to being nothing as anything in the Universe can be, and still be referred to as something. Where Earth’s invisible air has 10 quintillion (19 zeros) molecules per cubic centimeter, star-birth nebulae average below 10,000/cm3 which is the ultimate kind of transparent.
First consider the age-old question, ‘Why is the sky blue?’ The answer is that nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide and water-vapor (99.9% of our planets atmosphere) all have small enough kinetic diameters, that these molecules can normally only “scatter” (aka reflect in different directions) blue light. In particular water molecules, because they have the smallest sphere of influence in disrupting inbound photons from our Sun, are only barely blue. This is why small amounts of water, like a glassful’s worth are transparent, but huge amounts of H2O in the form of streams, lakes, and oceans are blue, if you are looking at them from a distance. Yes, reflection from a blue sky helps “blue” bodies of water, but they don’t turn white under cloudy sky, do they? Finally, swimmers among us will have noticed that when you are inside a body of water it’s back to being mostly transparent again? Yet when you hop out into the boat or on to the dock, that same water is mostly blue again. Magic? No. Science! When the scattered light come from a single direction, up in case of a lake, or down in the case of the sky, you can detect the accumulation of faint amount of color. But when the light is scatter from every direction, below the surface, or inside a room, there less color. So too are nebulae invisible from the inside, and only translucently red, blue, or brown when viewed from light years away where all photons are coming from the same tiny point in the sky.
Once you grasp this reality, Science Fiction will be further ruined for you. Star Trek spaceships flying through colorful nebulae is even more cartoonish than Crayola®-ing your astrophotography. Much to the Dark Rangers’ disappointment, even NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) seem to prioritize pretty over plausibility and consequently have filled their YouTube channels with many such misleading nebula fly-through animations. It would be excusable if these high-production-value animations came with a footnote explaining the true nature of these space clouds. That would leave a jumping-off point for curiosity and deeper understanding. Without that it more like science fiction than space science.
Who are the Dark Rangers to fault the two of our planet’s four leading space agencies? Science doesn’t really care how popular or well-funded you are, it only cares about whether your presentation of information is consistent with reality or not. It doesn’t even matter that at the time of this printing, Dark Ranger Telescope Tours remains the #1 ranked telescope experience on Earth – according to TripAdvisor.com That’s not necessarily an indication of scholarship, just a measure of how entertaining we are. But it does suggest that the difference might be that we don’t feel we have to compromise scientific accuracy to wow people.
Dumbbell Nebula
As far as we know supernovas, which super-giant starts explode are the most catastrophic events in the Universe. The Dumbbell Nebula is an example of the less horrific death that smaller stars experience. This type of star-death nebula is known as a "planetary nebula." The misnomer was a place-holder name assigned by astronomers of the 1700s who assumed that once future astronomers had a better understanding of what these mostly symmetrical, normally round-ish clouds really were, a less misleading name would arise. Nope! Science has understood the true nature of these objects for decades now and we still cling to the terrible name. Hang this art on your wall. Gaze upon from time to time, ponder what you know about this type of star-death nebulae and perhaps you will be inspired to come up the perfect better name that has evaded astronomers for so long. To get you started, here's the basic story.
As this star reached advanced age it could no longer accomplish basic nuclear fusion because it first exhausted its supply hydrogen fuel as it swelled to gigantic size and then collapsed closer to it original size. That collapse increased its temperature enough that it could survive by fusing helium -- the byproduct of hydrogen fusion. Unlike gigantic stars it never achieved a high enough temperature to atoms larger than helium so as it ballooned up diameter a 2nd time it instead began to break apart flinging its outer layers into deep space destroying everything that once orbited this star. The expanding debris field continues to glow as illuminated by infrared energy coming off star's hot core.
The future of the Dumbbell nebula is that eventually it's core will cool enough that it no longer emits light energy, thus becoming a white dwarf. Without that illumination the debris field will fade to the point of no longer being detectable.
At 1400 light years away (fairly close), and fully 3.2 light years in diameter (much bigger than most), it's not surprising that back in 1764, the Dumbbell was the first planetary nebulae to be discovered. It is distinct enough to be visible through our larger telescopes even on full moon nights.
On a dark night, the more sensitive eyes of children can begin to detect the blue green color of the debris field. Even it just appears grey to you, perhaps you would agree that "MRI of an Apple Core Nebula" or "Semi-transparent Marshmallow Wearing a Belt Nebula" would be a better name for this particular planetary nebula. But the higher priority is that we REALLY need to come up with a better name than planetary nebula to describe this type of star-death nebula.
Lagoon Star-birth Nebula
Though the Lagoon Star-birth Nebula can be seen by the unaided eye under dark sky conditions it wasn't documented until Giovanni Battista Hodierna, one of Galileo's biggest fans, studied it with his telescope in the 1650s. For the first 200 years it was know to science it was only unimaginatively referred numerically. It's not clear who coined the name but that person was clearly immune to pareidolia - seeing likenesses in nature or art, where they do not exist and/or even never intended (e.g. cloud watching). To see the black, jack-o-lantern grin beneath the narrowly-set, beady eyes and above the stubbly beard as a "lagoon", suggests somebody who can't see the purple-blue jinni [genie] for the coastline. Keep in mind these are the same people that can somehow see a Centaur brandishing a bow as the constellation named Sagittarius, where this nebula resides, when clearly Sagittarius is the teapot boiling over that creates the steam know as "the Milky Way."
The best thing about giving your visualization skills some exercise with space clouds, is that unlike Earth clouds, a nebula will look exactly the same for decades or even centuries -- many opportunities to convince others that what you see them are best ways to visual your favorite space clouds.
Maybe you don't have dark sky, or a big enough telescope to compensate for your light pollution (that you and your neighbors should really do something about) to get a good look at this star-birth nebula? Not to worry, nothing inspires some dark sky advocacy and/or justifies the purchase of a bigger telescope, like these conversation pieces known as Dark Ranger Telescope Astro Art.
Crab Star-death Nebula
Long before the invention of the telescope, on July 4th, 1054 CE a second Sun appeared in the sky. As documented by Chinese astronomers this star shined as bright as a full Moon but from a light source no bigger than other bright stars in the sky. This made it visible in the daytime for 23 days and the brightest thing in the sky for several months eventually disappearing to human eyes after 2 years and never seen again, until the debris field was rediscovered in 1731 by Telescope. We now know that this was a supernova event where a huge star ran out of fuel and exploded. Only 2 things can survive these most horrific types of star deaths, a neutron star, or a black hole. Stellar Black holes seem to only happen after the largest types of stars undergo core collapse. The core left behind when this star imploded, was a fast spinning neutron star known as a pulsar.
In astronomy visual texture is everything. To the untrained eye one cloudy object pretty much looks like the next. However, supernova star-death nebulae are easy to recognized by their stringy texture. These arcing filaments are the shock waves from the original explosion expanding outward, piling up the trace amounts of hydrogen found everywhere in the Universe, muck like a snowplow pushing snow. Though unlike snow hydrogen gas is only visible when it is extremely energized and riding a supernova shockwave will do that.
One of the reasons you might want to add this Dark Ranger Telescope Astro Art to your collection is as a reminder that no matter how bad of day you are having, it could be worse, your star could have exploded.
Star Clusters
The Double Star Cluster
7,000 light years away from Earth and about 500 light years away from each other, are the two clusters of stars known as The Double Star Cluster. In dark sky, the human eye can detect them as a brighter smudge standing out against the northern section of the Milky Way. In reality these two star clusters are not actually with us in Orion Arm of our galaxy, but instead shining through from the larger Perseus Arm where it warps around us at even a greater distance from the Milky Way’s core than we are. Confused? You aren’t the only one! Imagine a couple of fleas arguing about what kind of dog they are on. That’s been astronomers’ challenge in mapping the Milky Way, until the European Space Agency (ESA) sent their spacecraft Gaia to Earth’s Lagrange Point #2. Long before James Webb Space Telescope was sent to that same vantage point, Gaia has been there since 2014 precisely measuring and remeasuring the distance to over 1 billion stars to also calculate their exact motion. Thanks to Gaia we know more about the geography of our galaxy than most Americans do their own planet. The trouble with galactic mapping is that it’s a three-dimensional problem. Let’s keep it simple for now and revert to the ancient technique of pretending constellations are two-dimensional patterns. Now we say The Double Star Cluster halfway between the constellations Cassiopeia and Perseus, and find it there.
The stars that make up constellations are all of different ages and different distances and have no relation to one another except that we humans have connected these same stars with imaginary lines for millennia. All stars begin in star clusters. Like so many siblings, they are born in the same place, from huge clouds of dust and gas called star-birth nebulae. As more and more stars hatch from their cocoons, their combined outward flow of energy, known as stellar wind, pushes away the unused dust and gas revealing a cluster of stars.
As a star ages, it manufactures larger atoms by smashing together small ones. As that ratio changes from mostly hydrogen to increasing amounts helium, carbon, neon, oxygen, silicon, etc. the color of the light the star emits changes. From the color of stars astronomers can determine their relative age. New born stars are blue. They become just white when they in elementary school. Yellow stars like our Sun are in their high school and college years. Orange stars are middle aged. Red stars are senior citizens.
When those red stars run out of fuel they explode as supernovas, weakening the gravitational stability of the cluster causing their siblings on the edges to fall way into deep space. Eventually the entire star cluster falls apart. Those lucky few that wander into interesting alignments as viewed from Earth, get to be recognized as parts of constellations by us humans and apparently many species of migratory birds too.
Stars that are born big age much faster than their smaller siblings. The largest ones race through their entire life-cycle in only just a few million years, where smaller stars like our Sun live for billions of years. This is why the Double Star Cluster has a variety of colorful stars. Star color is subtle, like flavor is to La Croix. It's important to note that all stars are mostly white so what you should set your search image for is the extra tint of light present in addition to white. Astrophotography always reveals more information than the human eye can see through a telescope. This due to lots of biological reasons like, limited contrast ratios, too fast of refresh-rate for color rendition, etc. When showing off this colorful piece of Dark Ranger Telescope Astro Art to an ophthalmologist, they can elaborate. But if they get a little boring you can interrupt with what you've learned about stellar evolution.
The Pleiades Star Cluster
The Pleiades, has lots of names. It is also known as Seven Sisters, Subaru, Corn Maidens, Seven Gurus, and The Tiny Dipper. More remarkably the Pleiades are both a constellation and a star cluster. Star cluster and constellations are seldom the same thing. The stars that make up constellations are all of different ages and different distances and have no actual relation to one another except that we humans have connected these same stars with imaginary lines for millennia. The stars that form star clusters were all born at the same time and in the same place, from huge clouds of dust and gas called star-birth nebulae. Gravity concentrates and compress dust and gas into ever denser spheres until the hydrogen atoms begin to fuse, creating helium atoms, creating an outward current of energy, and subatomic goo. These chaotic cauldrons of nuclear fusion are known as stars. As more and more stars ignite their combined emissions of stellar wind blow the unused dust and gas deeper into space, clearing out the neighborhood, until only the star cluster is left behind.
Stargazing
Zero Gravity Chairs under the Milky Way
Some guests reflect that their favorite part of their telescope tour was just marveling at the marvelous views of the Milky Way from our Zero Gravity chairs. Our observatory is here because of how glorious the Milky Way is. And if we can serve our own mission well, the Milky Way will continue, at least here, to stretch from horizon to horizon. The goal is to convince the regional tourism economy is that light of the Milky Way is more valuable than lights shining into the sky or so overly bright the excess light bounces off the ground and into the sky. Obviously we haven't convinced all of our neighbors. The light pollution of Las Vegas (200 miles away) and St. George, Utah (85 miles away) erupt over our southwest horizon after our Sun has gone down. Far fewer lights, so easier to mute, but much closer to our observatory, the light pollution of Bryce Canyon City's is our bigger problem but also most immediate opportunity. All patrons of the Dark Ranger Observatory help send an economic message. Those who use this piece of Dark Ranger Telescope Astro Art as a conversation piece to inspire others to come and see our near pristine view of the Milky Way, are helping us make an even greater dark sky difference.
Ford and Arthur Under Orion
Starting in 1666, Isaac Newton experimented with prisms to understand how light could split into the rainbow spectrum and be recombined back into full-spectrum, white light. Newton also knew that rainbows were the bane of early telescopes. His hypothesis was that the design of lenses was to blame and he proved himself correct by building a new kind of telescope where mirrors did the majority of the work. His 1668 prototype telescope was only 7” long and used a 2” diameter bronze mirror, yet it nevertheless provided rainbow-free views and enough clarity to show four Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter. His second and third telescopes were slightly larger, but by 1792, Newton had proven his point and moved onto calculus and other pursuits.
To this day, the Newtonian Telescope is still favored by both professional and amateur astronomers alike. It blends the wide-field views of modern refractors (long and skinny, all-lenses telescopes) and high-power magnification of the short and girthy catadioptric telescopes where both mirrors and lenses are used. If you want one telescope that can do it all, get a Newtonian. The Hubble Space Telescope is a Newtonian, as is Ford, the telescope in the foreground.
All the telescopes of Dark Ranger Telescope Tours are named for characters and things from Douglas Adam's 5-part Trilogy, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Ford Prefect, a researcher for that wholly remarkable book, who, while visiting Earth, takes the name for a model of car misnamed high above its actual performance status, thinking that would help him blend in among the humans. Ford is the eponym for this 12" Skywatcher Newtonian Telescope, because like Ford, who becomes Arthur Dent's (whose namesake telescope is in the background) most trusted traveling companion across space and time, this Ford can also travel both far and wide. To put it another way, most telescopes can only look at one tiny spec of sky at a time, for example zooming in on the Orion Nebula, the middle smudge of the sword that hangs from Orion’s belt. After Ford has shown you that stunning view of stars being born, you can switch to low-power eyepiece and this same scope could show you an entire star cluster, which is the next step in stellar evolution. A classic star cluster is Pleiades Star Cluster – described in the mythology by many cultures as being maidens. Orion, for nefarious reasons, has already chased the group of young ladies out of the frame of this astro art. Nevertheless, Ford could be pointed in their direction and reveal that instead of “7 Sisters” visible to the unaided eye, there are actually over 50 bright blue and white sibling stars in the group.
We won’t sell you our best buddy Ford, don’t even ask. But we can sell you small, medium, and large versions of the astro art he posed for. What’s more you can also buy an amazing picture, in any of those three sizes of the Pleiades Star Cluster we used Ford to image.
Arthur & Processor under Taurus and Orion
All the telescopes at Dark Ranger Telescope Tours are named for characters and things from Douglas Adam's 5-part trilogy, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Our largest refractor and most expensive telescopes, Stellarvue's limited edition SVX180T (of which we have #42 -- of course) is named Arthur after Adam's anti-hero and main character, Arthur Dent. In the background is Prosser, a Celestron 11" Schmidtt Cassegrain Telescope (in our opinion still the most versatile type of telescope ever made). You don't have to be an Adams fan to hang this piece of telescope astro-art on your wall, but if do, you might at least want to be read chapter one so you can be ready for gleeful fan-person's conversations about bulldozers, Genghis Khan, and bypasses, your guests will want to engage you in.
Failing that, steer the conversation to the background subject matter in this beautiful image where the constellations overhead depict that battle between Orion and his father Zeus, in the bull-form of Taurus, who are fighting for "non-consent access" to the Pleiades maidens. The Pleiades are already out of frame, running westward toward the protection of Hera, Zeus's wife, Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt, Athena, Goddess of War.
Not familiar with that story either? Have you been to the Dark Ranger Observatory before? Or just not during our winter season?
Constellations
Ursa Major
Ursa Major, the Great Bear, as drawn by northern American Indian tribes, depicts a mother grizzly bear standing on her hind legs. Hang her on your wall to guard your home or office (aka den?) and you will never visualize "The Big Dipper" in the night sky quite the same way again.