Andy Steere's
"THE SUMMER TRIANGLE"
Photo Page
The "Summer Triangle" is probably the best known of all asterisms that are visible in the North American summer (June-August). The triangle is formed by the bright stars Vega in Lyra, Deneb in Cygnus, and Altair in Aquila. Our own milky-way galaxy is very bright through this section of sky.
My lack of a decent wide angle lens has always prevented me from grabbing a picture of this. This time, I borrowed a friend's 24mm f/2.8 Nikon lens and went out with the idea to capture this asterism and the rest of the summer milky way.
This photo was taken on the night of June 25th, 1996. Actually, very early morning of the 26th at ~3:00am. The moon was very bright and didn't set until 2am... which was ok because a thick bank of clouds covered the whole sky till that time (despite the weatherman telling me it was clear!).
I took several shots of this asterism, ranging in exposures from 2 to 20 minutes, but the best looking one was a 7.5 minute shot at f/2.8.
This image is also available in a high-res version (1024x783x24bit JPG 195k), if you have the hardware to handle it.
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Last modified on 03/25/2001
