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The animals were interesting. The Venus transit was impressive. But the most spectacular sights were found in the southern night sky itself. We were located away from light and air pollution, making the night sky very dark. Many of the best astronomical sights can only be seen in the southern hemisphere. First and foremost is the Milky Way, which is composed of the millions of stars in our galaxy seen from our location within the galaxy. We took this photo of the Milky Way around the constellation Crux (the Southern Cross). The photo is a 12-minute exposure on Kodak E200 slide film using a 35 mm camera with a 24 mm wide angle lens mounted on our telescope tracking setup. The dark "hole" in the center is caused by a cloud of relatively cold gas blocking some of the Milky Way's light.

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(Main content: 7/4/2004.  Page made: 4/21/2016.)