Odd stars

[PaulR1]

Anyone shed some light on whats going on here please ?

Just finished some more hours on the pacman nebula , thought I would wizz over to M45 for a nose and I see this .

Checked for condensation , all seems clear.

thanks

[Ruud]

Maybe tiny droplets of dew. Anyway, it's amazing!

[Sunshine]

Looks like dew to me.

[cletrac1922]

Paul

Have seen same effect with the moon

Moon had what appeared to be a halo

Caused by ice crystals in the upper atmosphere

http://www.astropixels.com/blog/2012/12/moon-halo/

John

[ollypenrice]

Did you look at the chip window? Or could it have been the sky hazing over?

Olly

[Ruud]

They may be Bottlinger's rings

These are elliptical rings assumed to be caused by very flat pyramidal ice crystals floating horizontally in the air.

Their long axis is perpendicular to the horizon and they have (almost?) no colour in the images I found. These have a lot of colour.

Were the rings standing on edge with respect to the horizon? If so, you may have taken a rather unique image of colourful Bottliger's rings.

[PaulR1]

3 hours ago, Ruud said:

They may be Bottlinger's rings

These are elliptical rings assumed to be caused by very flat pyramidal ice crystals floating horizontally in the air.

Their long axis is perpendicular to the horizon and they have (almost?) no colour in the images I found. These have a lot of colour.

Were the rings standing on edge with respect to the horizon? If so, you may have taken a rather unique image of colourful Bottliger's rings.

Sadly not , as this showed up on another bright star as well , Vega I think it was.

I didnt check the camera sensor , maybe this is dew on the secondary mirror . Will have to investigate further , wonder if the missus will miss her yoga mat ?

[toxic]

it looks like sky haze as Olly mentioned and a little out of focus but still looks cool though

[PaulR1]

1 hour ago, toxic said:

it looks like sky haze as Olly mentioned and a little out of focus but still looks cool though

Could be I guess , yeah looks like the focus has drifted a little thats just one raw though ,think 180s . When i saw it I didnt go any further as it was like 2 am ish .

 

[geordie85]

My money is on dew. 

[Ruud]

This post shows the same kind of halos

They are ellipses with their major and minor axes aligned with the diffraction spikes. The sizes of the ellipses increases linearly (?) with the wavelength of the light. In Paul's image the major and minor axis have a ration of 1.25 : 1. In Galen's the same ratio is about 1.2 : 1.

[Charic]

It's good whatever caused it.
I doubt some folk could even replicate an image like this using their artistic licence.

[PaulR1]

Many thanks guys for the input , was imaging last night . The winner is :  Dew

Saw the same thing last night , checked the secondary mirror what wasnt really visible by eye i could feel with my finger ( just checked the side of it )

Maybe I do some Astro art lol .

Now making a dew shield