Altair

When I went observing in Armenia in 1992, Armenia and Azerbaijan were fighting.    Just south of the observatory was the border between Armenia and the Azeri exclave of Nakhchivan.  Just to the east of the observatory was the exclave of the exclave, the village of Karki that had been captured by Armenia just a couple of months earlier in May 1992.   Anyhow, one night mortars knocked out the power to the telescopes, cutting off the night's observing.   I had been working through the day, so I was already asleep and I slept through the excitement.

The previous star I mentioned was Vega.  Just across the Milky Way lies α Aquilae or Altair.   Altair like Vega is a bright blue star.  In fact it is almost a twin of Vega down to its rapid spin.   The biggest difference is that we are looking at the equator of Altair more or less (while we see Vega's pole), so where Vega was brighter from our point of view than average, Altair is fainter.  Altair is one of the few stars for which we have made a direct image using optical interferometers.  It is also by far the smallest in angular size.  Not surprisingly Altair is quite squished, as Vega is, but in the case of Altair our viewpoint is favourable actually to see the distortion.  For Vega we can only infer the shape.

Here is a photo of the Eagle (Aquila) from tonight with Altair as the eye of the bird near the top of the image (just to the left of the word "Altair").  It is a 30-second exposure with an five-year-old digital camera.

Aquila (the Eagle) with Altair labeled

Here is a photo of Jupiter and the Galilean moons (from left to right: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto) taken a couple of minutes earlier.  The planet Uranus is the blue stripe in top-left corner.

Jupiter and the Galilean Satellites with Uranus at Top Left