Electronically Assisted Astronomy

At last night's astronomy meeting, Steve, in the center of the photo, who is one of our members did a demonstration of something called "Electronic Assisted Astronomy."  This involves connecting a small specialized camera to the back of a small telescope, and then connecting it to a computer and making 60 exposures over 10 minutes.  What happens is that a celestial object like a faint galaxy, which appears to the human eye like a very faint gray fuzzy thing, suddenly shows color and is brighter on the computer screen.  It's like magic, and it lets you do observing in the light-polluted skies of Long Island.

This is a photograph of the screen of Steve's computer, showing in the center of the sky image, a faint galaxy, NGC 2903 in the constellation Leo, the lion.