A great astronomy enthusiast from Havre-Saint-Pierre has achieved a feat: photographing the Giant Squid, a nebula located more than 2,300 light years from Earth.
It is an old star at the end of its life which ejects the gas which forms this nebula
explains Édith Tanguay at the microphone of Hello CoastTHURSDAY.
Observing the Giant Squid Planetary Nebula is not within everyone’s reach. To be able to take his portrait, Édith Tanguay has, in her backyard, a fairly sophisticated installation for taking photos of the deep sky.
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Edith Tanguay’s backyard is a veritable open-air laboratory.
Photo: Courtesy of Édith Tanguay
This Giant Squid is a special case, because it is observable through another red-colored nebula, composed of hydrogen.
Since October, Édith Tanguay has accumulated hours of observations and photographs. By taking photo sequences every evening, using 10-minute long exposure shots, she captured 37 hours of images.
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Édith Tanguay has equipped herself with a large array of telescopes: she has a 9.25, an 80 mm and a solar telescope.
Photo: Courtesy Édith Tanguay
It was on the night of December 26 that the taking of images finally ended. If the weather had been on my side, I would have continued to obtain even more precision
exclaims Édith Tanguay, insatiable.
Its secret, for spending long periods of sitting in the cold, lies in the three Ps: passion, patience and perseverance.
To make the celestial body appear on the screen, she processed the image using software. It’s quite an achievement for the North Coast who knew nothing about astrophotography four years ago.
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The cigar galaxy.
Photo: Courtesy Edith Tanguay
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The Tadpole Nebula is a huge cloud of hydrogen located in the constellation Coachman.
Photo: Courtesy Édith Tanguay
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Stephan’s Quintet is a group of galaxies 270 million light years away.
Photo: Courtesy Édith Tanguay
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The moon.
Photo: Courtesy Édith Tanguay
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Circumpolar star trails captured by a long exposure.
Photo: Courtesy Édith Tanguay
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Sunspots.
Photo: Courtesy Édith Tanguay
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Plasma bubbles form on the surface of the sun and stretch its magnetic field like a rubber band that eventually breaks.
Photo: Courtesy Édith Tanguay
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Plasma bubbles form on the surface of the sun and stretch its magnetic field like a rubber band that eventually breaks.
Photo: Courtesy Édith Tanguay
The cigar galaxy.
Photo: Courtesy Edith Tanguay
Photo album: Édith Tanguay
Indeed, Édith Tanguay looked at her first telescope in 1993, armed with a star finder, but it was the pandemic that gave her the opportunity to learn about astrophotography.
She learned about her new passion thanks to tutorials and the community of amateur astronomers on the web.
A chance there is that
she says, because even though the region’s villages enjoy starry skies free of light pollution, there are few astronomy clubs to satisfy the curiosity of amateurs.
This is why Édith Tanguay, a rare woman in her community, is working to change things. She wishes to launch initiatives, in particular that of an astrobiblio: telescopes available to be borrowed from the municipal library.
To share the celestial phenomena that few people have the chance to observe, she even organized an exhibition in her own backyard last summer. His neighbors could admire his photos and observe the plasma ejections from the sun, broadcast live on a screen thanks to his solar telescope.
And to start the year 2025, she is making astronomical resolutions: photographing the planets Jupiter, Mars and Saturn.
