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Not Our Astrophotography - Blog Posts
Article of the Day!
“Dust in the Stellar Wind: A Cosmological Primer” by Pat Brennan
Picture of the Day!
The Pencil Nebula, 800 light-years away and nearly 5 light-years long, is a small part of the Vela supernova remnant. This supernova shock wave travels through space at over 500,000 kilometers per hour!
Image credit: Helge Buesing
Picture of the Day!
This image is composed of consecutive shots taken near Llers in Spain’s Girona province, showing Comet Pons-Brooks. After passing closest to the Sun, it is now fading as it moves into the southern skies toward the outer Solar System.
Image credit: Juan Carlos Casado
Video of the Day!
Hubble has discovered that Jupiter’s red spot - a storm larger than Earth - is wobbling!
Picture of the Day!
NGC 6188 Nebula is also known as the Firebird Nebula. It is an emission nebula located near the edge of a vast, dark molecular cloud in the southern constellation Ara, approximately 4,000 light-years from Earth.
Video of the Day!
NASA’s next mission to the Moon will carry LEXI (the Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager), an instrument which will provide the first-ever global view of the magnetic field that shields Earth from solar radiation!
Article of the Day!
"How Gravity Warps Light" from NASA Universe Web Team
Picture of the Day!
Also referred to as Messier 31, the Andromeda Galaxy is the nearest major neighbor to the Milky Way. It is roughly twice the size of our galaxy and lies approximately 2.5 million light-years away.
Video of the Day!
An artist’s rendering shows us what happens when a star gets a little too close to a massive black hole!
Picture of the Day!
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has captured a stunning image of the iconic Pillars of Creation, a region where new stars are being born within thick clouds of gas and dust. The three-dimensional pillars resemble towering rock formations, yet they are much more porous. Composed of cool interstellar gas and dust, they sometimes appear semi-transparent in near-infrared light.
Video of the Day!
NASA's Parker Solar Probe broke a record! It got within 3.8 million miles of the Sun's surface - closer than any human-made object before! Not only that, it's the fastest human-made object, reaching a speed of about 435,000 mph.
Astronomy Word of the Day
The Magellanic Clouds are two small, irregular dwarf galaxies outside of the Milky Way. These two galaxies are visible in the skies of the southern hemisphere, close to the South Celestial Pole, so they don't appear to set!
Image: https://aaa.org/.../01/southern-skies-the-magellanic-clouds/
So gorgeous! Here's the NASA article to go with the pic.
Christmas Tree Cluster
NASA
Today's word of the day is "earthshine" which is when the Earth reflects the Sun's light so that it makes the dark side of the moon glow! Super cool.
Image credit: Abhijit Juvekar
Dragons fighting in space?
Just kidding. These "dragons" are made up of gas and dust in the emission nebula NGC 6188, which is 4000 lightyears away in the Ara constellation!
Image by: Carlos Taylor
Happy Halloween, everyone!
2024 October 27
LDN 43: The Cosmic Bat Nebula Credit & Copyright: Mark Hanson and Mike Selby; Text: Michelle Thaller (NASA’s GSFC)
Explanation: What is the most spook-tacular nebula in the galaxy? One contender is LDN 43, which bears an astonishing resemblance to a vast cosmic bat flying amongst the stars on a dark Halloween night. Located about 1400 light years away in the constellation Ophiuchus, this molecular cloud is dense enough to block light not only from background stars, but from wisps of gas lit up by the nearby reflection nebula LBN 7. Far from being a harbinger of death, this 12-light year-long filament of gas and dust is actually a stellar nursery. Glowing with eerie light, the bat is lit up from inside by dense gaseous knots that have just formed young stars.
∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap241027.html
Happy Monday!
Today's picture of the day was taken by Matthew Dominick from the ISS! The image shows a giant jet lightning, which is a new discovery (only 23 years!) and associated with thunderstorms. While regular lightning travels between the ground and the clouds, giant jet lightning bursts upwards.
Did you know that there are 5 known dwarf planets in our solar system? Everyone knows Pluto, but there is also Ceres, Haumea, Makemake and Eris.
Info from: https://www.iau.org/public/themes/pluto/#n6
Happy Wednesday! It's time for an astronomy word of the day!
Asterism - an asterism is any prominent star pattern that isn’t a whole constellation, such as the Northern Cross or the Big Dipper (pictured below)
Definition from: https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-terms/ Image from: https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/a-new-way-to-see-the-big-dipper/
Astronomy Picture of the Day from NASA
Image taken by Alexandros Maragos
There was a supermoon yesterday (August 19th), which means that the moon appears larger and brighter than usual! Alexandros Maragos took this image as the blue supermoon was approaching its peak at the Temple of Poseidon in Greece. What an incredible image!
2024 August 10
The Light, Dark, and Dusty Trifid Image Credit & Copyright: Robert Edelmaier and Gabriele Gegenbauer
Explanation: Messier 20, popularly known as the Trifid Nebula, lies about 5,000 light-years away toward the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. A star forming region in the plane of our galaxy, the Trifid does illustrate three different types of astronomical nebulae; red emission nebulae dominated by light from hydrogen atoms, blue reflection nebulae produced by dust reflecting starlight, and dark nebulae where dense dust clouds appear in silhouette. The reddish emission region, roughly separated into three parts by obscuring dust lanes, is what lends the Trifid its popular name. The cosmic cloud complex is over 40 light-years across and would cover the area of a full moon on planet Earth’s sky. But the Trifid Nebula is too faint to be seen by the unaided eye. Over 75 hours of image data captured under dark night skies was used to create this stunning telescopic view.
∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240810.html
According to this article on NASA's website, Eta Carinae, a star in the Keyhole Nebula, went through an interesting outburst about 170 years ago, which made it one of the brightest stars in the southern sky. Check it out!
Wow - the visible star at the center of the planetary nebula is an A-type giant star. It's the companion of the white dwarf which spawned the nebula itself. (Loved the pic so much I had to read about the object a little).
NGC 1514 // Marc Fischer
Every February 2, we wonder if Punxsutawney Phil will see his shadow.
In Saturn’s case, astronomers know some of Saturn’s moons will cast shadows across the planet’s iconic rings every 15 years. This effect only occurs when the planet’s rings are perpendicular to the Sun. The next time this will happen is in May 2025.
Watch as four of Saturn’s moons orbit the planet, based on images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope over a 9.5-hour span in 1995. Enceladus is first and Mimas is close behind. Both of these moons cast small shadows on Saturn, but among the two, only Enceladus’ shadow cuts across the rings. Dione follows next and casts a long shadow across the planet’s rings. About 12 seconds in, the moon Tethys moves swiftly behind the planet toward the right.
Credit: NASA/ESA/STScI.
2024 February 4
The Cone Nebula from Hubble Image Credit: Hubble Legacy Archive, NASA, ESA - Processing & Licence: Judy Schmidt
Explanation: Stars are forming in the gigantic dust pillar called the Cone Nebula. Cones, pillars, and majestic flowing shapes abound in stellar nurseries where natal clouds of gas and dust are buffeted by energetic winds from newborn stars. The Cone Nebula, a well-known example, lies within the bright galactic star-forming region NGC 2264. The Cone was captured in unprecedented detail in this close-up composite of several observations from the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. While the Cone Nebula, about 2,500 light-years away in Monoceros, is around 7 light-years long, the region pictured here surrounding the cone’s blunted head is a mere 2.5 light-years across. In our neck of the galaxy that distance is just over half way from our Sun to its nearest stellar neighbors in the Alpha Centauri star system. The massive star NGC 2264 IRS, seen by Hubble’s infrared camera in 1997, is the likely source of the wind sculpting the Cone Nebula and lies off the top of the image. The Cone Nebula’s reddish veil is produced by dust and glowing hydrogen gas.
∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240204.html
Wonderous strange! This unusual arrangement in the sky was one of only 100 known polar-ring galaxies when it was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1999. Officially known to astronomers as NGC 4650A, the polar-rings may be the result of two galaxies colliding. Gas from the smaller galaxy would have been stripped off and captured by the larger galaxy, forming a new ring of dust, gas, and stars, which orbit the inner galaxy almost at right angles to the old disk. In addition to learning about galaxy interaction, astronomers use polar-ring galaxies like this to study dark matter, which does not emit light or interact with normal matter (except through gravity), making it difficult to understand. Both the old, rotating disk and the dark matter surrounding this galaxy pull on its polar ring. The alignment of the ring along the pole of the inner disk's rotation allows scientists to probe this combination of tugs and thus the distribution of dark matter. Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI. ALT TEXT: Two galaxies appear to intersect at right angles. Vertically there is a bright column of dust and stars, and horizontally there is a smaller hazy yellow band, brighter at its center, with no discernable stars. In the space around and behind the intersecting forms are smaller stars and distant galaxies colored yellow and red.
Cosmic fireworks ahead! This dramatically colorful image shows MACS J0717, one of the most complex and distorted galaxy clusters known. It was formed by the collision of four smaller galaxy clusters. A visible-light image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows hundreds of galaxies, both within the cluster and throughout the background, and myriad foreground stars. A pink overlay represents radio data from the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, which traces enormous shock waves and turbulence. The diffuse emission in blue, from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, highlights gas with temperatures of millions of degrees. Credit: NASA, ESA, CXC, NRAO/AUI/NSF, STScI, and R. van Weeren (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics); NASA, ESA, J. Lotz (STScI), and the Hubble Frontier Fields team. ALT TEXT: Hundreds of small galaxies of various shapes on the black background of space. They are concentrated near the center of the image. Dramatic pink ribbons form a curving L shape near the center. Below them, a linear pink feature with a blue blob in the middle extends from upper left to lower right. Diffuse blue light fills much of the field of view and is brightest just to the right of the pink ribbons.
Rosette Nebula by space.by.jase
Dusty regions like these are often the places where stars form. In fact, there are two notable stars—V633 (top left of center) and V376 Cassiopeiae (bottom left)—in this image from the Hubble Space Telescope.
These stars have yet to start fusing hydrogen in their cores, and continue to accumulate mass. As they do this, much of the material they ingest gets shot back out as energetic jets. For these young stars, these jets can contain as much mass as Earth has.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA; Gilles Chapdelaine.
ALT TEXT: A protostar in the process of forming. Above the center, at 11 o’clock, is a bright, white star. To the bottom right of this star is a large cavity, surrounded by dark brown gas and dust. This surrounding dust fills the image with the exception of another small cavity toward the bottom left. At about 4 o’clock in this cavity, there is another bright, white star. Smaller white stars are spread throughout the image.
Beautiful!
2023 September 26
IC 4592: The Blue Horsehead Reflection Nebula Image Credit & Copyright: Antoine & Dalia Grelin
Explanation: Do you see the horse’s head? What you are seeing is not the famous Horsehead nebula toward Orion, but rather a fainter nebula that only takes on a familiar form with deeper imaging. The main part of the here-imaged molecular cloud complex is reflection nebula IC 4592. Reflection nebulas are made up of very fine dust that normally appears dark but can look quite blue when reflecting the visible light of energetic nearby stars. In this case, the source of much of the reflected light is a star at the eye of the horse. That star is part of Nu Scorpii, one of the brighter star systems toward the constellation of the Scorpion (Scorpius). A second reflection nebula dubbed IC 4601 is visible surrounding two stars above and to the right of the image center.
∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230926.html