Sam's Astrophtography Thread

[YosemiteSam]

No news on the asteroid that is now in orbit around earth? Can imagine if it actually hit the earth 100 years ago, it is 300ft X 120 ft. that would have been game over for a lot of people.

It's been orbiting the Earth for at least 100 years and is expected to continue on for centuries. They just didn't spot it until recently due to it's relatively small size and at 9 million miles distance. It's in no danger of impacting Earth as it's orbit is over 9 million miles from Earth at it's closest.

 

[YosemiteSam]

VLT (Very Large Telescope) Snaps An Exotic Exoplanet “First”

Astronomers hunt for planets orbiting other stars (exoplanets) using a variety of methods. One successful method is direct imaging; this is particularly effective for planets on wide orbits around young stars, because the light from the planet is not overwhelmed by light from the host star and is thus easier to spot.

This image demonstrates this technique. It shows a T-Tauri star named CVSO 30, located approximately 1200 light-years away from Earth in the 25 Orionis group (slightly northwest of Orion’s famous Belt). In 2012, astronomers found that CVSO 30 hosted one exoplanet (CVSO 30b) using a detection method known as transit photometry, where the light from a star observably dips as a planet travels in front of it. Now, astronomers have gone back to look at the system using a number of telescopes. The study combines observations obtained with the ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, and the Calar Alto Observatory facilities in Spain.

Using the data astronomers have imaged what is likely to be a second planet! To produce the image, astronomers exploited the astrometry provided by VLT’s NACO and SINFONI instruments.

This new exoplanet, named CVSO 30c, is the small dot to the upper left of the frame (the large blob is the star itself). While the previously-detected planet, CVSO 30b, orbits very close to the star, whirling around CVSO 30 in just under 11 hours at an orbital distance of 0.008 au, CVSO 30c orbits significantly further out, at a distance of 660 au, taking a staggering 27 000 years to complete a single orbit. (For reference, the planet Mercury orbits the Sun at an average distance of 0.39 au, while Neptune sits at just over 30 au.)

If it is confirmed that CVSO 30c orbits CVSO 30, this would be the first star system to host both a close-in exoplanet detected by the transit method and a far-out exoplanet detected by direct imaging. Astronomers are still exploring how such an exotic system came to form in such a short timeframe, as the star is only 2.5 million years old; it is possible that the two planets interacted at some point in the past, scattering off one another and settling in their current extreme orbits.

 

[YosemiteSam]

NGC 6814: Grand Design Spiral Galaxy from Hubble
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA; Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt (Geckzilla)

Explanation: In the center of this serene stellar swirl is likely a harrowing black-hole beast. The surrounding swirl sweeps around billions of stars which are highlighted by the brightest and bluest. The breadth and beauty of the display give the swirl the designation of a grand design spiral galaxy. The central beast shows evidence that it is a supermassive black hole about 10 million times the mass of our Sun. This ferocious creature devours stars and gas and is surrounded by a spinning moat of hot plasma that emits blasts of X-rays. The central violent activity gives it the designation of a Seyfert galaxy. Together, this beauty and beast are cataloged as NGC 6814 and have been appearing together toward the constellation of the Eagle (Aquila) for roughly the past billion years.

 

[YosemiteSam]

Asperatus Clouds Over New Zealand
Image Credit & Copyright: Witta Priester

Explanation: What kind of clouds are these? Although their cause is presently unknown, such unusual atmospheric structures, as menacing as they might seem, do not appear to be harbingers of meteorological doom. Known informally as Undulatus asperatus clouds, they can be stunning in appearance, unusual in occurrence, are relatively unstudied, and have even been suggested as a new type of cloud. Whereas most low cloud decks are flat bottomed, asperatus clouds appear to have significant vertical structure underneath. Speculation therefore holds that asperatus clouds might be related to lenticular clouds that form near mountains, or mammatus clouds associated with thunderstorms, or perhaps a foehn wind -- a type of dry downward wind that flows off mountains. Such a wind called the Canterbury arch streams toward the east coast of New Zealand's South Island. The featured imageHanmer Springs in Canterbury, New Zealand, in 2005, shows great detail partly because sunlight illuminates the undulating clouds from the side.

 

[YosemiteSam]

Close Comet and Large Magellanic Cloud
Image Credit & Copyright: Justin Tilbrook (Astronomical Society of South Australia)

Explanation: Sporting a surprisingly bright, lovely green coma Comet 252P/Linear poses next to the Large Magellanic Cloud in this southern skyscape. The stack of telephoto exposures was captured on March 16 from Penwortham, South Australia. Recognized as a Jupiter family periodic comet, 252P/Linear will come close to our fair planet on March 21, passing a mere 5.3 million kilometers away. That's about 14 times the Earth-Moon distance. In fact, it is one of two comets that will make remarkably close approaches in the next few days as a much fainter Comet Pan-STARRS (P/2016 BA14) comes within 3.5 million kilometers (9 times the Earth-Moon distance) on March 22. The two have extremely similarorbits, suggesting they may have originally been part of the same comet. Sweeping quickly across the sky because of their proximity to Earth, both comets will soon move into northern skies.

 

[Seven]

NGC 6814: Grand Design Spiral Galaxy from Hubble
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA; Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt (Geckzilla)
Explanation: In the center of this serene stellar swirl is likely a harrowing black-hole beast. The surrounding swirl sweeps around billions of stars which are highlighted by the brightest and bluest. The breadth and beauty of the display give the swirl the designation of a grand design spiral galaxy. The central beast shows evidence that it is a supermassive black hole about 10 million times the mass of our Sun. This ferocious creature devours stars and gas and is surrounded by a spinning moat of hot plasma that emits blasts of X-rays. The central violent activity gives it the designation of a Seyfert galaxy. Together, this beauty and beast are cataloged as NGC 6814 and have been appearing together toward the constellation of the Eagle (Aquila) for roughly the past billion years.

I cannot wrap my tiny little mind around just how friggin' huge the universe is...........billions of stars?

If I had a nickle...............

 

[YosemiteSam]

I cannot wrap my tiny little mind around just how friggin' huge the universe is...........billions of stars?

If I had a nickle...............

Billions of stars isn't even close to how many stars in the universe. That is talking about just that one galaxy, not the universe as a whole. There are billions of stars in a galaxy, there are trillions of galaxies!

Galaxy observations
It's easier to count stars when they are inside galaxies, since that's where they tend to cluster. To even begin to estimate the number of stars, then you would need to estimate the number of galaxies and come up with some sort of an average.

Some estimates peg the Milky Way's star mass as having 100 billion "solar masses," or 100 billion times the mass of the sun. Averaging out the types of stars within our galaxy, this would produce an answer of about 100 billion stars in the galaxy. This is subject to change, however, depending on how many stars are bigger and smaller than our own sun. Also, other estimates say the Milky Way could have 200 billion stars or more.

The number of galaxies is an astonishing number, however, as shown by some imaging experiments performed by the Hubble Space Telescope. Several times over the years, the telescope has pointed a detector at a tiny spot in the sky to count galaxies, performing the work again after the telescope was upgraded by astronauts during the shuttle era.

A 1995 exposure of a small spot in Ursa Major revealed about 3,000 faint galaxies. In 2003-4, using upgraded instruments, scientists looked at a smaller spot in the constellation Fornax and found 10,000 galaxies. An even more detailed investigation in Fornax in 2012, with even better instruments, showed about 5,500 galaxies.

Kornreich used a very rough estimate of 10 trillion galaxies in the universe. Multiplying that by the Milky Way's estimated 100 billion stars results in a large number indeed: 100 octillion stars, or 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars, or a "1" with 29 zeros after it. Kornreich emphasized that number is likely a gross underestimation, as more detailed looks at the universe will show even more galaxies.

 

[YosemiteSam]

Sagittarius Sunflowers
Image Credit & Copyright: Andrew Campbell

Explanation: These three bright nebulae are often featured in telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius and the crowded starfields of the central Milky Way. In fact, 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged two of them; M8, the large nebula left of center, and colorful M20 near the bottom of the frame The third, NGC 6559, is right of M8, separated from the larger nebula by dark dust lanes. All three are stellar nurseries about five thousand light-years or so distant. The expansive M8, over a hundred light-years across, is also known as the Lagoon Nebula. M20's popular moniker is the Trifid. In the composite image, narrowband data records ionized hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur atoms radiating at visible wavelengths. The mapping of colors and range of brightness used to compose this cosmic still life were inspired by Van Gogh's famous Sunflowers. Just right of the Trifid one of Messier's open star clusters, M21, is also included on the telescopic canvas.

 

[YosemiteSam]

Jupiter's Clouds from New Horizons
Image Credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins U. APL, SWRI

Explanation: The New Horizons spacecraft took some stunning images of Jupiter on its way out to Pluto. Famous for its Great Red Spot, Jupiter is also known for its regular, equatorial cloud bands, visible through even modest sized telescopes. The featured image, horizontally compressed, was taken in 2007 near Jupiter's terminator and shows the Jovian giant's wide diversity of cloud patterns. On the far left are clouds closest to Jupiter's South Pole. Here turbulent whirlpools and swirls are seen in a dark region, dubbed a belt, that rings the planet. Even light colored regions, called zones, show tremendous structure, complete with complex wave patterns. The energy that drives these waves surely comes from below. New Horizons is the fastest space probe ever launched, has successfully complete its main flyby of Pluto in 2015, and is now heading further out and on track to flyby Kuiper belt object 2014 MU69 in 2019. In the near term, many space enthusiasts excitedly await Juno's arrival at Jupiter next Monday.

 

[YosemiteSam]

Northern Lights above Lofoten
Image Credit & Copyright: Alex Conu

Explanation: The Aurora Borealis or northern lights are familiar visitors to night skies above the village of Reine in the Lofoten Islands, Norway, planet Earth. In this scene, captured from a mountaintop camp site, the auroral curtains do seem to create an eerie tension with the coastal lights though. A modern perspective on the world at night, the stunning image was chosen as the over all winner in The World at Night's 2016 International Earth and Sky Photo Contest. Selections were made from over 900 entries highlighting the beauty of the night sky and its battle with light pollution.

 

[YosemiteSam]

Sculptor Galaxy NGC 134
Image Credit & Copyright: CHART32 Team, Processing - Volker Wendel

Explanation: NGC 134 is probably not the best known spiral galaxy in the constellation Sculptor. Still, the tantalizing island universe is a clearly a telescopic treasure in southern skies. It shares a bright core, clumpy dust lanes, and loosely wrapped spiral arms with spiky foreground stars of the Milky Way and the more diminutive galaxy NGC 131 in this sharp cosmic vista. From a distance of about 60 million light-years, NGC 134 is seen tilted nearly edge-on. It spans some 150,000 light-years, making it even larger than our own Milky Way galaxy. NGC 134's warped disk and faint extensions give the appearance of past gravitational interactions with neighboring galaxies. Like the much closer and brighter Sculptor galaxy NGC 253, tendrils of dust appear to rise from a galactic disk sprinkled with blue star clusters and pinkish star forming regions.

 

[YosemiteSam]

A Phoenix Aurora over Iceland
Image Credit & Copyright: Hallgrimur P. Helgason; Rollover Annotation: Judy Schmidt

Explanation: All of the other aurora watchers had gone home. By 3:30 am in Iceland, on a quiet night last September, much of that night's auroras had died down. Suddenly though, a new burst of particles streamed down from space, lighting up the Earth's atmosphere once again. This time, unexpectedly, pareidoliacally, they created an amazing shape reminiscent of a giant phoenix. With camera equipment at the ready, two quick sky images were taken, followed immediately by a third of the land. The mountain in the background is Helgafell, while the small foreground river is called Kaldá, both located about 30 kilometers north of Iceland's capital Reykjavik. Seasoned skywatchers will note that just above the mountain, toward the left, is the constellation of Orion, while the Pleiades star cluster is also visible just above the frame center. The new aurora lasted only a minute and would be gone forever -- possibly dismissed as an embellished aberration -- were it not captured in the featured, digitally-composed, image mosaic.

 

[YosemiteSam]

Juno Approaching Jupiter
Image Credit: NASA, JPL, Juno Mission

Explanation: Approaching over the north pole after nearly a five-year journey, Juno enjoys a perspective on Jupiter not often seen, even by spacecraft from Earth that usually swing by closer to Jupiter's equator. Looking down toward the ruling gas giant from a distance of 10.9 million kilometers, the spacecraft's JunoCam captured this image with Jupiter's nightside and orbiting entourage of four large Galilean moons on June 21. JunoCam is intended to provide close-up views of the gas giant's cloudy zoned and belted atmosphere and on July 4 (July 5 UT) Juno is set to burn its main engine to slow down and be captured into its own orbit. If all goes well, it will be the first spacecraft to orbit the poles of Jupiter, skimming to within 5,000 kilometers of the Jovian cloud tops during the 20 month mission.

 

[YosemiteSam]

Auroras in Jupiter's Atmosphere

In this composite image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope you can see auroras in Jupiter's atmosphere. They are imaged in the far-ultraviolet part of the spectrum by Hubble's Imaging Spectrograph. The auroras are far bigger than on Earth and hundreds of times more energetic. And they are a constant occurrence, Jupiter's massive magnetic field (about 20,000 times stronger than Earth's magnetic field) is grabbing charged particles from its surroundings, driving its auroras.

https://lh4.***BROKEN***/-1Yi6Le60gYY/V3ghfrquN1I/AAAAAAAAvbI/VhukZk1NCFA_j_3eBRLkGgNGcUMhX5PugCL0B/w532-h709-no/jupiter.jpg

 

[YosemiteSam]

From USA Today

NASA's Juno spacecraft enters Jupiter's orbit

http://usat.ly/29d5cJy

PASADENA, Calif. — The best celebration this Independence Day wasn’t around a barbecue or fireworks show, but in a dark room filled with NASA engineers.After hours of anticipation, team members broke out in cheers. The Juno mission's spacecraft made it into Jupiter's orbit just before 9 p.m. local time after a risky maneuver to slow it down by more than 1,200 mph so it could be captured by Jupiter’s gravity."NASA did it again," said Scott Bolton, the scientist in charge of the Juno project, in a news conference afterward at the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where the mission is being directed.Rick Nybakken, a Juno project manager, said it was a "make-or-break" moment for Juno's five-year-old, 1.8 billion mile journey through space.


https://lh3.***BROKEN***/-LeEbssCDB20/V3fQ4VOasVI/AAAAAAABIMQ/m8h7zZsE_c4_ErpJxomb8RWjk2ugrrq2ACL0B/w346-h195/juno.gif



Sam's note: **** is about to get interesting!

 

[panchucko]

From USA Today

NASA's Juno spacecraft enters Jupiter's orbit

http://usat.ly/29d5cJy

PASADENA, Calif. — The best celebration this Independence Day wasn’t around a barbecue or fireworks show, but in a dark room filled with NASA engineers.After hours of anticipation, team members broke out in cheers. The Juno mission's spacecraft made it into Jupiter's orbit just before 9 p.m. local time after a risky maneuver to slow it down by more than 1,200 mph so it could be captured by Jupiter’s gravity."NASA did it again," said Scott Bolton, the scientist in charge of the Juno project, in a news conference afterward at the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where the mission is being directed.Rick Nybakken, a Juno project manager, said it was a "make-or-break" moment for Juno's five-year-old, 1.8 billion mile journey through space.


https://lh3.***BROKEN***/-LeEbssCDB20/V3fQ4VOasVI/AAAAAAABIMQ/m8h7zZsE_c4_ErpJxomb8RWjk2ugrrq2ACL0B/w346-h195/juno.gif



Sam's note: **** is about to get interesting!

That's awesome

Will the junocam be broadcasting live?

 

[YosemiteSam]

That's awesome

Will the junocam be broadcasting live?

No, it's not quite like that.

Here is a note about it:

JunoCam (or JCM) is the visible-light camera/telescope of the Juno Jupiter orbiter, a NASA space probe to the planet Jupiter launched on 5 August 2011. It was built by Malin Space Science Systems. It is covered in whale blubber to prevent burning.

Due to telecommunications constraints, Juno will only be able to return about 40 megabytes of camera data during each 11-day orbital period. This will limit the number of images that are captured and transmitted during each orbit to somewhere between 10 and 1000. This may be comparable to the Galileo mission, which captured thousands of images despite its slow data rate (due to antenna problems).
​

 

[DFWJC]

So did any of you all notice that Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn were bright in the night sky at the same time last night, and with the naked eye?
In Dallas it was right before the fireworks at about 9:30. Not sure when the first one of the bunch set.
Pretty sweet.

I just use a simple app on my phone call "Sky Guide" to show my kids and friends..

 

[YosemiteSam]

FUN FACT ABOUT JUNO SPACE CRAFT

Today, you’ve probably heard the news that the Juno spacecraft has entered orbit around Jupiter. But what you might not know is where the name comes from.
Juno was an ancient Roman goddess, wife and sister of Jupiter, daughter of Saturn, and mother of Mars. According to mythology, she kept watch over Rome, but in particular women.

Jupiter, though, wasn’t exactly the model husband. He had several mistresses that he would hide from Juno, often using clouds, while she tried to uncover evidence of this adultery. Most of the moons of Jupiter are actually the names of these mistresses, including Io, Europa, and Metis. They were named more than 400 years ago, by Galileo himself.

And what’s the Juno spacecraft doing? Well, now that it's in orbit it will be peering beneath the clouds to uncover Jupiter's secrets – although this time from a scientific perspective, not a mythological one.

So, NASA’s latest spacecraft is named after a Roman goddess who suspected her husband of infidelity. Who said scientists didn't know how to have fun?​

 

[YosemiteSam]

So did any of you all notice that Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn were bright in the night sky at the same time last night, and with the naked eye?
In Dallas it was right before the fireworks at about 9:30. Not sure when the first one of the bunch set.
Pretty sweet.

I just use a simple app on my phone call "Sky Guide" to show my kids and friends..

I'm always looking up!