Sam's Astrophtography Thread

[YosemiteSam]

The Cat's Eye Nebula
Image Credit: J. P. Harrington (U. Maryland) & K. J. Borkowski (NCSU) HST, NASA

Explanation: Three thousand light-years away, a dying star throws off shells of glowing gas. This image from the Hubble Space Telescope reveals the Cat's Eye Nebula to be one of the most complex planetary nebulae known. In fact, the features seen in the Cat's Eye are so complex that astronomers suspect the bright central object may actually be a binary star system. The term planetary nebula, used to describe this general class of objects, is misleading. Although these objects may appear round and planet-like in small telescopes, high resolution images reveal them to be stars surrounded by cocoons of gas blown off in the late stages of stellar evolution.

 

[YosemiteSam]

The Colorful Clouds of Rho Ophiuchi
Image Credit & Copyright: Tom Masterson

Explanation: The many spectacular colors of the Rho Ophiuchi (oh'-fee-yu-kee) clouds highlight the many processes that occur there. The blue regions shine primarily by reflected light. Blue light from the star Rho Ophiuchi and nearby starsreflects more efficiently off this portion of the nebula than red light. The Earth's daytime sky appears blue for the same reason. The red and yellow regions shine primarily because of emission from the nebula's atomic and molecular gas. Light from nearby blue stars - more energetic than the bright star Antares - knocks electrons away from the gas, which then shines when the electrons recombine with the gas. The dark brown regions are caused by dust grains - born in young stellar atmospheres - which effectively block light emitted behind them. The Rho Ophiuchi star clouds, well in front of the globular cluster M4 visible here on the upper right, are even more colorful than humans can see - the clouds emits light in every wavelength band from the radio to the gamma-ray.

 

[YosemiteSam]

The Swirling Core of the Crab Nebula
Image Credit: NASA, ESA - Acknowledgment: J. Hester (ASU), M. Weisskopf (NASA / GSFC)

Explanation: At the core of the Crab Nebula lies a city-sized, magnetized neutron star spinning 30 times a second. Known as the Crab Pulsar, it's actually the rightmost of two bright stars, just below a central swirl in this stunning Hubble snapshot of the nebula's core. Some three light-years across, the spectacular picture frames the glowing gas, cavities and swirling filaments bathed in an eerie blue light. The blue glow is visible radiation given off by electrons spiraling in a strong magnetic field at nearly the speed of light. Like a cosmic dynamo the pulsar powers the emission from the nebula, driving a shock wave through surrounding material and accelerating the spiraling electrons. With more mass than the Sun and the density of an atomic nucleus, the spinning pulsar is the collapsed core of a massive star that exploded. The Crab Nebula is the expanding remnant of the star's outer layers. The supernova explosion was witnessed on planet Earth in the year 1054.

 

[YosemiteSam]

SPHERE observations of the planet HD 131399Ab

This annotated composite image shows the newly discovered exoplanet HD 131399Ab in the triple-star system HD 131399. The image of the planet was obtained with the SPHERE imager on the ESO Very Large Telescope in Chile. This is the first exoplanet to be discovered by SPHERE and one of very few directly-imaged planets. With a temperature of around 580 degrees Celsius and an estimated mass of four Jupiter masses, it is also one of the coldest and least massive directly-imaged exoplanets.

This picture was created from two separate SPHERE observations: one to image the three stars and one to detect the faint planet. The planet appears vastly brighter in this image than in would in reality in comparison to the stars.

Credit:
ESO/K. Wagner et al.

Video: Artist’s impression of planet orbiting in the HD 131399 system:

 

[YosemiteSam]

Arp 286: Trio in Virgo
Image Credit & Copyright: CHART32 Team, Processing - Johannes Schedler

Explanation: A remarkable telescopic composition in yellow and blue, this scene features a trio of interacting galaxies almost 90 million light-years away, toward the constellation Virgo. On the right, two, spiky, foreground Milky Way stars echo the trio galaxy hues, a reminder that stars in our own galaxy are like those in the distant island universes. With sweeping spiral arms and obscuring dust lanes, NGC 5566 is enormous, about 150,000 light-years across. Just above it lies small, blue NGC 5569. Near center, the third galaxy, NGC 5560, is multicolored and apparently stretched and distorted by its interaction with NGC 5566. The galaxy trio is also included in Halton Arp's 1966 Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies as Arp 286. Of course, such cosmic interactions are now appreciated as a common part of the evolution of galaxies.

 

[YosemiteSam]

Information about Saturn's Rings.

Saturn's rings consist of dust between the size of a grain of sand to the size of a house. The ring's thickness ranges from 32 feet (10 meters) wide to as much as 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) wide. Now consider that with the fact that the rings are 175,000 miles wide! (281,000 kilometers) As large as Jupiter is, it's only 86,000 miles wide. (140,000 kilometers) The Sun is quite a bit bigger, (865,000 miles or 1.4 million kilometers wide) but given that the Sun is 99.8% of the total mass in our solar system. Saturn's ring system is HUGE!

This picture shows Saturn's rings from the side. See how razor thin the rings are, but look a the HUGE shadow the cast on Saturn due to their width even though they are hair thin!!!

If Saturn were as thick as yard stick, the rings would be thinner than a razor blade!

How big is the sun? Let's find out!

 

[YosemiteSam]

Dark Nebulas across Taurus
Image Processing & Copyright: Oliver Czernetz - Data: Digitized Sky Survey (POSS-II)

Explanation: Sometimes even the dark dust of interstellar space has a serene beauty. One such place occurs toward the constellation of Taurus. The filaments featured here can be found on the sky between the Pleiades star cluster and the California Nebula. This dust is not known not for its bright glow but for its absorption and opaqueness. Several bright stars are visible with their blue light seen reflecting off the brown dust. Other stars appear unusually red as their light barely peaks through a column of dark dust, with red the color that remains after the blue is scattered away. Yet other stars are behind dust pillars so thick they are not visible here. Although appearing serene, the scene is actually an ongoing loop of tumult and rebirth. This is because massive enough knots of gas and dust will gravitationally collapse to form new stars -- stars that both create new dust in their atmospheres and destroy old dust with their energetic light and winds.

 

[YosemiteSam]

Pluto at Night
Image Credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins Univ./APL, Southwest Research Institute

Explanation: The night side of Pluto spans this shadowy scene. The spacebased view with the Sun behind the distant world was captured by New Horizons last July. The spacecraft was at a range of over 21,000 kilometers, about 19 minutes after its closest approach. A denizen of the Kuiper Belt in dramatic silhouette, the image also reveals Pluto's tenuous, surprisingly complex layers of hazy atmosphere. The crescent twilight landscape near the top of the frame includes southern areas of nitrogen ice plains informally known as Sputnik Planum and rugged mountains of water-ice in the Norgay Montes.

 

[Tabascocat]

Earth as seen from the Hubble.

 

[YosemiteSam]

NGC 2736: The Pencil Nebula
Image Credit & Copyright: Howard Hedlund & Dave Jurasevich, Las Campanas Obs.

Explanation: Moving from top to bottom in the frame near the center of this sharply detailed color composite, thin, bright, braided filaments are actually long ripples in a cosmic sheet of glowing gas seen almost edge-on. The shock wave plows through interstellar space at over 500,000 kilometers per hour. Cataloged as NGC 2736, its elongated appearance suggests its popular name, the Pencil Nebula. The Pencil Nebula is about 5 light-years long and 800 light-years away, but represents only a small part of the Vela supernova remnant. The Vela remnant itself is around 100 light-years in diameter, the expanding debris cloud of a star that was seen to explode about 11,000 years ago. Initially, the shock wave was moving at millions of kilometers per hour but has slowed considerably, sweeping up surrounding interstellar material. In the narrowband, wide field image, red and blue-green colors track the characteristic glow of ionized hydrogen and oxygen atoms.

 

[YosemiteSam]

The View Toward M106
Image Credit & Copyright: Fabian Neyer

Explanation: A big, bright, beautiful spiral, Messier 106 is at the center of this galaxy filled cosmic vista. The two degree wide telescopic field of view looks toward the well-trained constellation Canes Venatici, near the handle of the Big Dipper. Also known as NGC 4258, M106 is about 80,000 light-years across and 23.5 million light-years away, the largest member of the Canes II galaxy group. For a far away galaxy, the distance to M106 is well-known in part because it can be directly measured by tracking this galaxy's remarkable maser, or microwave laser emission. Very rare but naturally occuring, the maser emission is produced by water molecules in molecular clouds orbiting its active galactic nucleus. Another prominent spiral galaxy on the scene, viewed nearly edge-on, is NGC 4217 below and right of M106. The distance to NGC 4217 is much less well-known, estimated to be about 60 million light-years.

 

[YosemiteSam]

USA's Northeast Megalopolis from Space
Image Credit: NASA, International Space Station

Explanation: Can you identify a familiar area in the northeast USA just from nighttime lights? It might be possible because many major cities are visible, including (right to left) New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Richmond and Norfolk -- Boston of the USA's Northeast megalopolis is not pictured. The featured image was taken in 2012 from the International Space Station. In the foreground are two Russian cargo ships with prominent solar panels. This Northeast megalopolis of the USA contains almost 20 percent of the people of the USA but only about 2 percent of the land area. Also known also as the Northeast Corridor and part of the Eastern Seaboard, about 10 percent of the world's largest companies are headquartered here. The near continuity of the lights seem to add credence to the 1960s-era prediction that the entire stretch is evolving into one continuous city.

 

[YosemiteSam]

The Rise and Fall of Supernova 2015F
Video Credit & Copyright: Changsu Choi & Myungshin Im (Seoul National University)

Explanation: Sit back and watch a star explode. The actual supernova occurred back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, but images of the spectacular event began arriving last year. Supernova 2015F was discovered in nearby spiral galaxy NGC 2442 by Berto Monard in 2015 March and was unusually bright -- enough to be seen with only a small telescope. The pattern of brightness variation indicated a Type Ia supernova -- a type of stellar explosion that results when an Earth-sizewhite dwarf gains so much mass that its core crosses the threshold of nuclear fusion, possibly caused by a lower mass white-dwarf companion spiraling into it. Finding and tracking Type Ia supernovae are particularly important because their intrinsic brightness can be calibrated, making their apparent brightness a good measure of their distance -- and hence useful toward calibrating the distance scale of the entire universe. The featured video tracked the stellar disruption from before explosion images arrived, as it brightened, and for several months as the fission-powered supernova glow faded. The remnants of SN2015F are now too dim to see without a large telescope. Just yesterday, however, the night sky lit up once again, this time with an even brighter supernova in an even closer galaxy: Centaurus A.

 

[YosemiteSam]

Crossing Mars
Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, MSSS

Explanation: Where is NASA's rover Curiosity going on Mars? Its geographical goals are on the slopes of Mount Sharp, whose peak is seen in the background on the right. A key scientific goal, however, remains to better assess when and where conditions on Mars were once suitable for life, in particular microbial life. To further this goal, Curiosity was directed to cross the rugged terrain of Nautkluft Plateau, visible in the featured image on the foreground left. Curiosity iscrossing toward smoother uphill sites with rocks containing hematite and sulfates, sites that could give the rolling rover new clues on how long this part of Mars was wet -- and hence more favorable for life -- before drying out. Of recent concern, however, is Curiosity's aluminum wheels, which are showing increasing signs of wear. Although already fulfilling the goals of its two year study, Curiosity's mission has been extended as it continues to uncover valuable information about the extraordinary past of Mars, the next planet out from the Sun from Earth.

Click the image to see the larger high-res version

 

[YosemiteSam]

Deep Magellanic Clouds Image Indicates Collisions
Image Credit & Copyright: Yuri Beletsky (Carnegie Las Campanas Observatory, TWAN) & David Martinez-Delgado (U. Heidelberg)

Explanation: Did the two most famous satellite galaxies of our Milky Way Galaxy once collide? No one knows for sure, but a detailed inspection of deep images like that featured here give an indication that they have. Pictured, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is on the top left and the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is on the bottom right. The surrounding field is monochrome color-inverted to highlight faint star streams, shown in gray. Perhaps surprisingly, the featured research-grade image was compiled with small telescopes to cover the large angular field -- nearly 40 degrees across. Much of the faint nebulosity is Galactic Cirrus clouds of thin dust in our own Galaxy, but a faint stream of stars does appear to be extending from the SMC toward the LMC. Also, stars surrounding the LMC appear asymmetrically distributed, indicating in simulations that they could well have been pulled off gravitationally in one or more collisions. Both the LMC and the SMC are visible to the unaided eye in southern skies. Future telescopic observations and computer simulations are sure to continue in a continuing effort to better understand the history of our Milky Way and its surroundings.

 

[YosemiteSam]

A comet, traveling at nearly 1.3 million miles per hour, plunged toward the sun on Aug. 3-4. The comet didn’t fall into the sun, but rather wrapped around it — or at least it would have if it had survived its journey. Like most sungrazing comets, this one was torn apart and vaporized by the intense forces near the sun. Watch it here:

https://lh3.***BROKEN***/-0N5GH80RjIQ/V6OSWaj07uI/AAAAAAAESQs/BLIb8P3LrGUZopIz6Mm5u73NSyyIuK5xQ/s426/sohosungrazersmall.gif

 

[panchucko]

A comet, traveling at nearly 1.3 million miles per hour, plunged toward the sun on Aug. 3-4. The comet didn’t fall into the sun, but rather wrapped around it — or at least it would have if it had survived its journey. Like most sungrazing comets, this one was torn apart and vaporized by the intense forces near the sun. Watch it here:

That comet was moving

 

[YosemiteSam]

That comet was moving

Yep, that was almost a six hour clip (you can see the time at the bottom), that said. When you get close to the Sun, it's gravity pulls very hard and it will get you moving like nobody's business! The central circle (white circle) is the actual outline of the Sun. The diameter is over 800,000 miles across to give it scale and you see how fast that comet approached (speeding up quickly no less) the Sun.

 

[YosemiteSam]

Jupiter with Io and Europa

Here we have a really nice image of Jupiter with two of its moons, Io and Europa. The really fascinating thing about this image however is, that it was taken over 37 years ago, February 13th, 1979, by the Voyager 1 space probe.

Built to last 5 years, the spacecraft is in interstellar space today and still operating almost 39 years after its launch on September 5th, 1977. Voyager 1 passed Jupiter on March 5th, 1979, and Saturn on November 12th, 1980. It’s current velocity is about 38,000 miles per hour.

https://lh4.***BROKEN***/--cQFj77KDRE/V6U-4EkErPI/AAAAAAAAyNs/ixR6ueIWBD4azVPo-foW5aKSe5nAjfBaQCL0B/w585-h888-no/voyager_jupiter_moons.jpg

 

[GIFTS86]

Wow. I absolutely love anything about the universe. I watch anything and read everything I can about it. It's the most fascinating thing there is in life. I will be reading this entire thing in a moment. Thanks for posting your passion.