Sam's Astrophtography Thread

[YosemiteSam]

Like a ship plowing through cosmic seas, runaway star Zeta Ophiuchi produces the arcing interstellar bow wave or bow shock seen in this stunning infrared portrait. In the false-color view, bluish Zeta Oph, a star about 20 times more massive than the Sun, lies near the center of the frame, moving toward the left at 24 kilometers per second. Its strong stellar wind precedes it, compressing and heating the dusty interstellar material and shaping the curved shock front. Around it are clouds of relatively undisturbed material. What set this star in motion? Zeta Oph was likely once a member of a binary star system, its companion star was more massive and hence shorter lived. When the companion exploded as a supernova catastrophically losing mass, Zeta Oph was flung out of the system. About 460 light-years away, Zeta Oph is 65,000 times more luminous than the Sun and would be one of the brighter stars in the sky if it weren't surrounded by obscuring dust. The image spans about 1.5 degrees or 12 light-years at the estimated distance of Zeta Ophiuchi.

 

[Bill Wooten]

Like a ship plowing through cosmic seas, runaway star Zeta Ophiuchi produces the arcing interstellar bow wave or bow shock seen in this stunning infrared portrait. In the false-color view, bluish Zeta Oph, a star about 20 times more massive than the Sun, lies near the center of the frame, moving toward the left at 24 kilometers per second. Its strong stellar wind precedes it, compressing and heating the dusty interstellar material and shaping the curved shock front. Around it are clouds of relatively undisturbed material. What set this star in motion? Zeta Oph was likely once a member of a binary star system, its companion star was more massive and hence shorter lived. When the companion exploded as a supernova catastrophically losing mass, Zeta Oph was flung out of the system. About 460 light-years away, Zeta Oph is 65,000 times more luminous than the Sun and would be one of the brighter stars in the sky if it weren't surrounded by obscuring dust. The image spans about 1.5 degrees or 12 light-years at the estimated distance of Zeta Ophiuchi.

That is amazing. As others have said, thanks for sharing this info.

 

[YosemiteSam]

That is amazing. As others have said, thanks for sharing this info.

Like Earth, Space has some incredible beauty too.

 

[CF74]

https://lh6.***BROKEN***/-5mRVvBjtmL8/VoIZLIio2KI/AAAAAAABQx8/byAgEsj3TGo/w934-h864-no/OrionDust_Fraile_1037.jpg

Prince _______ Rising From Chaos...

 

[YosemiteSam]

This is the Omega Centauri Globular Cluster.

A globular cluster is a spherical collection of stars that orbits a galactic core as a satellite. Globular clusters are very tightly bound by gravity, which gives them their spherical shapes and relatively high stellar densities toward their centers. ​

Omega Centauri (ω Cen), or NGC 5139, is a globular cluster in the constellation of Centaurus that was first identified as a non-stellar object by Edmond Halley in 1677. Located at a distance of 15,800 light-years (4,850 pc), it is the largest globular cluster in the Milky Way galaxy at a diameter of roughly 150 light-years. It is estimated to contain approximately 10 million stars and a total mass equivalent to 4 million solar masses.

Omega Centauri is so distinctive from the other galactic globular clusters that it is thought to have an alternate origin as the core remnant of a disrupted dwarf galaxy.

If you look closely, the stars are different colors. The more blueish or white, the hotter they are. The more orange or red ones, and generally cooler than the blue and white ones.

 

[YosemiteSam]

The Elephant's Trunk Nebula in IC 1396
Image Credit & Copyright: J.C. Canonne, P. Bernhard, D. Chaplain & L. Bourgon

The Elephant's Trunk nebula is a concentration of interstellar gas and dust within the much larger ionized gas region IC 1396 located in the constellation Cepheus about 2,400 light years away from Earth. The piece of the nebula shown here is the dark, dense globule IC 1396A; it is commonly called the Elephant's Trunk nebula because of its appearance at visible light wavelengths, where there is a dark patch with a bright, sinuous rim. The bright rim is the surface of the dense cloud that is being illuminated and ionized by a very bright, massive star (HD 206267) that is just to the west of IC 1396A.

Like an illustration in a galactic Just So Story, the Elephant's Trunk Nebula winds through the emission nebula and young star cluster complex IC 1396, in the high and far off constellation of Cepheus. Of course, the cosmic elephant's trunk is over 20 light-years long. This composite was recorded through narrow band filters that transmit the light from ionized hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen atoms in the region. The resulting image highlights the bright swept-back ridges that outline pockets of cool interstellar dust and gas. Such embedded, dark, tendril-shaped clouds contain the raw material for star formation and hide protostars within the obscuring cosmic dust. Nearly 3,000 light-years distant, the relatively faint IC 1396 complex covers a large region on the sky, spanning over 5 degrees.

https://lh3.***BROKEN***/-3_If0vTgl2E/VhyE6b6x2DI/AAAAAAABORo/eYSlivu3INw/s709-no/ElephantTrunk_Canonne_4088.jpg

 

[YosemiteSam]

Sharpless 308: Star Bubble
Image Credit & Copyright: Kfir Simon

Explanation: Blown by fast winds from a hot, massive star, this cosmic bubble is huge. Cataloged as Sharpless 2-308 it lies some 5,200 light-years away toward the constellation of the Big Dog (Canis Major) and covers slightly more of the sky than a Full Moon. That corresponds to a diameter of 60 light-years at its estimated distance. The massive star that created the bubble, a Wolf-Rayet star, is the bright one near the center of the nebula. Wolf-Rayet stars have over 20 times the mass of the Sun and are thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova phase of massive star evolution. Fast winds from this Wolf-Rayet star create the bubble-shaped nebula as they sweep up slower moving material from an earlier phase of evolution. The windblown nebula has an age of about 70,000 years. Relatively faint emission captured in the expansive image is dominated by the glow of ionized oxygen atoms mapped to a blue hue.

https://lh5.***BROKEN***/-dSdWhU0Z1BY/VYjc9zcT9zI/AAAAAAABMH8/k8EK0O-PKfo/w717-h709-no/sh308_simon_2088.jpg

 

[YosemiteSam]

The Lagoon Nebula in Hydrogen, Sulfur, and Oxygen light spectrum
Image Credit & Copyright: John Nemcik

The majestic Lagoon Nebula is filled with hot gas and the home for many young stars. Spanning 100 light years across while lying only about 5000 light years distant, the Lagoon Nebula is so big and bright that it can be seen without a telescope toward the constellation of the Archer (Sagittarius). Many bright stars are visible from NGC 6530, an open cluster that formed in the nebula only several million years ago. The greater nebula, also known as M8 and NGC 6523, is named "Lagoon" for the band of dust seen to the right of the open cluster's center. The featured image was taken in the light emitted by Hydrogen (shown in brown), Sulfur (red), and Oxygen (blue) and displayed in enhanced color. The featured picture is a newly processed panorama of M8, capturing twice the diameter of the Full Moon. Star formation continues in the Lagoon Nebula as witnessed by the many globules that exist there.

https://lh4.***BROKEN***/-55uf6JrG3Ks/VotPz3lvtiI/AAAAAAABRDY/R08vn63HOm4/w901-h709-no/LagoonHSO_Nemcik_1829.jpg

 

[YosemiteSam]

Comets and Bright Star
Image Credit & Copyright: Fritz Helmut Hemmerich

This timely, telescopic, two panel mosaic spans about 10 full moons across planet Earth's predawn skies. Recorded as the year began from Tenerife, Canary Islands, near the top of the frame are the faint coma and tail of Comet Borrelly (P/19). A comet with a seven year orbital period, Borrelly's nucleus was visited by the ion propelled spacecraft Deep Space 1 near the beginning of the 21st century. Anchoring the scene at the bottom is brilliant star Arcturus (Alpha Bootes) and Comet Catalina (C/2013 US10) a first time visitor from the Oort Cloud. Catalina's yellowish dust tail extends below and right. Buffeted by winds and storms from the Sun, the comet's complex ion tail sweeps up and toward the right, across most of the field of view. Remarkably, one of the composition's 30 second exposure subframes also caught the trail of a bright meteor, slashing toward the left between comets and bright star.

https://lh3.***BROKEN***/-PJgxhTmvx7w/VoypqXghioI/AAAAAAABRGI/MBpYNQ_DBlw/w316-h665-no/CatalinaBorrellyArcturus2016-01-01_Hemmerich.jpg

 

[YosemiteSam]

In the Center of Spiral Galaxy NGC 3521
Image Credit: +European Space Agency, ESA/Hubble & +NASA and S. Smartt (Queen's University Belfast); Acknowledgement: Robert Gendler

The acknowledgement of Robert Gendler is because while he didn't take the image (massive telescopes did), he processed the data. He is an Astrophotographer too, but his processing skills are some of the absolute best. He doesn't live that far from me and he has spoken at our Astronomy club's monthly lecture several times.

This huge swirling mass of stars, gas, and dust occurs near the center of a nearby spiral galaxy. Gorgeous spiral NGC 3521 is a mere 35 million light-years distant, toward the constellation Leo. Spanning some 50,000 light-years, its central region is shown in this dramatic image, constructed from data from the Hubble Space Telescope. The close-up view highlights this galaxy's characteristic multiple, patchy, irregular spiral arms laced with dust and clusters of young, blue stars. In contrast, many other spirals exhibit grand, sweeping arms. A relatively bright galaxy in planet Earth's sky, NGC 3521 is easily visible in small telescopes, but often overlooked by amateur imagers in favor of other Leo spiral galaxies, like M65 and M66.

https://lh3.***BROKEN***/-I29_mMrrjjE/VlwlIqIqHRI/AAAAAAABP-g/zWolfP976Fc/w1098-h898-no/ngc3521_hstGendler_1270.jpg

 

[YosemiteSam]

Lets do another Galaxy. This time the beautiful barred spiral galaxy NGC-1300.

Explanation: Big, beautiful, barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300 lies some 70 million light-years away on the banks of the constellation Eridanus. This Hubble Space Telescope composite view of the gorgeous island universe is one of the largest Hubble images ever made of a complete galaxy.NGC 1300 spans over 100,000 light-years and the Hubble image reveals striking details of the galaxy's dominant central bar and majestic spiral arms. In fact, on close inspection the nucleus of this classic barred spiral itself shows a remarkable region of spiral structure about 3,000 light-years across. Like other spiral galaxies, including our own Milky Way, NGC 1300 is thought to have a supermassive central black hole.

As the explanation says, from the left to the right side of this picture is 100,000 light years. That means light emitted from a star on the left side, would take 100,000 years at the speed of light to reach the other side of that galaxy. What's more amazing is the galaxy you're looking at is 70 MILLION light years away. That means, you are looking 70 million years into the past. This is what the galaxy looked like 70 million years ago. (just before the Dinosaurs where whipped out here on Earth. It certainly does not actually look like that today, but we will have to wait another 70 million years to see what it looks like today!

 

[YosemiteSam]

Virgo Cluster Galaxies
Image Credit & Copyright: Rogelio Bernal Andreo

Well over a thousand galaxies are known members of the Virgo Cluster, the closest large cluster of galaxies to our own local group. In fact, the galaxy cluster is difficult to appreciate all at once because it covers such a large area on the sky. This careful wide-field mosaic of telescopic images clearly records the central region of the Virgo Cluster through faint foreground dust clouds lingering above the plane of our own Milky Way galaxy. The cluster's dominant giant elliptical galaxy M87, is just below and to the left of the frame center. To the right of M87 is a string of galaxies known as Markarian's Chain. A closer examination of the image will reveal many Virgo cluster member galaxies as small fuzzy patches. Sliding your cursor over the image will label the larger galaxies using NGC catalog designations. Galaxies are also shown with Messier catalog numbers, including M84, M86, and prominent colorful spirals M88, M90, and M91. On average, Virgo Cluster galaxies are measured to be about 48 million light-years away. The Virgo Cluster distance has been used to give an important determination of the Hubble Constant and the scale of the Universe.

https://lh6.***BROKEN***/-tHg3ZqLoF6g/VcA9Zm7duGI/AAAAAAABMx0/2XBtiLkTAiU/w1278-h693-no/VirgoCluster_RBA_2048.jpg

 

[YosemiteSam]

How many people are interested in me continuing this thread? I just want to make sure I'm not doing it for nothing if nobody here is interested. I love this ...stuff. If nobody else here does, I won't inundate everyone with stuff you don't care to see.

 

[Shunpike]

How many people are interested in me continuing this thread? I just want to make sure I'm not doing it for nothing if nobody here is interested. I love this ...stuff. If nobody else here does, I won't inundate everyone with stuff you don't care to see.

Please continue Sam.

Folks, please at least "Like" the posts to keep Sam informed about your interest in the topic.

 

[YosemiteSam]

Please continue Sam.

Folks, please at least "Like" the posts to keep Sam informed about your interest in the topic.

I don't need likes. (Reality is welcome to reset mine) I just want to make sure people are interested if I'm going to put forth the effort.

 

[YosemiteSam]

This is a time lapse of our Sun in 4k from Oct 14th to Oct 30th 2014. The sound you hear is the sound the Sun is making mostly I believe coming from the electromagnetism.

Another interesting fact about the Sun.

The sun's photosphere is often mistakenly referred to as the surface of the sun. In reality however, the sun's photosphere is only a "liquid-like" plasma layer made of neon that covers the actual surface of the sun. That visible layer we see with our eyes is composed of penumbral filaments that are several hundred kilometers deep. This visible neon plasma layer that we call the photosphere, and a thicker, more dense atmospheric layer composed of silicon plasma, entirely covers the actual rocky, calcium ferrite surface layer of the sun. The visible photosphere covers the actual surface of the sun, much as the earth's oceans cover most of the surface of the earth. In this case the sun's photosphere is very bright and we cannot see the darker, more rigid surface features below the photosphere without the aid of satellite technology.

 

[Shunpike]

I don't need likes. (Reality is welcome to reset mine) I just want to make sure people are interested if I'm going to put forth the effort.

Yeah. I know you don't need likes. You are unfriendly and aloof. To keep this thread full of pics, people can just like your posts to show that they are interested in you posting more pics.

 

[YosemiteSam]

Explanation: A darkened and mysterious north polar region informally known as Mordor Macula caps this premier high-resolution portrait of Charon, Pluto's largest moon. Captured by New Horizons near its closest approach on July 14, the image data was transmitted to Earth on September 21. The combined blue, red, and infrared data is processed to enhance colors, following variations in surface properties with a resolution of about 2.9 kilometers (1.8 miles). In fact, Charon is 1,214 kilometers (754 miles) across, about 1/10th the size of planet Earth but a whopping 1/2 the diameter of Pluto itself. That makes it the largest satellite relative to its planet in the solar system. This remarkable image of Charon's Pluto-facing hemisphere shows a clearer view of an apparently moon-girdling belt of fractures and canyons that seems to separate smooth southern plains from varied northern terrain.

 

[YosemiteSam]

Supernova 1994D and the Unexpected Universe
Image Credit: High-Z Supernova Search Team, HST, NASA

Explanation: Long ago, far away, a star exploded. Supernova 1994D, visible as the bright spot on the lower left, occurred in the outskirts of disk galaxy NGC 4526. Supernova 1994D was not of interest for how different it was, but rather for how similar it was to other supernovae. In fact, the light emitted during the weeks after its explosion caused it to be given the familiar designation of a Type Ia supernova. If all Type 1a supernovae have the same intrinsic brightness, then the dimmer a supernova appears, the farther away it must be. By calibrating a precise brightness-distance relation, astronomers are able to estimate not only the expansion rate of the universe (parameterized by the Hubble Constant), but also thegeometry of the universe we live in (parameterized by Omega and Lambda). The large number and great distances to supernovae measured over the past few years, when combined with otherobservations, are interpreted as indicating that we live in a previously unexpecteduniverse.

The bright Supernova you are seeing in the image is also the creation of a black hole.

 

[Seven]

How many people are interested in me continuing this thread? I just want to make sure I'm not doing it for nothing if nobody here is interested. I love this ...stuff. If nobody else here does, I won't inundate everyone with stuff you don't care to see.

Dude. Do NOT stop. (Well, you can if ya want.)

This is the best thread here.

Thank you again for sharing........