This is the heart nebula (or at least as much of it as I can take with my setup without doing a mosaic) also known as IC 1805 or NGC 896. It is around 7 000 light years from us, in the constellation Cassiopeia. Despite its distance to us it still appears about twice as big as the moon in the sky, which speaks volumes when it comes to its actual size (about 200 light years in diameter).
This being an emission nebula its light mostly comes from gasses ionised by nearby stars.
This nebula also has an open cluster at it's center (a bit closer to us than the rest of the nebula), Melotte 15:
This cluster is bout 1,5 million years old which is very young for such a stellar object. It is composed a a few very heavy and bright stars and many fainter lighter stars.
The starless version :
(Image taken using a CarbonStar 150/600 newtonian telescope with a 0.95 coma corrector, ZWO ASI294 monochrome camera and Baader 6.5nm narrowband filter. 25x300s for the Ha filter, 26x300s for the SII filter and 26x300s for the OIII filter, total imaging time 6h 25min, stacking and processing done in PixInsight. Photo taken mid-January) Other versions with a different colour combinations (a bit less pleased of how they turned out).
If you want to see the nebula in its entirety, you can check out this NASA Astronomy picture of the day made by Adam Jensen.
Photo of NGC 7000 / the North American nebula (southern part), the bright star on the top left corner is ξ Cygni. Might rework it later since this one still has a bit too much gradient/haze due to the full moon when I took the photos. In most cases, emission nebula are the result of gas clouds being ionised by the high energy UV radiation coming from very Hot (and often massive) stars/star cluster. In the case of NGC 7000 the star(s) responsible for most of the ionisation was an unknown for quite a long time, it is only in 2004 that the star responsible for the ionisation was located. This star (actually a binary system according to later publication) known as J205551.3+435225 is located behind the dark region of the nebula (bottom right corner of the photo) which explains why it was only recently identified.
(My best guess of the position of J205551.3+435225 in my picture according to what I can find in the original publication and in the SIMBAD database)
One last thing, that star was later nicknamed Bajamar Star, which comes from the original Spanish name for the Bahamas island.
Photo of Pickering's triangle (also known as Fleming's triangle) and NGC 6979 / NGC 6974 (the more diffused clouds at the top center/left). This is the third part of the Cygnus loop / veil nebula, this part of the supernova remnant is fainter than the previous two parts of the loop I photographed. This explains in part why it was only discovered by in 1904 by Williamina Fleming (whereas the two writer part were discovered in 1784 by William Herschel). Williamina Fleming was a pioneer in stellar classification, she worked with other women at the Harvard college observatory. Their work in star classification resulted in the Henry Draper Catalogue, an extensive (225 300 stars in the first edition) classification of stars with their position and their spectra. Williamina is also credited with the discovery of 59 nebula (including the famous hors head nebula) more than 300 variable stars as well as (with Henry Norris Russell and Edward Charles Pickering) the discovery of white dwarfs (the remnants of dead sun-like stars).
Ok, so I finished the processing of my new photo of the Flaming Star Nebula (IC 405)
Image taken in SII and Ha with a few RGB images to have the correct star colours. This is technically an SHH combination image but with a narrowband normalisation and a lot of curve modifications (with and without colour masks) to get colours/contrast that I liked. I already had taken a photo of this nebula, but it was using mostly RGB data with a bit of Ha (and a lot less integration time). It did show the dust reflection way better, but I like the contrast we can see inside the nebula's gas on this one. Thanks to @shaythempronouns for suggesting the use of an SII filter to image this nebula. Starless version :
(Image taken using a CarbonStar 150/600 newtonian telescope with a 0.95 coma corrector, ZWO ASI294 monochrome camera ZWO LRGB filters and Baader 6.5nm narrowband filter. 5x120s image for each colour filter (RGB), 29x300s for the Ha filter and 33x300s for the SII filter, total imaging time 6h 35min, stacking and processing done in PixInsight. Photo taken mid-January)
In my new scale, °X, 0 is Earths' record lowest surface temperature, 50 is the global average, and 100 is the record highest, with a linear scale between each point and adjustment every year as needed.
Temperature Scales [Explained]
Transcript Under the Cut
Temperature Scales
[A table with five columns, labelled: Unit, water freezing point, water boiling point, notes, cursedness. There are eleven rows below the labels.]
[Row 1:] Celsius, 0, 100, Used in most of the world, 2/10 [Row 2:] Kelvin, 273.15, 373.15, 0K is absolute zero, 2/10 [Row 3:] Fahrenheit, 32, 212, Outdoors in most places is between 0–100, 3/10 [Row 4:] Réaumur, 0, 80, Like Celsius, but with 80 instead of 100, 3/8 [Row 5:] Rømer, 7.5, 60, Fahrenheit precursor with similarly random design, 4/10, [Row 6:] Rankine, 491.7, 671.7, Fahrenheit, but with 0°F set to absolute zero, 6/10 [Row 7:] Newton, 0, 33-ish, Poorly defined, with reference points like "the hottest water you can hold your hand in", 7-ish/10 [Row 8:] Wedgewood, –8, –6.7, Intended for comparing the melting points of metals, all of which it was very wrong about, 9/10 [Row 9:] Galen, –4?, 4??, Runs from –4 (cold) to 4 (hot). 0 is "normal"(?), 4/–4 [Row 10:] ''Real'' Celsius, 100, 0, In Anders Celsius's original specification, bigger numbers are ''colder''; others later flipped it, 10/0 [Row 11:] Dalton, 0, 100, A nonlinear scale; 0°C and 100°C are 0 and 100 Dalton, but 50°C is 53.9 Dalton, 53.9/50
can I read posts on the internet lightning speed ? yes.
can I read a scientific publication quickly ? also yes !!!
now, can I read a normal book at a somewhat regular speed ? no, I have to re-read the previous page, hell the previous chapter because I forgot what the conversation between the character was about !
Photo of the Pleiades (Messier 45) I took to test my new telescope. This is an open cluster of stars situated about 440 light years from earth, the brighter stars of the cluster are visible with the naked eye (around 5 to 10 stars visible depending of the light pollution, weather and eye accommodation do darkness). Unfortunately, the nebulosity, which I composed of dust clouds reflecting the light from the bright stars, is only visible in photos or with (relatively) large telescope. The cluster is about 100 million years old which is young (for an astronomical object), the more visible stars are hot blue giants, but many other, less visible, stars are present in the cluster. This cluster due to its high visibility has taken an important place in many cultures and mythologies.
(as a fun fact the name of M45 in Japanese is Subaru, and yes the car brand dose gets its name for this star cluster (which explains the logo of the brand))
same picture with a better post treatment of the original data.
in astrophotography, a lot the work is in the post treatment step. that step does not add details or actual alter the actual data, it's all about how do you reduce the noise in the image as much as posible while keeping the data as visible as possible (in short a lot of math hidden behind what looks like simple fonction such as ''deconvolution'').
This is M51, also known as the Whirlpool Galaxy it is a pair a galaxy currently interacting together. If you look at the two arms of the spiral, you will see that the one on the left is somewhat deformed (near the other galaxy) this is due to the gravitational interaction between the two galaxies. Those interaction are also the reason why the left galaxy (NGC 5195) is this irregular. Some of the models have proposed that both galaxies have passed through each other at some point in the past. In the future both galaxie will slowly fuse together, but this will take at least a few hundred million years. Multiple other interacting galaxies also exist, such as the butterfly galaxies or the antenna galaxies.
This photo was supposed to be a test of my new equatorial mount but the result was WAY BETTER than expected so here you go (the post-treatment of the photos is not the best ever but I had to work with a limited amount a data). I will probably post more photos this summer since I now have access to better skys and a better mount than in Munich (If the weather complies).
Here's another black and white picture taken in H-alpha, this time of the Pacman nebula (NGC 281). I don't have a lot to say about this one, it's a hydrogen gas cloud similar to the gas cloud around Sadr that I previously photographed. An interesting thing about it thought, is its position, it's about 6 500 light years from us and about 1000 light years above the galactic plane, making it a prominent target to study star formation. The cluster of stars at the center of the nebulas is a good example of those newly borne stars as it is only about 3.5 million years old.
There might not be sound in space, but there is quite a lot to listen to in the radio frequencies (especially when it comes to the planets of the solar system).
(the full article : https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-juno-spacecraft-enters-jupiters-magnetic-field ) Some ''similar'' sounds are also present on earth with for example the reverberation if radio waves emitted by lightning.
I'm trying to find a clean, concise, factual video of pulsar pulses but the top results on youtube are all fake clickbait bullshit. Where are the videos from professor so-and-so with 10 subscribers of simple black and white graphs.
(this page has what I'm looking for but afaik none of these videos are on youtube)
Astrophotographer & chemist, mid 20'sCurrently on the roof yelling at the clouds to get out of the wayMostly astrophotos I've taken, possibly other science related stuff
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