Messier 31 - The Andromeda Galaxy

Taken October 27, 29, 30, 31 and November 1 - 4, 2019 near Seattle, Washington

Telescope: Astro-Physics 130 GTX @ f/4.5 using Astro-Physics Quad-TCC

Camera: QHY600

Guide Camera: Starlight Xpress Lodestar

Mount: Astro-Physics 900GTO with CP4 and APCC-Pro

Capture Software: NINA

Exposure:

Red: 4 hours 3 minutes (81 x 3 min, bin 1x1)

Green: 4 hours 27 minutes (89 x 3 min, bin 1x1)

Blue: 4 hours 54 minutes (98 x 3 min, bin 1x1)

Lum: 6 hours 36 minutes (132 x 3 min, bin 1x1)

Total Integration Time: 20 hours

Processed in PixInsight 1.8

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Photographed at Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada

(285 km by road north of Toronto)

* Temperature 17° C.

* Total exposure time: 6 minutes.

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Description:

High in the northern hemisphere summer sky our home galaxy, the Milky Way, runs through the constellations Cassiopeia (left side), Cepheus (centre) and Cygnus (right side).

This area of the sky is riddled with glowing red clouds of hydrogen gas, numerous star clusters, and areas of dark foreground gas that obscures the light of millions of stars beyond.

Just a little above and to the right of centre is the bright circular red gas cloud IC 1396. For a close-up view of this nebula made with a 400 mm lens in August 2015, click here:

www.flickr.com/photos/97587627@N06/19929294304

One of the most distinctive gas clouds is the aptly named "North America Nebula", at bottom right. For a close-up view of this nebula made with a 400 mm lens, click here:

www.flickr.com/photos/97587627@N06/19933485213

For a version of this photo WITHOUT labels, click on the LEFT side of your screen, or click here:

www.flickr.com/photos/97587627@N06/28165947613

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Technical information:

Sigma 50 mm f/1.4 DG HSM ART lens on Nikon D810a camera body, mounted on Astrophysics 1100GTO equatorial mount with a Kirk Enterprises ball head

Six stacked frames; each frame:

50 mm focal length

ISO 3200; 1 minute exposure at f/4; unguided

(with LENR - long exposure noise reduction)

Subframes registered in RegiStar;

Stacked and processed in Photoshop CS6 (brightness, contrast, levels, colour balance, colour desaturation)

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Captured in London, England, July 2021.

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features the spectacular galaxy NGC 2442, nicknamed the Meathook galaxy owing to its extremely asymmetrical and irregular shape.

This galaxy was host to a supernova explosion spotted in March 2015, known as SN 2015F, that was created by a white dwarf star. The white dwarf was part of a binary star system and siphoned mass from its companion, eventually becoming too greedy and taking on more than it could handle. This unbalanced the star and triggered runaway nuclear fusion that eventually led to an intensely violent supernova explosion. The supernova shone brightly for quite some time and was easily visible from Earth through even a small telescope until months later.

Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, S. Smartt et al.

#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #astronomy #space #astrophysics #Goddard #GoddardSpaceFlightCenter #ESA #EuropeanSpaceAgency #galaxy #supernova #solarsystemandbeyond #gsfc

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Captured in London, England,. September 2021.

(Copyright: Epiphany Appleseed)

Follow me on twitter @funkyappletree

Captured in London, England. July 2022.

NGC 6910 is an open star cluster set amidst clouds of gas and dust near the bright star Sadr in the constellation Cygnus.

Subframes for this image were accumulated over 4 different nights, some under dark skies near Goldendale, WA and others from within Seattle city limits. RGB data for the stars was combined with narrowband data for the gas and dust, with Ha assigned to R. In an effort to maintain a "natural" appearance, only modest amounts of SII and OIII data were added to the G and B channels, respectively.

Telescope: Celestron EdgeHD 8" with 0.7x Reducer

Camera: QSI 683wsg

Mount: Astro-Physics Mach1 GTO

Integration: 30 min (6 x 5 min) each RGB, binned 1x1 | 300 min (30 x 10 min) Ha, binned 1x1 | 100 min (10 x 10 min) SII, binned 2x2 | 120 min (12 x 10 min) OIII, binned 2x2.

Waxing Gibbous, 90.6% illuminated. Captured in London, England. January 2021.

Ha-RGB composition

>>> Click on the Picture to Full Res view <<<

T:Takahashi FSQ 106ED reduced @f3.8

M: Astrophysics Mach1 GTO

C: QSI 690ws-g8

G: Lodestar X2

F: Astronomik RGB; Ha 6nm

Foc: Sesto Senso Primalucelab

CPU: Eagle-2 Primalucelab

Sw: Sequence Generator Pro - PHD2 - Pixinsight 1.8

R:G:BxTv = 27:27:27x180"

HaxTv = 11x900"

Bias: 512

Dark: 64

Flat: 33

Captured in London, England, March 2022.

Waxing Gibbous, 77% illuminated. Captured in London, England. January 2021.

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Photographed at Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada, between 21.46 and 22.03 EDT

(285 km by road north of Toronto)

* Temperature 15° C.

* Total exposure time: 6 minutes

* 20 mm lens

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130 degrees of the northern portion of our home galaxy, the Milky Way, and some 80,000 stars, are seen in this wide angle image, running from the constellation Cepheus at left, through Cygnus and Aquila, to Scutum at right. The Milky Way bulges noticeably at the right side, toward the centre of the galaxy in Sagittarius (out of view to the right).

A little left of and below centre is the shocking pink, distinctively-shaped North America Nebula in the constellation Cygnus. For a telephoto view of this nebula made with a 300 mm lens on the same night, click here:

www.flickr.com/photos/97587627@N06/29220929561

Just to the right of the North America Nebula lies a region of glowing red hydrogen gas surrounding the star Gamma Cygni. For a telephoto view of this region, click here:

www.flickr.com/photos/97587627@N06/27845511250

And near the left edge, just below centre, is a fainter circular area of glowing red hydrogen gas, called IC 1396. For a close-in view of this gas cloud, click here:

www.flickr.com/photos/97587627@N06/19929294304

___________________________________________

Sigma 20 mm f/1.4 ART lens on Nikon D810a camera body, mounted on Astrophysics 1100GTO equatorial mount with a Kirk Enterprises ball head

Six stacked frames; each frame:

20 mm focal length; ISO 2500; 60 seconds exposure at f/4

(with LENR - long exposure noise reduction)

Subframes stacked in RegiStar;

Processed in Photoshop CS6 (brightness, contrast, levels, colour balance)

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Captured in London, England,. April 2022.

Full Harvest Moon, also known as Corn Moon, captured rising in London, England. September 2021.

NGC 6888 - The Crescent Nebula and Surrounding Region

Taken over many nights between July 13 and August 1, 2020 near Seattle, Washington

Telescope: TEC 180 @ f/5 using Astro-Physics Quad-TCC

Camera: QHY600

Guide Camera: Starlight Xpress Lodestar

Mount: Astro-Physics 900GTO with CP4 and APCC-Pro

Capture Software: SGPro and NIINA

Exposure:

Ha: 18 hours 15 minutes (73 x 15 min, bin 1x1)

OIII: 18 hours 15 minutes (73 x 15 min, bin 1x1)

SII: 18 hours 15 minutes (73 x 15 min, bin 1x1)

Total Integration Time: 54 hours 45 minutes

Processed in PixInsight 1.8

NB Combination:

R = HA + SII

G = 25% Ha + 75% OIII

B = OIII

Waning Gibbous, 93.7% illuminated. Captured in London, England. August 2021.

Captured in London, england. December 2019.

30%, 40%, 50%, 70%, 80% & 90%. Reckon I had a good run. 10%, 20% % 60% cloudy!

The muted red tones of the globular cluster Liller 1 are partially obscured in this image by a dense scattering of piercingly blue stars. In fact, it is thanks to Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) that we are able to see Liller 1 so clearly in this image, because the WFC3 is sensitive to wavelengths of light that the human eye can’t detect. Liller 1 is only 30,000 light-years from Earth – relatively neighborly in astronomical terms – but it lies within the Milky Way’s ‘bulge’, the dense and dusty region at our galaxy’s center. Because of that, Liller 1 is heavily obscured from view by interstellar dust, which scatters visible light (particularly blue light) very effectively. Fortunately, some infrared and red visible light can pass through these dusty regions. WFC3 is sensitive to both visible and near-infrared (infrared that is close to the visible) wavelengths, allowing us to see through the obscuring clouds of dust, and providing this spectacular view of Liller 1.

Liller 1 is a particularly interesting globular cluster, because unlike most of its kind, it contains a mix of very young and very old stars. Globular clusters typically house only old stars, some nearly as old as the universe itself. Liller 1 instead contains at least two distinct stellar populations with remarkably different ages: the oldest one is 12 billion years old, and the youngest component is just 1-2 billion years old. This led astronomers to conclude that this stellar system was able to form stars over an extraordinarily long period of time.

Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Ferraro

#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #astrophysics #gsfc #starcluster

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This picture was captured on September 1, 2022 at Alpha Ridge Park in Marriottsville, Maryland USA

The Pleiades, also known as The Seven Sisters, Messier 45 and other names by different cultures, is an asterism and an open star cluster containing middle-aged, hot B-type stars in the north-west of the constellation Taurus. At a distance of about 444 light years, it is among the nearest star clusters to Earth. Wikipedia

Radius: 17.5 light years

Distance to Earth: 444.2 light years

Apparent magnitude (V): 1.6

Constellation: Taurus

Coordinates: RA 3h 47m 24s | Dec +24° 7′ 0″

Hemisphere: Northern Hemisphere

Apparent dimensions (V): 110' (arcmin)

Captured in London, England. May 2023.

Captured in London, England, December 2022.

---Photo details----

Stacks Hα: 42x3 min

Stacks O3: 42x3 min

Stacks S2: 42x3 min

Darks : 100

Exposure Time : 6hr18min

Stack program : AstroArt 7

Stack mode : Sigma clip

---Photo scope---

Camera : QSI 660 wsg-8

CCD Temperature : -10C

Binning : 2x2

Filter(s) used:

Astrodon 3nm Hα

Astrodon 3nm O3

Astrodon 3nm S2

Tube : Astro-Physics 130 EDF F/6

Field flattener / Reducer : Astro-Physics flattener

Effective focal length : 780 mm

Effective aperture : ~ F/6

---Guide scope---

Camera : Lodestar X2

Off Axis Guiding: yes

Guide exposure : 1 sec

---Mount and other stuff---

Mount : Skywatcher AZ-EQ-6 GT

Galaxy clusters are the largest objects in the universe held together by gravity. They contain enormous amounts of superheated gas, with temperatures of tens of millions of degrees, which glows brightly in X-rays, and can be observed across millions of light years between the galaxies. This image of the Abell 2744 galaxy cluster combines X-rays from Chandra (diffuse blue emission) with optical light data from Hubble (red, green, and blue).

Image credit: NASA/CXC; Optical: NASA/STScI

#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #chandraxrayobservatory #ChandraXRay #cxo #chandra #astronomy #space #astrophysics #nasamarshallspaceflightcenter #solarsystemandbeyond #galaxy #galaxycluster #GoddardSpaceFlightCenter #GSFC #Hubble #HST #HubbleSpaceTelescope

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I could enjoy imaging of the area, rich in gas and dust in Cepheus. Exposure looked not enough for the objects, and dark parts got noisier than expected.

I like this focal length, 873mm of AstroPhysics StarFire 130 GTX.

equipment: AstroPhysics 130GTX "Granturismo," Field Flattener at f/6.7 focal length 873mm, 22.1mm Spacer, EOS Adapter, Kipon EOS-EOS R adapter, and Canon EOS R-SP4II, modified by Seo-san on ZWO AM5 Equatorial Mount, auto guided at a star with Fujinon 1:2.8/75mm C-Mount Lens, Pentax x2 Extender, ZWO ASI 120MM-mini, GPUSB, and PHD2 Guiding

I used 4.8kg counterweight on 250mm counterweight shaft with ZWO AM5 equatorial mount and total 17.5kg weight on genuine stone bag. The mount worked precisely, but OTA slipped at rings. I threw two of 15 long exposure frames away due to trailing.

exposure: 13 times x 900 seconds, 4 x 240 sec, 4 x 60 sec, and 4 x 15 seconds at ISO 3.200 and f/6.7 focal length 873mm

site: 1,530m above sea level at lat. 36 26 01 North and long. 138 30 24 East in Rhododendron Park in Tsumagoi near Mt.Asama 群馬県嬬恋村しゃくなげ園. Ambient temperature was around 2 degrees Celsius or 36 degrees Fahrenheit. Wind was mild. SQML was 21.10.

NGC 2024 and Barnard 33: The Horsehead and Flame Nebula

Taken February 18-20 and 27 and March 8-9, 2020 near Seattle, Washington

Telescope: TEC 180 @ f/5 using Astro-Physics Quad-TCC

Camera: QHY600

Guide Camera: Starlight Xpress Lodestar

Mount: Astro-Physics 900GTO with CP4 and APCC-Pro

Capture Software: SGPro and NIINA

Exposure:

Ha: 6 hours 45 minutes (27 x 15 min, bin 1x1)

OIII: 5 hours 45 minutes (23 x 15 min, bin 1x1)

SII: 6 hours 45 minutes (27 x 15 min, bin 1x1)

Total Integration Time: 19 hours 15 minutes

Processed in PixInsight 1.8

Captured in London, England. July 2021.

Captured in London, England. May 2020.

Waning Gibbous view from Adelaide, Australia

Captured rising in London, England. May 2020. The third and final SUPERMOON of the year!

Captured in SW London, 12 August 2021.

Captured in London, England, February 2022

Captured in London, England. July 2020.

Captured in London, England. December 2019.

Captured in London, England. April 2022.

Captured in London, england. December 2019.

First light with the new (used) A-P scope.

Image Details:

Scope: A-P 130mm EDFS @ f/6 (no flattener)

Camera: QSI 6120

Mount: Takahashi EM-200

Guiding: QHY 5LII-M & Mini Guidescope (PHD2)

Image Capture: Sequence Generator Pro

Processing: PixInsight

Location: Central District, Seattle, WA

Ha: 39x5min

OIII: 36x5min

SII: 35x5min

Total integration time = 550 min ~ 9.2 hours

www.astrobin.com/y3jzyf/

The heart of the Heart nebula revisited using the "natural palette" with special attention to the dark nebulas there.

It a complete rework of a previous image made on SHOrgb.

A total of 57 hours of integration and a lot of intermediate version on the process.

Still I think that I could obtain more details, but this will be next year (maybe :P ).

Technical card

Imaging telescopes or lenses:Teleskop Service TS Photoline 107mm f/6.5 Super-Apo , Altair Astro RC250-TT 10" RC Truss Tube

Imaging cameras:ZWO ASI183MM-Cool , ZWO ASI1600MM-Cool

Mounts:Skywatcher EQ6R Pro , Mesu 200 Mk2

Guiding telescopes or lenses:Celestron OAG Deluxe , Teleskop Service TSOAG9 Off-Axis Guider

Guiding cameras:ZWO ASI290 Mini , ZWO ASI174 Mini

Focal reducers:Riccardi Reducer/Flattener 0.75x , Telescope-Service TS 2" Flattener

Software:Pleiades Astrophoto PixInsight , Seqence Generator Pro

Filters:Astrodon O-III 36mm - 5nm , Astrodon S-II 36mm - 5nm , Astrodon R Gen.2 E-series 36mm , Astrodon G Gen.2 E-series 36mm , Astrodon B Gen.2 E-series 36mm , Astrodon HA 36mm - 5nm , Optolong SII 6.5nm 36mm , Optolong OIII 6.5nm 36mm

Accessory:ZWO EFW , MoonLite NiteCrawler WR30 , MoonLite CSL 2.5" Focuser with High Res Stepper Motor

Dates:Nov. 29, 2019

Frames:

Astrodon B Gen.2 E-series 36mm: 90x30" (gain: 75.00) -20C bin 1x1

Astrodon G Gen.2 E-series 36mm: 90x30" (gain: 75.00) -20C bin 1x1

Astrodon HA 36mm - 5nm: 166x600" (gain: 200.00) -20C bin 1x1

Optolong OIII 6.5nm 36mm: 80x600" (gain: 183.00) -15C bin 1x1

Astrodon R Gen.2 E-series 36mm: 90x30" (gain: -75.00) -15C bin 1x1

Optolong SII 6.5nm 36mm: 80x600" (gain: 183.00) -15C bin 1x1

Integration: 56.6 hours

Avg. Moon age: 2.95 days

Avg. Moon phase: 9.53%

Astrometry.net job: 3907933

RA center: 2h 34' 16"

DEC center: +61° 21' 18"

Pixel scale: 1.007 arcsec/pixel

Orientation: 359.646 degrees

Field radius: 0.408 degrees

Resolution: 1760x2328

Locations: AAS Montsec, Àger, Lleida, Spain

Data source: Own remote observatory

Remote source: Non-commercial independent facility

Sharpless 132 (Sh2-132)

Taken September 12, 13, 14, and 15, 2016 near North Bend, WA

Telescope: TEC 110FL @ f/5.6

Camera: QSI 683 WSG-8

Guide Camera: Starlight Xpress Lodestar

Mount: Astro-Physics 900GTO

Exposure:

Ha: 8 hours 20 minutes (25 x 20 min, bin 1x1)

OIII: 8 hours 20 minutes (25 x 20 min, bin 1x1)

SII: 8 hours (24 x 20 min, bin 1x1)

Total Integration Time: 24 hours 40 minutes

Processed in PixInsight 1.8

Narrowband color mapping in Hubble Palette (SHO).

3 (ii). Sep 8, 2020

The photograph Without any distracting labels or arrows.

James Weldon Johnson’s poem “I hear the stars still singing” invites all of us to think about astrophysicists. Since November 2016 Professor Vicky Kalogera and her colleagues have been able to actually detect the gravitational waves generated by stars’ and black holes’ collisions billions of years ago. The LIGO research teams don’t merely detect and record gravitational waves, but they can also decipher the precise information that the convey from the past and they can represent them by sound waves.

Yes, nowadays astrophysicists can actually hear the stars still singing today, even if their song was produced billions of years ago. So to the stars’ listener, Prof. Kalogera, this photograph is dedicated along with the poem lines:

“I hear the stars still singing

To the beautiful, silent night,

As they speed with noiseless winging…”

When the Milky Way’s galactic centre was shot (Sep. 08, 2020, 21:42’ UTC+3), its elevation (altitude) was 17.8° above horizon and its azimuth 201.8°

This photograph of the Milky Way was made by stacking 29 light frames by Starry Landscape Stacker (minimum horizon noise algorithm).

T:Takahashi FSQ 106ED @f/3,65 w 0.73x focal reducer

M: Astrophysics Mach1 GTO

C: QSI 690ws-g8

G: QHY-MZ5m

F: Astronomic deep sky LRGB set

Foc: Sharp Sky Pro foucser

CPU: Eagle-S Primalucelab

Sw: Sequence Generator Pro - PHD2 - Pixinsight 1.8

L:R:G:B=12:12:12:12 x 300"

Bias: 21

Dark: 21

Flat: 25

Sh2-129 and OU4 - The Flying Bat and Squid Nebulas

Taken August 13-15, 17, 18, and 22-29 and September 3, 5, 6, and 27-29, 2020 near Seattle, Washington

Telescope: Astro-Physics 130GTX @ f/4.5 using Astro-Physics Quad-TCC

Camera: QHY600M

Filters: Chroma Ha and OIII, 3nm

Guide Camera: Starlight Xpress Lodestar

Mount: Astro-Physics 900GTO with CP4 and Astro-Physics Mach2GTO and APCC-Pro

Capture Software: SGPro and NINA

Exposure:

Ha: 40 hours 30 minutes (162 x 15 min, bin 1x1)

OIII: 38 hours 30 minutes (154 x 15 min, bin 1x1)

Total Integration Time: 79 hours

Processed in PixInsight 1.8.8-6

NB Combination:

R = HA

G = 15% Ha + 85% OIII

B = OIII

Mobile Photography(Love and Peace)

Captured in London, England. October 2020.

Waxing Gibbous, 82.9% illuminated, 390,745km from Earth. 6th of January 2020.

The beautiful spiral galaxy visible in the center of the image is known as RX J1140.1+0307, a galaxy in the Virgo constellation imaged by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, and it presents an interesting puzzle. At first glance, this galaxy appears to be a normal spiral galaxy, much like the Milky Way, but first appearances can be deceptive!

The Milky Way galaxy, like most large galaxies, has a supermassive black hole at its center, but some galaxies are centered on lighter, intermediate-mass black holes. RX J1140.1+0307 is such a galaxy — in fact, it is centered on one of the lowest black hole masses known in any luminous galactic core. What puzzles scientists about this particular galaxy is that the calculations don’t add up. With such a relatively low mass for the central black hole, models for the emission from the object cannot explain the observed spectrum. There must be other mechanisms at play in the interactions between the inner and outer parts of the accretion disk surrounding the black hole.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt

NASA image use policy.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.

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Captured in London, England. April 2022.

General Relativity states that gravity is a curvature of space-time by the mass of objects. This concept is sometimes illustrated, to help those of us who think visually, by a picture of a broad, flat, blanket-like surface indented deeply by round objects dropped on it. Ergo, these massive objects distort space-time, represented by beach sand at low tide. (The footprint is an unrelated freebe. Make of it what you will, Einstein!)

ODC: Over Your Head. Space-time. Gravity waves. I think I get the big picture, but I admire the people who can really work with those concepts.

If you prefer to eschew my abstruse free associations, you may view this as a simple beach texture image, of course.

Huge waves are sculpted in this two-lobed nebula called the Red Spider Nebula, located some 3,000 light-years away in the constellation of Sagittarius. This warm planetary nebula harbors one of the hottest stars known and its powerful stellar winds generate waves 100 billion kilometers (62.4 billion miles) high. The waves are caused by supersonic shocks, formed when the local gas is compressed and heated in front of the rapidly expanding lobes. The atoms caught in the shock emit the spectacular radiation seen in this image.

Image credit: ESA/Garrelt Mellema (Leiden University, the Netherlands)

NASA image use policy.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.

Follow us on Twitter

Like us on Facebook

Find us on Instagram