Hubble's Hidden Treasures — Image Processing
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Muchas, muchas gracias por sus visitas, favs y comentarios :)
Many, many thanks for your visits, favs and comments :)
Olympus & 60 mm macro.
A beautiful galactic dance 211 million light years away. Captured by Hubble WFC3 and processed by me.
Sharpless 101 (Sh2-101) is a H II region emission nebula located in the constellation Cygnus. It is sometimes also called the Tulip Nebula because it appears to resemble the outline of a tulip when imaged photographically. It was catalogued by astronomer Stewart Sharpless in his 1959 catalog of nebulae. It lies at a distance of about 6,000 light-years (5.7×1016 km; 3.5×1016 mi) from Earth.
Details
M: Mesu 200
T: ODK10
C: QSI683 with 3nm Ha, OIII and SII Astrodon filters
25x1800s Ha
25x1800s OIII
24x1800s SII
Total exposure time 37 hours
A macro of a glass of coffee, for Macro Monday, on the theme of beverage.
This was my second try at it, as the first try gave me some very lukewarm image. Also had to take a photo, then leave it for a few seconds, then go back, as the lense kept fogging up!
I was originally going to leave this as colour, but popped it into silver efex after color efex, just to see and I really liked it.
Nikon Z6, 18mm Extension Tube, FTZ, Tamron 90mm Macro Lense, Ring FLash,
Exposure X5, Color Efex Pro 4, Silver Efex Pro 2
La galaxie spirale NGC 634 (Hubble) est située à 217 millions d'années-lumière de la Terre dans la constellation du Triangle (Triangulum). La finesse des détails et la structure spirale exceptionnellement parfaite de la galaxie en ont fait une cible d'observation privilégiée suite à la disparition violente d'une naine blanche. La supernova de type Ia SN2008a y avait ainsi été repérée et brièvement rivalisé d'éclat avec la galaxie hôte.
Les naines blanches constituent le point final de l'évolution des étoiles dont la masse se situe entre 0,07 et 8 masses solaires, soit 97 % des étoiles de la Voie lactée. Avec toutefois des exceptions, dans un système binaire une naine blanche peut accréter la matière provenant de son étoile compagnon et prendre progressivement du poids. Mais l'étoile peut finir par devenir trop pleine, lorsqu'elle dépasse 1,38 masse solaire. Des réactions nucléaires se déclenchent en produisant d'énormes quantités d'énergie et l'étoile explose en supernova de type Ia.
Cette image a été créée à partir d'images prises avec le canal grand champ de la caméra avancée de Hubble. Ces images ont été obtenues à travers un filtre jaune (F555W, coloré en bleu), combinées avec celles images obtenues à travers des filtres rouge (F625W, coloré en vert) et proche infrarouge (F775W, coloré en rouge). Les temps d'exposition totaux par filtre étaient respectivement de 3 750 s, 3 530 s et 2 484 s, et le champ de vision de 2,5 x 1,5 minute d'arc, soir 0,062° (cf. ESA/Hubble et NASA).
Pour situer la galaxie spirale NGC 634 (Hubble) dans la constellation du Triangle (Triangulum) :
It's Dog Day Monday again! I can't believe another week has flown bye.
Meet Hubble. All I know is that he was not named after the space station or Edwin Hubble after whom the space station was named. Hubble was a loveable, happy-go-lucky Welsh Corgi that lived right around the corner from us until he and his owners moved out of the Bay Area in 2014. Every time I'd meet him, he'd "smile." Don't get the idea that every dog I'm going to show you is smiling. I'm getting into the more serious group and then, just plain old. And, you know, we get grumpy as dogs, especially the two who I'll be showing you in a few weeks that were 17 when I met them.
Anyway, Happy Dog Day Monday #19. Any day with a dog is a happy one (a gross exaggeration, but not as exaggerated as any day without a dog isn't half as great as a day with one). When you unravel that, go rescue a dog.
Cats are okay, too, but from what I've seen on You Tube (and at my nephew's home), they are usually cantankerous, shredding rugs and couches, and love to throw things off countertops. So do parrots, but at least a parrot will talk to you while you're trying to correct them. Our cockatiel used to sing all the radio commercials he'd learned from the radio while we went to school. That was 61 years ago. My favorite, "Where there's Life, there's Lucky Strikes!"
… no not the space telescope, the (T)Oil and Trouble one.
Another quick on for Sliders Sunday. I am working on a couple of sets as project, but neither is near enough to completion to share, and time is limited for me just now.
Never one to throw away images (though I am trying to learn how) I have repurposed one of my oil droplet images from Smile on Saturday’s project yesterday. The starting image had lots of detail and texture and a little bit of colour variation from using two oils (see the comment from yesterday for more if you wish).
The work was done mainly in Affinity though I did us a bit of Nik Color Efex to tweak it a bit at the end.
The basic approach takes an oft-travelled path for me. Duplicate the image layer, flip it horizontally and vertically to give the overall result some symmetry and blend the two layers together with Difference blend mode (or any other mode that works for you) which injects lots of colours. The rest is just tweaking the colours.
I’ll post a link to the in-camera image so you can see the rather bland (in comparison) starting point.
Thanks for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Sliders Sunday :)
Hubble rocks out with heavy metal stars!
This 10.5-billion-year-old globular cluster, NGC 6496, is home to heavy-metal stars of a celestial kind! The stars comprising this spectacular spherical cluster are enriched with much higher proportions of metals — elements heavier than hydrogen and helium are curiously known as metals in astronomy — than stars found in similar clusters.
A handful of these high-metallicity stars are also variable stars, meaning that their brightness fluctuates over time. NGC 6496 hosts a selection of long-period variables — giant pulsating stars whose brightness can take up to, and even over, a thousand days to change — and short-period eclipsing binaries, which dim when eclipsed by a stellar companion.
The nature of the variability of these stars can reveal important information about their mass, radius, luminosity, temperature, composition, and evolution, providing astronomers with measurements that would be difficult or even impossible to obtain through other methods.
NGC 6496 was discovered in 1826 by Scottish astronomer James Dunlop. The cluster resides at about 35,000 light-years away in the southern constellation of Scorpius (The Scorpion).
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt
Text credit: European Space Agency
Read more: go.nasa.gov/1U2wqGW
IC1848 emission nebula located in Cassiopeia.
Processed in Hubble palette colours.
Skywatcher 100ED
Canon 700d
Celestron CGEM DX
14x180s (42 mins) ISO800
Processed in PixInsight
10328px x 6833px
Resolution ............... 0.797 arcsec/px
Rotation ................. 90.001 deg
Observation start time ... 2023-01-21 21:29:28 UTC
Observation end time ..... 2023-01-21 22:31:41 UTC
Focal distance ........... 554.90 mm
Pixel size ............... 2.15 um
Field of view ............ 2d 17' 14.8" x 1d 30' 48.1"
Image center ............. RA: 2 53 17.192 Dec: +60 26 17.38 ex: +0.053614 px ey: -0.001726 px
Lors du lancement du télescope spatial Hubble il y a 35 ans, personne n'aurait pu imaginer à quel point il allait transformer notre vision de l'espace. Lancé le 24 avril 1990, le télescope poursuit aujourd'hui sa mission. Pour célébrer son anniversaire, la NASA a publié quatre images récentes prises par Hubble, qui prouvent sa pérennité, même après trois décennies !
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When the launched 35 years ago, no one would have guessed how much it would shape the way we view space. Launched on April 24, 1990, the telescope continues its mission today. To celebrate its anniversary, NASA released four recent images taken by Hubble that prove its staying power even after three decades !
Credit : NASA, ESA, STScI; Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
The Hubble Space telescope's observations of the universe have seldom produced more intriguing images than that seen in this section of bubble glass in the window of a public house.
We are back from Portugal, a little jet-lagged (always milder going east to west than vice-versa) and none the worse for the wear. Time to upload the 1,136 images that I took. Here's a garden abstract from the archives while I get to it. :)
- Rosa's Garden of Earthly Delights, Keefer Lake, Ontario, Canada -
First time trying air show photography....not an easy task could have done with a longer lens (18-250mm) something like the Hubble telescope !!!
Full of admiration for the aircraft snappers !!
U.S. 1 dollar coin commemorating the Hubble Telescope and it's development at the Goddard Space Center in Maryland.
Imaging telescope or lens: RCOS 14.5"
Imaging camera: SBIG STX KAF-16803
Mount: Paramount-ME
Guiding telescope or lens: RCOS 14.5"
Software: Pixinsight 1.8
Filters: Ha 5nm, Astrodon Luminance, Astrodon Blue, Astrodon Red, Astrodon Green
Resolution: 3605x3417
Dates: Feb. 27, 2017, March 2, 2017, March 7, 2017
Frames:
Astrodon Blue: 13x1200" bin 1x1
Astrodon Green: 13x1200" bin 1x1
Astrodon Luminance: 20x1200" bin 1x1
Astrodon Luminance: 5x600" bin 1x1
Astrodon Red: 12x1200" bin 1x1
Ha 5nm: 12x1800" bin 1x1
Integration: 26.2 hours
I recently published a well-received version of M81, it seemed rude not to process its compatriot.
In order to realise all the details you could argue the image is actually a L, L, L, L, L, L, L, L, L, L, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, RGB, RGB, RGB, RGB, RGB, RGB, rather than just a HaLRGB image!
In order to realise all the details I have been persisting with my (very time-consuming approach) of building the main layers from multiple stretches of the main frames from very dark to very light, a manual HDR (but with full control) most of the work is done in PI but the layering and masking has to be done in PS for control. I am finding at the longer focal lengths this really lets me realise all details from the dark (often washed out by brightness on such targets) to the very light, I can even stretch beyond the limit to realise the fainter details.
Anyway, hope you all like - not a quick process taking about 8 hours solid to process over a few days.
As well as realising some great detail I was pleased to see the inner structures showing well including the mushroom shape to the right and the double boundary of the left side (inner ring just about visible)
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 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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Dans la constellation du Poisson Volant (Volans) à 300 millions d'a.l. de la Terre, l'anneau de Lindsay-Shapley AM 0644-741 est une galaxie lenticulaire non barrée et en anneau. Elle avait autrefois un noyau jaunâtre qui était le centre d’une galaxie spirale normale. Il se serait formé par une collision avec une autre galaxie, ce qui a déclenché un effet gravitationnel et une perturbation provoquant la condensation de la poussière, ce qui l'a forcé à s'étendre et à créer un anneau. D'une taille de 150 000 a.l., il possède aujourd'hui une région de formation d'étoiles dominée par de jeunes étoiles massives, bleues et chaudes. Les régions roses le long de l'anneau sont des nuages raréfiés d'hydrogène gazeux rougeoyant et fluorescent, alors qu'il est bombardé par une forte lumière ultraviolette émise par les étoiles bleues. Il continuera à s’étendre pendant encore 300 millions d’années, après quoi il commencera à se désintégrer.
Outre les deux grandes structures galactiques proches, plusieurs galaxies très éloignées sont visibles sur l'image, principalement dans sa partie inférieure gauche. Les deux stries rougeâtres et les autres petites structures elliptiques témoignent que leur lumière a été émise bien avant celle des galaxies voisines et qu'elles sont donc bien plus éloignées de nous dans l’espace-temps (cf. site Hubble).
Pour situer l'astre dans sa constellation :
www.flickr.com/photos/7208148@N02/48950795956/in/datepost...
New findings from NASA’s Juno probe orbiting Jupiter provide a fuller picture of how the planet’s distinctive and colorful atmospheric features offer clues about the unseen processes below its clouds. The results highlight the inner workings of the belts and zones of clouds encircling Jupiter, as well as its polar cyclones and even the Great Red Spot.
Jupiter's banded appearance is created by the cloud-forming weather layer. This composite image shows views of Jupiter in infrared and visible light taken by the Gemini North telescope and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
Credits: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/NASA/ESA, M.H. Wong and I. de Pater (UC Berkeley) et al.
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #jpl #jetpropulsionlaboratory #nasamarshall #MSFC #solarsystem #juno #jupiter #space #astronomy #nasajuno #nasamarshallspaceflightcenter #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #ESA #EuropeanSpaceAgency
Cette photomosaïque de la galaxie d'Andromède, située à 2,5 millions d'années-lumière de la Terre, est la plus grande jamais créée à partir d'images du télescope spatial Hubble. Elle comprend plus de 600 images du télescope et a nécessité plus d'une décennie de travail. La photomosaïque comprend 200 millions d'étoiles, soit une fraction de la population d'étoiles estimée à mille milliards d'étoiles d'Andromède.
« Les régions intéressantes comprennent : (a) des amas d'étoiles bleues brillantes intégrées dans la galaxie, des galaxies d'arrière-plan vues beaucoup plus loin et un bombardement photographique par quelques étoiles brillantes au premier plan qui sont en fait à l'intérieur de notre Voie lactée ; (b) NGC 206, le nuage d'étoiles le plus visible d'Andromède ; (c) un jeune amas d'étoiles bleues nouveau-nées ; (d) la galaxie satellite M32, qui pourrait être le noyau résiduel d'une galaxie qui est entrée en collision avec Andromède ; (e) des bandes de poussière sombres à travers une myriade d'étoiles.
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This photomosaic of the Andromeda galaxy, located 2.5 million light-years from Earth, is the largest ever created using images from the Hubble Space Telescope. It features over 600 Hubble images and required over a decade to make. The composite features 200 million stars, a fraction of Andromeda’s estimated trillion-star population.
Interesting regions include: (a) Clusters of bright blue stars embedded within the galaxy, background galaxies seen much farther away, and photo-bombing by a couple bright foreground stars that are actually inside our Milky Way; (b) NGC 206 the most conspicuous star cloud in Andromeda; (c) A young cluster of blue newborn stars; (d) The satellite galaxy M32, that may be the residual core of a galaxy that once collided with Andromeda; (e) Dark dust lanes across myriad stars.
Crédit : NASA, ESA, Benjamin F. Williams (Université de Washington), Zhuo Chen (Université de Washington), L. Clifton Johnson (Northwestern) ; traitement des images : Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
__________________________________________PdF_____
A black hole forms in a giant cumulus cloud where nothing can escape, well not actually nothing but it’s toil and trouble for somebody, that ship on the horizon for instance.
A 130 millions d'a.l., les bras gracieux et sinueux de la majestueuse galaxie spirale NGC 3147, d'un diamètre de 83 000 a.l., apparaissent comme un grand escalier en spirale balayant l’espace dans cette image du télescope spatial Hubble. Ce sont en fait de longues bandes de jeunes étoiles bleues, de nébuleuses roses et de poussière. La beauté de la galaxie dément le fait qu’en son centre même se trouve un trou noir mal nourri, entouré d’un disque mince et compact d’étoiles, de gaz et de poussière qui ont été pris dans un maelstrom gravitationnel. La gravité du trou noir est si intense que tout ce qui s’aventure près de lui est balayé dans le disque. Ce dernier est si profondément ancré dans le champ gravitationnel intense du trou noir que la lumière du disque de gaz est modifiée, selon les théories de relativité d’Einstein, donnant aux astronomes un aperçu unique des processus dynamiques proches (cf. hubblesite.org).
Pour mieux situer l'astre dans sa constellation :
www.flickr.com/photos/7208148@N02/48686608841/in/datepost...
ZWO ASI6200MM-P/EFW 2" x 7 (SHO)
Tele Vue NP101is (4" f/4.3)
Losmandy G11
Integration:
Ha: 10 x 600s = 1:40
Oiii: 12 x 600s = 2:00
Sii: 17 x 600s = 2:40
Total: 6:30
Captured with NINA. Processed in PixInsight. Finished in Affinity Photo.
Captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, this image shows NGC 7513, a barred spiral galaxy. Located approximately 60 million light-years away, NGC 7513 lies within the Sculptor constellation in the Southern Hemisphere.
This galaxy is moving at the astounding speed of 972 miles per second, and it is heading away from us. For context, Earth orbits the Sun at about 19 miles per second. Though NGC 7513’s apparent movement away from the Milky Way might seem strange, it is not that unusual.
While some galaxies, like the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy, are caught in each other’s gravitational pull and will eventually merge together, the vast majority of galaxies in our universe appear to be moving away from each other. This phenomenon is due to the expansion of the universe, and it is the space between galaxies that is stretching, rather than the galaxies themselves moving.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Stiavelli
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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After seeing yesterday's APOD, a Hubble Legacy Archive image processed by Hunter Wilson; (apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160309.html) I really enjoyed the presentation, but there were a few things that I didn't like about the way the image was processed. So naturally I decided to have a go at it myself and downloaded the data from the website last night (hla.stsci.edu/) and started tinkering with it this morning. I finished it to an initial satisfactory processing and was quite pleased at the results!
Clustered at the center of this image are six brilliant spots of light, four of them creating a circle around a central pair. Appearances can be deceiving, however, as this formation is not composed of six individual galaxies, but is actually two separate galaxies and one distant quasar imaged four times. Data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope also indicates that there is a seventh spot of light in the very center, which is a rare fifth image of the distant quasar. This rare phenomenon is the result of the two central galaxies, which are in the foreground, acting as a lens.
The four bright points around the galaxy pair, and the fainter one in the very center, are in fact five separate images of a single quasar (known as 2M1310-1714), an extremely luminous but distant object. The reason we see this quintuple effect is a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. Gravitational lensing occurs when a celestial object with an enormous amount of mass – such as a pair of galaxies – causes the fabric of space to warp. When light from a distant object travels through that gravitationally warped space, it is magnified and bent around the huge mass. This allows humans here on Earth to observe multiple, magnified images of the far-away source. The quasar in this image actually lies farther away from Earth than the pair of galaxies. The galaxy pair’s enormous mass bent and magnified the light from the distant quasar, giving the incredible appearance that the galaxies are surrounded by four quasars – when in reality, a single quasar lies far beyond them!
Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) imaged the trio in spectacular detail. It was installed on Hubble in 2009 during Hubble Servicing Mission 4, Hubble’s final servicing mission. WFC3 continues to provide both top-quality data and fantastic images 12 years after its installation.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, T. Treu; Acknowledgment: J. Schmidt
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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Spotted in Explore by DMC43. Thanks Donna! #228 23/11/08
Pretty chilly here today so back to indoor flowers for the moment!
La nébuleuse planétaire NGC 2899 est située à 4 500 années-lumière de la Terre et à 25 895 années-lumière du centre galactique dans la constellation australe des Voiles (Vela). Cet objet présente un flux de gaz cylindrique, bipolaire et diagonal propulsé par le rayonnement et les vents stellaires d'une naine blanche située en son centre. En réalité, deux étoiles compagnes pourraient interagir et sculpter la nébuleuse, pincée en son centre par un anneau fragmenté (tore) qui ressemble à un beignet à moitié mangé. Elle présente une forêt de "piliers" gazeux pointant vers la source du rayonnement et des vents stellaires. Ses couleurs proviennent de l'hydrogène et de l'oxygène brillants (cf. NASA, ESA, STScI ; Image Processing : Joseph DePasquale STScI).
Pour situer la nébuleuse planétaire NGC 2899 (Hubble) dans la constellation australe des Voiles (Vela) :
Spanning from 2003 to 2021, this collection of images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features galaxies that are all hosts to both Cepheid variables and supernovae. These two celestial phenomena are both crucial tools used by astronomers to determine astronomical distance, and have been used to refine our measurement of Hubble’s constant, the expansion rate of the Universe.
Credits: NASA, ESA CC BY 4.0
Peering deep into the early universe, this picturesque parallel field observation from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveals thousands of colorful galaxies swimming in the inky blackness of space. A few foreground stars from our own galaxy, the Milky Way, are also visible.
In October 2013 Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) began observing this portion of sky as part of the Frontier Fields program. This spectacular skyscape was captured during the study of the giant galaxy cluster Abell 2744, otherwise known as Pandora’s Box. While one of Hubble’s cameras concentrated on Abell 2744, the other camera viewed this adjacent patch of sky near to the cluster.
Containing countless galaxies of various ages, shapes and sizes, this parallel field observation is nearly as deep as the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field. In addition to showcasing the stunning beauty of the deep universe in incredible detail, this parallel field — when compared to other deep fields — will help astronomers understand how similar the universe looks in different directions.
Image credit: NASA, ESA and the HST Frontier Fields team (STScI),
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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This image features the spiral galaxy NGC 691, captured in fantastic detail using Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). This galaxy is a member of the NGC 691 galaxy group named after it: a group of gravitationally bound galaxies about 120 million light-years from Earth.
Hubble observes objects such as NGC 691 using a range of filters. Each filter only allows certain wavelengths of light to reach Hubble’s WFC3. The resulting filtered images are colored by specialists who make informed choices about which color best corresponds to the wavelengths of light from the astronomical objects that are transmitted by each filter. Combining the colored images from individual filters creates a full-color image. This detailed process provides us with remarkably good insight into the nature and appearance of these objects.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Riess et al.; Acknowledgment: M. Zamani
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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Made with a Sony a7s + 70-200 mm + Staradventurer travel mount, processed with Pixinsight.
A bit of explanation :
This image is composed of ~100 pictures of single 30s, so a total of ~50 mn of exposure.
During one of the frame, Hubble passed from right to left and disappeared in the Earth shadow!!!
We had too successive possible nights with kind of the same framing, I think this was the first one (04/04/2018 20h59). It was also very windy, that explains the weird corkscrew trajectory of Hubble on the right.
NGC 4666 takes center stage in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This majestic spiral galaxy lies about 80 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo and is undergoing a particularly intense episode of star formation. Astronomers refer to galaxies that rapidly form stars as starburst galaxies. NGC 4666’s starburst is likely due to gravitational interactions with its unruly neighbors – including the nearby galaxy NGC 4668 and a dwarf galaxy, which is a small galaxy made up of a few billion stars.
NGC 4666’s burst of star formation is driving an unusual form of extreme galactic weather known as a superwind – a gigantic transfer of gas from the bright central heart of the galaxy out into space. This superwind is the result of driving winds from short-lived massive stars formed during NGC 4666’s starburst as well as spectacularly energetic supernova explosions. Two supernovae occurred in NGC 4666 within the last decade – one in 2014 and the other in 2019. The star that led to the 2019 supernova was 19 times as massive as our Sun!
Though the torrent of superheated gas emanating from NGC 4666 is truly vast in scale – extending for tens of thousands of light-years – it is invisible in this image. The superwind’s extremely high temperature makes it stand out as a luminous plume in X-ray or radio observations, but it doesn’t show up at the visible wavelengths imaged by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, O. Graur; Acknowledgment: L. Shatz
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #astronomy #space #astrophysics #solarsystemandbeyond #gsfc #Goddard #GoddardSpaceFlightCenter #ESA #EuropeanSpaceAgency #galaxy
The bright variable star V 372 Orionis takes center stage in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, which has also captured a smaller companion star in the upper left of this image. Both stars lie in the Orion Nebula, a colossal region of star formation roughly 1,450 light-years from Earth.
V 372 Orionis is a particular type of variable star known as an Orion Variable. These young stars experience some tempestuous moods and growing pains, which are visible to astronomers as irregular variations in luminosity. Orion Variables are often associated with diffuse nebulae, and V 372 Orionis is no exception; the patchy gas and dust of the Orion Nebula pervade this scene.
This image overlays data from two of Hubble’s instruments. Data from the Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3 at infrared and visible wavelengths were layered to reveal rich details of this corner of the Orion Nebula. Hubble also left its own subtle signature on this astronomical portrait in the form of diffraction spikes that surround the bright stars. The four spikes around the brightest stars in this image form when an intense point source of light, such as starlight, interacts with the four vanes inside Hubble that support the telescope’s secondary mirror. The diffraction spikes of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, on the other hand, are six-pointed due to Webb’s hexagonal mirror segments and 3-legged support structure for the secondary mirror.
Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Bally, M. Robberto
For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2023/hubble-views-a-st...
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has allowed astronomers to view galaxies of all shapes and sizes from nearly every angle. When a galaxy is seen edge-on, the mesmerizing perspective reveals a dazzling slice of the universe. The "Little Sombrero," also known as NGC 7814 or Caldwell 43, is one such galaxy.
Set against a speckled backdrop of more remote galaxies, the Little Sombrero features a bright central bulge, a thin disk full of dust, and a glowing halo of gas and stars that sprawls out into space. It is roughly 40 million light-years from Earth, 80,000 light-years-wide, and billions of years old.
The dusty spiral is named after the grander-appearing Sombrero galaxy, which resembles a broad-brimmed Mexican hat. Also viewed from its edge, the Sombrero galaxy is located just 28 million light-years away and looks larger than the Little Sombrero. In reality, they are nearly the same size, but the Sombrero appears bigger because it is closer.
This image of the Little Sombrero is a combination of visible and infrared observations captured by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys in 2006. The observations were taken to assist astronomers in studying the galaxy's stellar populations, and to help shed light on the evolution of this galaxy and others like it.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, and R. de Jong (Leibniz-Institut fur Astrophysik Potsdam); Image processing: G. Kober (NASA Goddard/Catholic University of America)
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This image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows JO204, a ‘jellyfish galaxy’ so named for the bright tendrils of gas that appear in this image as drifting lazily below JO204’s bright central bulk. The galaxy lies almost 600 million light-years away in the constellation Sextans. Hubble observed JO204 as part of a survey performed with the intention of better understanding star formation under extreme conditions.
While the delicate ribbons of gas beneath JO204 may look like floating jellyfish tentacles, they are in fact the outcome of an intense astronomical process known as ram pressure stripping. Ram pressure is a particular type of pressure exerted on a body when it moves relative to a fluid. An intuitive example is the sensation of pressure you experience when you are standing in an intense gust of wind – the wind is a moving fluid, and your body feels pressure from it. An extension of this analogy is that your body will remain whole and coherent, but the more loosely bound things – like your hair and your clothes – will flap in the wind. The same is true for jellyfish galaxies. They experience ram pressure because of their movement against the intergalactic medium that fills the spaces between galaxies in a galaxy cluster. The galaxies experience intense pressure from that movement, and as a result their more loosely bound gas is stripped away. This gas is mostly the colder and denser gas in the galaxy – gas which, when stirred and compressed by the ram pressure, collapses and forms new stars in the jellyfish’s beautiful tendrils.
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA; M. Gullieuszik and the GASP team
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Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have discovered an immense cloud of hydrogen dubbed “The Behemoth” bleeding from a planet orbiting a nearby star. The enormous, comet-like feature is about 50 times the size of the parent star. The hydrogen is evaporating from a warm, Neptune-sized planet, due to extreme radiation from the star.
This phenomenon has never been seen around an exoplanet so small. It may offer clues to how other planets with hydrogen-enveloped atmospheres could have their outer layers evaporated by their parent star, leaving behind solid, rocky cores. Hot, rocky planets such as these that roughly the size of Earth are known as Hot-Super Earths.
“This cloud is very spectacular, though the evaporation rate does not threaten the planet right now,” explains the study’s leader, David Ehrenreich of the Observatory of the University of Geneva in Switzerland. “But we know that in the past, the star, which is a faint red dwarf, was more active. This means that the planet evaporated faster during its first billion years of existence because of the strong radiation from the young star. Overall, we estimate that it may have lost up to 10 percent of its atmosphere over the past several billion years.”
Read more: www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/hubble-sees-a-behemoth-bleed...
Caption: This artist's concept shows "The Behemoth," an enormous comet-like cloud of hydrogen bleeding off of a warm, Neptune-sized planet just 30 light-years from Earth. Also depicted is the parent star, which is a faint red dwarf named GJ 436. The hydrogen is evaporating from the planet due to extreme radiation from the star. A phenomenon this large has never before been seen around any exoplanet.
Credits: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)
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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This image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope revisits the Veil Nebula, which was featured in a previous Hubble image release. In this image, new processing techniques have been applied, bringing out fine details of the nebula’s delicate threads and filaments of ionized gas.
To create this colorful image, observations were taken by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 instrument using five different filters. The new post-processing methods have further enhanced details of emissions from doubly ionized oxygen (seen here in blues), ionized hydrogen, and ionized nitrogen (seen here in reds).
The Veil Nebula lies around 2,100 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Cygnus (the Swan), making it a relatively close neighbor in astronomical terms. Only a small portion of the nebula was captured in this image.
The Veil Nebula is the visible portion of the nearby Cygnus Loop, a supernova remnant formed roughly 10,000 years ago by the death of a massive star. That star – which was 20 times the mass of the Sun – lived fast and died young, ending its life in a cataclysmic release of energy. Despite this stellar violence, the shockwaves and debris from the supernova sculpted the Veil Nebula’s delicate tracery of ionized gas – creating a scene of surprising astronomical beauty.
The Veil Nebula is also featured in Hubble’s Caldwell Catalog, a collection of astronomical objects that have been imaged by Hubble and are visible to amateur astronomers in the night sky.
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Z. Levay
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