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A brand new pinhole camera from Reality So Subtle (35r). It has 2 pinholes, one on the front and one on the back, The back one is used dfor shooting "redscale". © www.johnfar.com
Sometimes you look outside your window and Mother Nature reminds you of how insignificant you are.
And you revel in it.
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After Burning Man 1995, I found a small gold amulet in the dust during cleanup. It was a stylized version of the Venus of Willendorf. I tied it around my neck and wore it for the next year and a half. It seemed to have protected me during the turmoil and tragedy of 1996. A couple of months before the 1997 event, I went into the hot springs pool on the Fly Ranch. Somehow the string came loose and it slipped from my neck and sank to the bottom. It's still down there, somewhere in the mud.
.
But yet, she is still with me.
NGC 5194 (= PGC 47404 = M51), The Whirlpool Galaxy
(also, with NGC 5195 = Arp 85), Discovered (Oct 13, 1773) by Charles Messier. An 8th-magnitude spiral galaxy (type SA(s)bc pec) in Canes Venatici (RA 13 29 52.6, Dec +47 11 44)
Historical Identification:
Physical Information: NGC 5194's recessional velocity of 465 km/sec is too small to provide a reliable distance indication, but happens to provide a relatively accurate result of 22 million light years. Redshift-independent distance estimates have ranged from 19 to 30 million light years, but observations of a 2005 supernova in NGC 5195 slightly lowered the estimated distance to 23 ± 4 million light years. Given that and its apparent size of 11.2 by 6.9 arcmin, the galaxy is about 70 thousand light years across. Its spectacular spiral structure is believed to be due to its interaction with NGC 5195, with which it forms Arp 85. (Note: The history of discovery implies that M51 should apply only to NGC 5195, but it is not uncommon for NGC 5194 to be referred to as M51A and for NGC 5195 to be referred to as M51B, as though they had both discovered by Messier.) NGC has a bright central nucleus, making it a Seyfert galaxy (type Sy 2). An extensive bridge of stars, gas and dust connects M51 with its smaller companion. Clusters of hot, bright young stars, and gases heated by their radiation illuminate the spiral arms, and clearly define them. Thick dust lanes straddle the arms, sweep across the "bridge" and partially obscure the companion. The Whirlpool Galaxy was the first nebula observed to have a spiral structure, by the 3rd Lord Rosse, using the 72-inch Leviathan (the largest telescope in the world for many decades) at Birr Castle in 1845.
"Excerpt courtesy of Courtney Seligman"
cseligman.com/text/atlas/ngc51a.htm#5194
Image... Cherryvalley Observatory (I83). Telescope: 0.2-m SCT & SBIG STL-1301E CCD Camera @f7.6. Image Scale 2.17 arcsec/pixel, Field of View 46 x 37 arcmins.
Flat field and dark subtract calibration frames. Combined Stack of two images of 210 seconds each unfiltered and unbinned. CCD operating temperature: -42 degrees. Image acquisition and processing: CCD Soft v5, TheSky6 Professional and Mira Pro v7. December 27th 2014.
Dr. Halton Arp originally compiled the Atlas of peculiar galaxies with photographs he made mainly using the Palomar 200-inch telescope and the 48-inch Schmidt telescope between the years 1961 to 1966. Original image can be found here: ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp85.jpeg
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SN 2018epf was originally discovered by ATLAS with their internal designation of ATLAS18szp. It was posted to the Transient Domain Server (TNS) as AT 2018epf. A team called SCAT took a spectrum and their analysis was of a Type Ia/b supernova at a redshift of 0.0377. Upon sending their data to TNS the designation was changed from AT 2018epf to SN 2018epf.
However, the object flagged by the ATLAS team at RA = 16:50:31.703, Decl. = +43:03:27.18 does not look like a galaxy, but instead an orange star in the SDSS. The Gaia data for this star shows proper motion of –26.7 +/- 3.9 mas in RA and –29.7 +/- 3.9 mas in Decl. That suggests movement to the southwest. The video showing the POSS1 image (b&w) and the SDSS image (color) some 50 years apart confirms movement in that direction. The Gaia parallax suggests a distance of some 632 light-years. With a reported V magnitude of 17.14 that corresponds to an absolute magnitude of about +10.7 which suggests this star is either a late-type K or very early M dwarf. Note a fainter star to the right of the star which shows lateral movement between the frames.
Furthermore, David Bishop’s supernova site reports a follow up image that shows the object was unconfirmed. As of the moment this report was done, a click of the link to that image would not pull up.
What did the SCAT team train their instrument on? Did they take a spectrum of this star and mistake it for a supernova? Or, did they take a spectrum of another object and reported it for the wrong object? If it was the wrong object, what was the correct one? A check of the discoveries around that time found too many to say it must be this one, but a couple of possibilities are SN 2018eva (Type Ib) or SN 2018euz (Type Ia).
There is an odd thing about the SDSS image of the star. When you enlarge the image, the star is slightly oval even though other stars appear nearly circular. The PanSTARRS images also show it being oval. Maybe it is an unresolved double star of two stars of similar brightness and type. Second, there appears to be a red jet extending northwest. A check of the SDSS FITS images shows it on more than one image and it also appears on the PanSTARRS images so it must be a real object. Most likely this is a very distant background galaxy that was too faint to show up on the earlier POSS1 image.
A check of the CRTS database does not show any variability outside of the error bars, but that does not preclude a flare star. Perhaps the ATLAS team caught a flare from this star.
TNS entry for SN 2018epf: wis-tns.weizmann.ac.il/object/2018epf
SCAT ATel of the classification: www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=11919
SDSS: skyserver.sdss.org/dr16/en/tools/explore/Summary.aspx?id=...
David Bishop’s supernova archive for 2018: www.rochesterastronomy.org/sn2018/index.html
Two worlds of disruptive technology collide.
On June 21, 2010, Burning Man made the hyper-jump into the metaverse:
~ Photo by Lane Hartwell. fetching.net/
How to automatically dim your screen on Linux
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