View allAll Photos Tagged SPIRALGALAXY
The tranquil spiral galaxy UGC 12295 basks leisurely in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This galaxy lies around 192 million light-years away in the constellation Pisces, and is almost face-on when viewed from Earth, displaying a bright central bar and tightly wound spiral arms.
Despite appearing as an island of tranquillity in this image, UGC 12295 played host to a catastrophically violent explosion — a supernova — that was first detected in 2015. This supernova prompted two different teams of astronomers to propose Hubble observations of UGC 12295 that would sift through the wreckage of this vast stellar explosion.
Supernovae are the explosive deaths of massive stars, and are responsible for forging many of the elements found here on Earth. The first team of astronomers used Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) to examine the detritus left behind by the supernova in order to better understand the evolution of matter in our Universe.
The second team of astronomers also used WFC3 to explore the aftermath of UGC 12295’s supernova, but their investigation focused on returning to the sites of some of the best-studied nearby supernovae. Hubble’s keen vision can reveal lingering traces of these energetic events, shedding light on the nature of the systems that host supernovae.
[Image Description: A broad spiral galaxy seen directly face-on. It has two bright spiral arms that extend from a bar, which shines from the very centre. Additional fainter arms branch off from these, studded with bright blue patches of star formation. Small, distant galaxies are dotted around it, on a dark background.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Filippenko, J. Lyman; CC BY 4.0
Here is a 44-minute exposure of the large spiral galaxy known as Messier 81 (M81 or Bode’s Galaxy). It is referred to as Bode’s Galaxy as it was first discovered by Johann Elert Bode in 1774 and later picked up by Messier and added to his catalog. The magnitude is listed at a bright 6.9 and the distance is about 11,800,000 light-years.
Tech Specs: Meade 12" LX90, Canon 6D, 44 x 60 seconds at ISO 3200 (includes darks, bias and flats), guided, processed with DSS. Image Date: March 6, 2019. Location: The Dark Side Observatory, Weatherly, PA, USA.
The lazily winding spiral arms of the spectacular galaxy NGC 976 fill the frame of this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This spiral galaxy lies around 150 million light-years from the Milky Way in the constellation Aries. Despite its tranquil appearance, NGC 976 has played host to one of the most violent astronomical phenomena known — a supernova explosion. These cataclysmicly violent events take place at the end of the lives of massive stars, and can outshine entire galaxies for a short period. While supernovae mark the deaths of massive stars, they are also responsible for the creation of heavy elements that are incorporated into later generations of stars and planets.
Supernovae are also a useful aid for astronomers who measure the distances to faraway galaxies. The amount of energy thrown out into space by supernova explosions is very uniform, allowing astronomers to estimate their distances from how bright they appear to be when viewed from Earth. This image — which was created using data from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 — comes from a large collection of Hubble observations of nearby galaxies which host supernovae as well as a pulsating class of stars known as Cepheid variables. Both Cepheids and supernovae are used to measure astronomical distances, and galaxies containing both objects provide useful natural laboratories where the two methods can be calibrated against one another.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Jones, A. Riess et al.; CC BY 4.0
M94 is a galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici. This unusual spiral galaxy has an inner ring of active star formation, blue in color due to many massive, hot young stars. A dimmer outer halo of stars surrounds the brighter galactic core.
Taken under dark skies near Goldendale, WA.
Telescope: Celestron EdgeHD 8" f/10
Reducer: 0.7x
Camera: QSI 683wsg
Mount: Astro-Physics Mach1 GTO
Integration: 50 minutes (10 x 5 min) each RGB; 100 minutes (20 x 5 min) Luminance
Post-Processing Software: PixInsight 1.8.8, PaintShop Pro
This jewel-bright image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows NGC 1385, a spiral galaxy 68 million light-years from Earth, which lies in the constellation Fornax. The image was taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, which is often referred to as Hubble’s workhorse camera thanks to its reliability and versatility. It was installed in 2009 when astronauts last visited Hubble, and 12 years later it remains remarkably productive.
NGC 1385’s home – the Fornax constellation – is not named after an animal or an ancient god, as are many of the other constellations. Fornax is simply the Latin word for a furnace. The constellation was named Fornax by Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille, a French astronomer born in 1713. Lacaille named 14 of the 88 constellations we still recognize today. He seems to have had a penchant for naming constellations after scientific instruments, including Atlia (the air pump), Norma (the ruler, or set square), and Telescopium (the telescope).
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #astronomy #space #astrophysics #solarsystemandbeyond #gsfc #Goddard #GoddardSpaceFlightCenter #ESA #EuropeanSpaceAgency #galaxy #spiralgalaxy
This stunning image by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features the spiral galaxy NGC 5643 in the constellation of Lupus (The Wolf). Looking this good isn’t easy; thirty different exposures, for a total of 9 hours observation time, together with the high resolution and clarity of Hubble, were needed to produce an image of such high level of detail and of beauty.
NGC 5643 is about 60 million light-years away from Earth and has been the host of a recent supernova event (not visible in this latest image). This supernova (2017cbv) was a specific type in which a white dwarf steals so much mass from a companion star that it becomes unstable and explodes. The explosion releases significant amounts of energy and lights up that part of the galaxy.
The observation was proposed by Adam Riess, who was awarded a Nobel Laureate in physics 2011 for his contributions to the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe, alongside Saul Perlmutter and Brian Schmidt.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Riess et al.; CC BY 4.0; Acknowledgement: Mahdi Zamani
This stunning image by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features the spiral galaxy NGC 5643 in the constellation of Lupus (the Wolf). Looking this good isn’t easy; 30 different exposures, for a total of nine hours of observation time, together with the high resolution and clarity of Hubble, were needed to produce an image of such high level of detail and beauty.
NGC 5643 is about 60 million light-years away from Earth and has been the host of a recent supernova event (not visible in this latest image). This supernova (2017cbv) was a specific type in which a white dwarf steals so much mass from a companion star that it becomes unstable and explodes. The explosion releases significant amounts of energy and lights up that part of the galaxy.
The observation was proposed by Adam Riess, who (alongside Saul Perlmutter and Brian Schmidt) was awarded a Nobel Prize in physics in 2011 for his contributions to the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe.
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Riess et al.; acknowledgment: Mahdi Zamani
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #HubbleSpaceTelescope #HST #astronomy #space #astrophysics #solarsystemandbeyond #gsfc #Goddard #GoddardSpaceFlightCenter #ESA #EuropeanSpaceAgency #galaxy
This swirling mass of celestial gas, dust, and stars is a moderately luminous spiral galaxy named ESO 021-G004, located just under 130 million light-years away.
This galaxy has something known as an active galactic nucleus. While this phrase sounds complex, this simply means that astronomers measure a lot of radiation at all wavelengths coming from the centre of the galaxy. This radiation is generated by material falling inwards into the very central region of ESO 021-G004, and meeting the behemoth lurking there — a supermassive black hole. As material falls towards this black hole it is dragged into orbit as part of an accretion disc; it becomes superheated as it swirls around and around, emitting characteristic high-energy radiation until it is eventually devoured.
The data comprising this image were gathered by the Wide Field Camera 3 aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Rosario et al.; CC BY 4.0
The barred spiral galaxy known as NGC 4907 shows its starry face from 270 million light-years away to anyone who can see it from the Northern Hemisphere. This is a new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the face-on galaxy, displaying its beautiful spiral arms, wound loosely around its central bright bar of stars.
Shining brightly below the galaxy is a star that is actually within our own Milky Way galaxy. This star appears much brighter than the billions of stars in NGC 4907 as it is 100,000 times closer, residing only 2,500 light-years away.
NGC 4907 is also part of the Coma Cluster, a group of over 1,000 galaxies, some of which can be seen around NGC 4907 in this image. This massive cluster of galaxies lies within the constellation of Coma Berenices, which is named for the locks of Queen Berenice II of Egypt: the only constellation named after a historical person.
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Gregg
To kickstart the 30th anniversary year of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble has imaged a majestic spiral galaxy. Galaxy UGC 2885 may be the largest known in the local universe. It is 2.5 times wider than our Milky Way and contains 10 times as many stars.
Credits: NASA, ESA, and B. Holwerda (University of Louisville); CC BY 4.0
Lonely galaxies watch a passing comet slip away through the integrated flux.
This is a shot from May of this year. The comet is C/2017 T2 (PANSTARRS), not the current superstar comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE). T2 PANSTARRS spent three nights drifting past galaxies M81 and M82 before moving on. I caught this on the middle of those three nights. Unlike NEOWISE, T2 PANSTARRS was never bright enough to see unaided, and required a very long lens or small telescope to effectively photograph, so images of T2 PANSTARRS are comparatively rare. As you can see, the two comets feature very different tails. 2020 has already proven to be quite the year for Comets.
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This cosmic portrait — captured with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 — shows a stunning view of the spiral galaxy NGC 4571, which lies approximately 60 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices. This constellation — whose name translates as Bernice’s Hair — was named after an Egyptian queen who lived more than 2200 years ago.
As majestic as spiral galaxies like NGC 4571 are, they are far from the largest structures known to astronomers. NGC 4571 is part of the Virgo cluster, which contains more than a thousand galaxies. This cluster is in turn part of the larger Virgo supercluster, which also encompasses the Local Group which contains our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Even larger than superclusters are galaxy filaments — the largest known structures in the Universe.
This image comes from a large programme of observations designed to produce a treasure trove of combined observations from two great observatories: Hubble and ALMA. ALMA, The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, is a vast telescope consisting of 66 high-precision antennas high in the Chilean Andes, which together observe at wavelengths between infrared and radio waves. This allows ALMA to detect the clouds of cool interstellar dust which give rise to new stars. Hubble’s razor-sharp observations at ultraviolet wavelengths, meanwhile, allows astronomers to pinpoint the location of hot, luminous, newly formed stars. Together, the ALMA and Hubble observations provide a vital repository of data to astronomers studying star formation, as well as laying the groundwork for future science with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team; CC BY 4.0
This image depicts a swirling spiral galaxy named NGC 2906.
The blue speckles seen scattered across this galaxy are massive young stars, which emit hot, blue-tinged radiation as they burn through their fuel at an immense rate. The swathes of orange are a mix of older stars that have swollen and cooled, and low-mass stars that were never especially hot to begin with. Owing to their lower temperatures, these stars emit a cooler, reddish, radiation.
This image of NGC 2906 was captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3, an instrument installed on Hubble in 2009 during the telescope’s fourth servicing mission. Hubble observed this galaxy on the hunt for fading light from recent, nearby occurrences of objects known as supernovae.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A Filippenko; CC BY 4.0
This is my first attempt at a processing in PixInsight in almost a year. This image is almost passable, but I have some more ideas to try in processing as time permits. I also want to capture some more data on this target.
ZWO ASI6200MM-Pro
TeleVue NP101is
Losmandy G11
R, G, and B: 13 x 480s
L: 100 x 120s
The Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) taken over 2 nights on the 26th and 27th February 2020. Also visible is NGC 5474 a dwarf galaxy in the bottom left and NGC5477 up and left of the pinwheel.
120 3-minute subs giving 6 hours of exposure with darks, flats and bias
ISO: 400.
Camera: - Nikon D3100.
Wireless Remote: PIXEL TW-283 DC2 2.4G.
Telescope: - Skywatcher 130PDS Newtonian.
Mount: - Skywatcher EQ6R.
Guiding: Skywatcher EvoGuide 50ED & ZWO ASI120MM-Mini.
Processing Software: Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and edited in Star Tools.
Other Software: Stellarium Scope, Stellarium, All Sky Plate Solver, EQMOD, Poth Hub and PHD Guiding 2.
Moon: - New on day 1 and a slither on day 2.
Light Pollution and Location: - Bortle 8 in Davyhulme, Manchester.
Seeing: - Very good (At least comparatively to the last 6 months in Manchester which could be, for all I know, OK)
We had booked of 2 days to go on a city break however this had been curtailed due to the pandemic. Fortunately for the first time in a long time we have had an extended run of fine weather and stargazing. I am finally getting used to the equipment, on both nights I set up in the day, quickly did a polar alignment, quickly got things in focus, did some plate solving, started the guiding and set up the wireless remote to get going. Normally I’m faffing for most of the night, it is weird just being inside waiting for things to happen. The subs I was taking at 1.30am when the object was at the zenith were far superior than the ones taken before midnight. I’d be tempted to reprocess with just these at some point.
I’m still getting to grips with the processing side of things having obsessed over this image over the whole weekend. It would be great to get rid of all the noise but for now I’m giving it a rest.
Would welcome any feedback, good and/or constructive criticism!
These are some test images from the new System 5 scope at Grand Mesa Observatory, Colorado.
The system is:
Scope:
William Optics 12.5" Ritchey-Chrétien w/ 0.8x Reducer
Aperture: 317.5mm
Focal Length: 2032mm
Focal Ratio: f/6.4
Camera:
QHY600M 16-Bit Mono CMOS
Filters: LRGB, Ha, Oiii, Sii (by Chroma)
Pixel Size: 3.76 x 3.76
This image was made using PixInsight on 5 x RGB subs and 4 x Luminosity subs. Although master frames were provided, I calibrated and processed the raw subs myself. I used separate RGB and luminosity processing streams and combined everything just at the end which worked well (including blurring my colour image before channel combination with the luminosity image).
Large spiral galaxy Messier 51 is interacting gravitationally with smaller NGC 5195.
A rich spiral pattern of dark dust clouds reaches deep into the galactic core where a Seyfert 2 active galactic nucleus is located - a dust ring obscures the central accretion disk and supermassive black hole from view.
A small edge on spiral galaxy IC 4277 is seen beneath NGC 5195.
I always like seeing the "spray" of stars thrown off NGC5195 by the interaction - imagine getting flung out of your galaxy!
I also really like the cluster of tiny galaxies mid right edge!
They just barely fit in the view together when using Hyperstar with an Edge HD 925 and Atik 414-EX camera. Optolong RGB CCD filters.
Located in the constellation of Virgo (The Virgin), around 50 million light-years from Earth, NGC 4535 is truly a stunning sight to behold. Despite the incredible quality of this image, taken from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, NGC 4535 has a hazy, somewhat ghostly, appearance when viewed from a smaller telescope. This led amateur astronomer Leland S. Copeland to nickname NGC 4535 the “Lost Galaxy” in the 1950s.
The bright colours in this image aren’t just beautiful to look at, as they actually tell us about the population of stars within this barred spiral galaxy. The bright blue-ish colours, seen nestled amongst NGC 4535’s long, spiral arms, indicate the presence of a greater number of younger and hotter stars. In contrast, the yellower tones of this galaxy’s bulge suggest that this central area is home to stars which are older and cooler.
This galaxy was studied as part of the PHANGS survey, which aims to clarify many of the links between cold gas clouds, star formation, and the overall shape and other properties of galaxies. On 11 January 2021 the first release of the PHANGS-HST Collection was made publicly available.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team; CC BY 4.0
I was never very happy with my original image - my noise reduction resulted in black pits in background space and the colours were faint.
In PixInsight, I have gone back and used a lot more Multiscale Median Transform with a low contrast luminosity mask, working on both background chrominance and luminance noise then using a combination of MLT sharpening and noise reduction on the highlights.
I used the Colour Saturation process twice with a luminosity mask on the unstretched image and the Curves Transformation process on the stretched image (again with luminosity mask) to boost colour.
Using a lot more masking than I used to - doing the same thing with other sorts of photography as well.
Taken with iTelescope T7 from Nerpio in Spain.
25x10min x3 RGB
The larger Messier 51 is interacting gravitationally with smaller NGC 5195.
A rich spiral pattern of dark dust clouds reaches deep into the galactic core where a Seyfert 2 active galactic nucleus is located - a dust ring obscures the central accretion disk and supermassive black hole from view.
A small edge on spiral galaxy IC 4277 is seen beneath NGC 5195.
The galaxy featured here has a shape unlike many of the galaxies familiar to Hubble. Its thousands of bright stars evoke a spiral galaxy, but it lacks the characteristic ‘winding’ structure. The shining red blossoms stand out as well, twisted by clouds of dust — these are the locations of intense star formation. Yet it also radiates a diffuse glow, much like an elliptical galaxy and its core of older, redder stars. This galactic marvel is known to astronomers as NGC 1156.
NGC 1156 is located around 25 million light-years from Earth, in the constellation Aries. It has a variety of different features that are of interest to astronomers. A dwarf irregular galaxy, it’s also classified as isolated, meaning no other galaxies are nearby enough to influence its odd shape and continuing star formation. The extreme energy of freshly formed young stars gives colour to the galaxy, against the red glow of ionised hydrogen gas, while its centre is densely-packed with older generations of stars.
Hubble has captured NGC 1156 before — this new image features data from a galactic gap-filling programme simply titled “Every Known Nearby Galaxy”. Astronomers noticed that only three quarters of the galaxies within just over 30 million light-years of Earth had been observed by Hubble in sufficient detail to study the makeup of the stars within them. They proposed that in between larger projects, Hubble could take snapshots of the remaining quarter — including NGC 1156. Gap-filling programmes like this one ensure that the best use is made of Hubble’s valuable observing time.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. B. Tully, R. Jansen, R. Windhorst; CC BY 4.0
A massive galaxy cluster in the constellation Cetus dominates the centre of this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This image is populated with a serene collection of elliptical and spiral galaxies, but galaxies surrounding the central cluster — which is named SPT-CL J0019-2026 — appear stretched into bright arcs, as if distorted by a gargantuan magnifying glass. This cosmic contortion is called gravitational lensing, and it occurs when a massive object like a galaxy cluster has a sufficiently powerful gravitational field to distort and magnify the light from background objects. Gravitational lenses magnify light from objects that would usually be too distant and faint to observe, and so these lenses can extend Hubble’s view even deeper into the Universe.
This observation is part of an ongoing project to fill short gaps in Hubble’s observing schedule by systematically exploring the most massive galaxy clusters in the distant Universe, in the hopes of identifying promising targets for further study with both Hubble and the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. This particular galaxy cluster lies at a vast distance of 4.6 billion light years from Earth.
Each year, the Space Telescope Science Institute is inundated with observing proposals for Hubble, in which astronomers suggest targets for observation. Even after selecting only the very best proposals, scheduling observations of all of Hubble’s targets for a year is a formidable task. There is sometimes a small fraction of observing time left unused in Hubble’s schedule, so in its ‘spare time’ the telescope has a collection of objects to explore — including the lensing galaxy cluster shown in this image.
[Image description: A cluster of large galaxies, surrounded by various stars and smaller galaxies on a dark background. The central cluster is mostly made of bright elliptical galaxies that are surrounded by a warm glow. Nearby the cluster is the stretched, distorted arc of a galaxy, gravitationally lensed by the cluster.]
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, H. Ebeling; CC BY 4.0
Pictured here is the captivating galaxy NGC 2525. Located nearly 70 million light-years from Earth, this galaxy is part of the constellation of Puppis in the southern hemisphere. Together with the Carina and the Vela constellations, it makes up an image of the Argo from ancient greek mythology.
Another kind of monster, a supermassive black hole, lurks at the centre of NGC 2525. Nearly every galaxy contains a supermassive black hole, which can range in mass from hundreds of thousands to billions of times the mass of the Sun.
Hubble has captured a series of images of NGC2525 as part of one of its major investigations; measuring the expansion rate of the Universe, which can help answer fundamental questions about our Universe’s very nature. ESA/Hubble has now published a unique timelapse of this galaxy and it’s fading supernova.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Riess and the SH0ES team; CC BY 4.0
Acknowledgment: Mahdi Zamani
NGC 2403 is an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Camelopardalis. NGC 2403 is an outlying member of the M81 Group, and is approximately 8 million light-years distant. Star forming regions can be seen in this galaxy.
Tech Specs: Orion 8" f/8 Ritchey-Chretien Astrograph Telescope, Celestron CGEM-DX pier mounted, ZWO ASI290MC and ASI071MC-Pro, ZWO AAPlus, ZWO EAF, 54 x 60 seconds at -10C plus darks and flats, stacked in DSS. Image Date: November 6, 2021. Location: The Dark Side Observatory, Weatherly, PA, USA (Bortle Class 4).
Webb's picture of the month December is dominated by NGC 7469, a luminous, face-on spiral galaxy approximately 90 000 light-years in diameter that lies roughly 220 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus.
This spiral galaxy has recently been studied as part of the Great Observatories All-sky LIRGs Survey (GOALS), which aims to study the physics of star formation, black hole growth, and feedback in four nearby, merging luminous infrared galaxies. Other galaxies studied as part of the survey include previous ESA Webb Pictures of the Month II ZW 096 and IC 1623.
NGC 7469 is home to an active galactic nucleus (AGN), which is an extremely bright central region that is dominated by the light emitted by dust and gas as it falls into the galaxy’s central black hole. This galaxy provides astronomers with the unique opportunity to study the relationship between AGNs and starburst activity because this particular object hosts an AGN that is surrounded by a starburst ring at a distance of a mere 1500 light-years. While NGC 7469 is one of the best studied AGNs in the sky, the compact nature of this system and the presence of a great deal of dust have made it difficult for scientists to achieve both the resolution and sensitivity needed to study this relationship in the infrared. Now, with Webb, astronomers can explore the galaxy’s starburst ring, the central AGN, and the gas and dust in between.
Using Webb’s MIRI, NIRCam and NIRspec instruments to obtain images and spectra of NGC 7469 in unprecedented detail, the GOALS team has uncovered a number of details about the object. This includes very young star-forming clusters never seen before, as well as pockets of very warm, turbulent molecular gas, and direct evidence for the destruction of small dust grains within a few hundred light-years of the nucleus — proving that the AGN is impacting the surrounding interstellar medium. Furthermore, highly ionised, diffuse atomic gas seems to be exiting the nucleus at roughly 6.4 million kilometres per hour — part of a galactic outflow that had previously been identified from the ground, but is now revealed in stunning detail with Webb. With analysis of the rich Webb datasets still underway, additional secrets of this local AGN and starburst laboratory are sure to be revealed.
A prominent feature of this image is the striking six-pointed star that perfectly aligns with the heart of NGC 7469. Unlike the galaxy, this is not a real celestial object, but an imaging artifact known as a diffraction spike, caused by the bright, unresolved AGN. Diffraction spikes are patterns produced as light bends around the sharp edges of a telescope. Webb has three struts, with two angled at 150 degrees from its vertical strut, and its primary mirror is composed of hexagonal segments that each contain edges for light to diffract against. Webb’s struts are designed so that their diffraction spikes partially overlap with those created by the mirrors. Both of these lead to Webb’s complex star pattern.
Credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, L. Armus, A. S. Evans
Messier 88 (M88 or NGC 4501) is about 47 million light years away in the direction of the constellation Coma Berenices and belongs to the Virgo Cluster. I simply love how this galaxy poses for photographs, it’s hard to pick a bad angle with its symmetrical arms and well defined spiral. In this image, I used 60 x 60 second exposures shooting at f/10 on my Meade 12” LX-90 telescope using the ZWO ASI071mc-Pro cooled to 5C.
Tech Specs: Meade 12” LX-90, ZWO ASI071mc-Pro, 60 x 60 second exposures, guided using a ZWO ASI290MC and Orion 60mm guide scope. Captured using Sequence Generator Pro and processed using PixInsight. Image date: May 26, 2020. Location: The Dark Side Observatory, Weatherly, PA, USA.
NGC 1672 is a barred spiral galaxy located in the constellation Dorado and is 60 million light-years away from earth.
This Data was taken from the Hubble Legacy Archive and processed by me.
Programms used for processing: Pixinsight, Darktable, GIMP
Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, and obtained from the Hubble Legacy Archive, which is a collaboration between the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI/NASA), the Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility (ST-ECF/ESA) and the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC/NRC/CSA).
NGC 1055 is an edge-on spiral galaxy located in the constellation Cetus. The galaxy has a prominent nuclear bulge crossed by a wide knotty dark lane of dust and gas. The spiral arm structure appears to be elevated above the galaxy's plane and obscures the upper half of the bulge. Discovered on December 19, 1783 by William Herschel.
A rough distance estimate for NGC 1055 is 52 million light-years, with a diameter of about 115,800 light-years. NGC 1055 has extremely active star formation and is a bright infrared and radio source.
It is in a binary galaxy system with neighboring M77 (previously imaged) and there is about 7 million light years between them. Unfortunately I could not quite get both galaxies in the same image field!
Capture info:
Location: SkyPi Remote Observatory, Pie Town, NM US
Telescope: Officina Stellare RiDK 400mm
Camera: SBIG STX 16803
Mount: Paramount MEII
Data: LRGB 8,7,7,7
Processing: Pixinsight
To me NGC 2841 looks like a miniature Andromeda Galaxy. It is often listed on various “best of the” NGC objects lists. NGC 2841 is an unbarred spiral galaxy in the northern constellation of Ursa Major and is about 46 million light-years away from Earth.
Tech Specs: Meade 12” LX-90, Celestron CGEM-DX pier mounted, ZWO ASI071mc-Pro, Antares Focal Reducer, 60 x 60 second at -10C, 30 darks and 30 flats, guided using a ZWO ASI290MC and Orion 60mm guide scope. Captured using Sequence Generator Pro and processed using PixInsight. Image date: March 2, 2021. Location: The Dark Side Observatory, Weatherly, PA, USA.
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope sees galaxies of all shapes, sizes, brightnesses, and orientations in the cosmos. Sometimes, the telescope gazes at a galaxy oriented sideways — as shown here. The spiral galaxy featured in this Picture of the Week is called NGC 3717, and it is located about 60 million light-years away in the constellation of Hydra (The Sea Serpent).
Seeing a spiral almost in profile, as Hubble has here, can provide a vivid sense of its three-dimensional shape. Through most of their expanse, spiral galaxies are shaped like a thin pancake. At their cores, though, they have bright, spherical, star-filled bulges that extend above and below this disc, giving these galaxies a shape somewhat like that of a flying saucer when they are seen edgeon.
NGC 3717 is not captured perfectly edge-on in this image; the nearer part of the galaxy is tilted ever so slightly down, and the far side tilted up. This angle affords a view across the disc and the central bulge (of which only one side is visible).
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Rosario; CC BY 4.0
Thanks to everyone who attended last nights Hero workshop astro event out at Lake Ellesmere! We had absolutely perfect conditions for some great astro, crystal clear skies and a calm evening giving us some nice reflections.
We shot several views and even had some fun with wire wool
Posted with Photerloo
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The spiral galaxy NGC 298 basks in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 298 lies around 89 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus, and appears isolated in this image — only a handful of distant galaxies and foreground stars accompany the lonely galaxy. While NGC 298 seems peaceful, in 1986 it was host to one of astronomy's most extreme events: a catastrophic stellar explosion known as a Type II supernova.
Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys captured NGC 298 as part of an investigation into the origins of Type II supernovae. All Type II supernovae are produced by the collapse and subsequent explosion of young, massive stars, but they can produce a spectacular diversity of brightnesses and spectral features.
Astronomers suspect that the diversity of this cosmic firework show might be due to gas and dust being stripped from the stars that will eventually produce Type II supernovae. Observing the region surrounding supernova explosions can reveal traces of the progenitor star’s history preserved in this lost mass, as well as revealing any companion stars that survived the supernova. Hubble used the brief periods between scheduled observations to explore the aftermath of a number of Type II supernovae, hoping to piece together the relationship between Type II supernovae and the stellar systems which give rise to them.
[Image description: A spiral galaxy. It is tilted diagonally, and slightly towards the viewer, making its core and disc separately visible. Its disc is speckled by small stars, has threads of dark reddish dust and bubbles of bright, glowing gas. The core shines brightly in a warmer colour. Several tiny stars and small galaxies are included in the black background.]
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, C. Kilpatrick CC BY 4.0
NGC 4244, also known as the Silver Needle Galaxy, is found in the constellation Canes Venatici. Fairly low surface brightness requires some long exposures to bring out much detail, this is only just under one hour of exposure time. This spiral galaxy is orientated sideways, from our view, thus hiding the spiral arms typically seen. You can still see some dark dust lanes and clumps of gas in the profile.
Technical Card:
•Constellation:Canes Venatici
•Right ascension: 12h 17m 29.6s
•Declination: +37° 48′ 26″
•Distance: 13 million ly
•Apparent magnitude (V): +10.2/+10.6
Imaging Specs: Meade 12" LX90, Canon 6D, 54 x 60 seconds at ISO 3200 (includes darks, bias and flats), guided, stacked with DSS, processed with ImagesPlus. Image Date: April 11, 2019. Location: The Dark Side Observatory, Weatherly, PA, USA.
Known affectionately as the "Hamburger galaxy", this is an edge on spiral galaxy that is part of a small group of galaxies called the "Leo Triplet"
Its probably had gravitational interactions with the other 2 galaxies in the group which has resulted in a warping of the plane of the galaxy as seen towards the left hand edge.
Deeper images show a tail of stars from the right of the galaxy trailing off towards some of the other members but its just too faint here.
Cold galactic dust and hydrogen clouds are well seen edge on here, along with the glow of the galactic core and a peripheral blue edge from spiral arm stars.
In a way , not unlike the view we get of our Milky Way galaxy.
There is even a small, faint dwarf galaxy seen just above NGC3628, just like one of our own Magellanic cloud galaxies.
LRGB subs x 8 processed in PixInsight. Ive started to use selective colour masks which is working well for enhancing galactic cores and spiral arms whilst leaving everything else untouched. Used a little TGVDenoise just at the end for noise reduction in the background.
These are some test images from the new System 5 scope at Grand Mesa Observatory, Colorado.
The system is:
Scope:
William Optics 12.5" Ritchey-Chrétien w/ 0.8x Reducer
Aperture: 317.5mm
Focal Length: 2032mm
Focal Ratio: f/6.4
Camera:
QHY600M 16-Bit Mono CMOS
Filters: LRGB, Ha, Oiii, Sii (by Chroma)
Pixel Size: 3.76 x 3.76
On 10 December, ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray space observatory is celebrating its 20th launch anniversary. In those two decades, the observatory has supplied a constant stream of outstanding science. One area that the mission has excelled in is the science of black holes, having had a profound effect on our understanding of these cosmic enigmas.
Black holes are celestial objects so dense that nothing, not even light, can escape their pull. In this artist’s impression, the weird shapes of light around the black hole are what computer simulations predict will happen in the vicinity of its intense gravitational field.
Although neither XMM-Newton nor any other telescope can actually see black holes in this detail, the mission’s data and observations have provided a great source of information about these mysterious gravitational traps. In particular, XMM-Newton has been particularly good at isolating the X-rays given out by high-temperature, ionised atoms of iron as they swirl towards doom in the black hole.
The X-rays given out from the iron contain information about the geometry and dynamics of the black hole. In 2013, XMM-Newton was used to measure such emission in order to study the rotation rate of the supermassive black hole at the centre of the spiral galaxy NGC 1365.
Supermassive black holes, with masses between millions and billions of times the mass of our Sun, are thought to lurk in the centre of almost every large galaxy in the Universe. Their rotation rate is important because it can give away important details about the history of their host galaxy.
A fast rotating black hole is fed by a uniform stream of matter falling together, or by galaxies merging with one another, whereas a slowly rotating black hole is buffeted from all sides by small clumps of matter hitting it. In the case of NGC 1365, XMM-Newton showed that the black hole was rotating quickly and so the galaxy probably grew steadily over time, or merged with others.
More recently, XMM-Newton discovered mysterious flashes from the black hole at the centre of another galaxy called GSN 069. These flares took place every nine hours or so, raising the brightness of the X-ray emission by a factor of 100. These eruptions are thought to be coming from the matter caught in the black hole’s gravitational grip or from a less massive black hole circling the more massive one.
As XMM-Newton continues into its third decade, black holes and the galaxies they are found in will continue to be a priority target.
More about XMM-Newton’s first two decades in space:
XMM-Newton at 20: The fascinating X-ray Universe
XMM-Newton at 20: The large-scale Universe
XMM-Newton at 20: Taking care of the science operations
Credits: ESA/XMM-Newton/I. de la Calle
NGC 7217 è una galassia a spirale della costellazione di Pegaso, distante circa 50 milioni di anni luce e con dimensioni apparenti di 3.2’x3.9’ (circa 18 volte più piccola del diametro apparente della Luna piena). La caratteristica principale di questa galassia è la presenza di diversi anelli concentrici di stelle nel suo nucleo: il più esterno di questi è quello più ricco di gas ed è quello che ospita il maggior numero di episodi di formazione stellare, apparendo quindi di colore azzurro.
Dati tecnici di ripresa:
Tubo ottico Celestron C.92 Edge HD (D=235mm, F=2350mm)
Montatura Losmandy G11 con FS2
Camera CCD Atik 4000 raffreddata a -20C
Guida Fuori asse Proxima con Lodestar
Esposizione totale 6.5h così ripartita:
L:R:G:B 240’:49’:49’:49’ --> (24x600” bin1):(7x420”bin2): (7x420”bin2): ):(7x420”bin2)
Ripresa effettuata da Pian dell’Armà (PV)
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NGC 7217 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Pegasus, about 50 million light years and apparent size of 3.2'x3.9 ' (about 18 times smaller than the apparent diameter of the full Moon).
The main feature of this galaxy is the presence of several concentric rings of stars in its nucleus: the outermost of these is the most rich in gas and is the one that contains the largest number of episodes of star formation, thus appearing blue.
Technical data:
Optical Tube Celestron Edge HD C.92 (D = 235mm, F = 2350mm)
Mount Losmandy G11 with FS2
CCD camera Atik 4000 cooled to -20C
Off axis guide Proxima with Lodestar
Total exposure 6.5h distributed as follows:
L:R:G:B 240':49':49':49' --> (24x600" bin1): (7x420" bin2):
(7x420" bin2):(7x420" bin2)
Taken in Pian del'Armà (Northern Italy)
I doubt very much if this glyph is supposed to be a galaxy, but it reminded me of one. Or, perhaps it's a comet. Or, maybe nothing at all. Who really knows?
Ballroom Cave Ruins, Cedar Mesa, Utah.
This new Hubble image is centered on NGC 5793, a spiral galaxy over 150 million light-years away in the constellation of Libra. This galaxy has two particularly striking features: a beautiful dust lane and an intensely bright center — much brighter than that of our own galaxy, or indeed those of most spiral galaxies we observe.
NGC 5793 is a Seyfert galaxy. These galaxies have incredibly luminous centers that are thought to be caused by hungry supermassive black holes — black holes that can be billions of times the size of the sun — that pull in and devour gas and dust from their surroundings.
This galaxy is of great interest to astronomers for many reasons. For one, it appears to house objects known as masers. Whereas lasers emit visible light, masers emit microwave radiation. The term "masers" comes from the acronym Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Maser emission is caused by particles that absorb energy from their surroundings and then re-emit this in the microwave part of the spectrum.
Naturally occurring masers, like those observed in NGC 5793, can tell us a lot about their environment; we see these kinds of masers in areas where stars are forming. In NGC 5793 there are also intense mega-masers, which are thousands of times more luminous than the sun.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and E. Perlman (Florida Institute of Technology)
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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Low Surface Brightness Galaxy
“NGC 247 also known as Caldwell 62 and commonly known as the Claw Galaxy is an intermediate spiral galaxy (although it is sometimes classified as a dwarf spiral galaxy) about 11.1 Mly away in the constellation Cetus. NGC 247 is a member of the Sculptor Group, and is 70,000 light years in diameter.
NGC 247 has an unusually large void on one side of its spiral disk. This void contains some older, redder stars but no younger, bluer stars.” Wikipedia
Long 25.6 hours LRGBH exposure. Many small galaxies visible in background. H alpha added to red.
July to November 2022
Planewave CDK24, 0.6 m telescope.
Local enhancement on galaxy. Using new SPCC method.
FLI ProLine PL9000
Focal Length: 3962 mm, f6.5
PI, Lightroom, NXT
El Sauce Observatory
Río Hurtado, Coquimbo Region, Chile
Credits: Eric Ganz / Telescope Live
This smattering of celestial sequins is a spiral galaxy named NGC 4455, located in the northern constellation of Coma Berenices (Berenice’s Hair). This might sound like an odd name for a constellation — and in fact it is somewhat unusual; it’s the only modern constellation to be named in honour of a real person from history: Queen Berenice II of Egypt.
The story of Queen Berenice II is an interesting one. A ruling queen of the ancient Greek city of Cyrene in modern-day Libya, and later a queen of Ptolemaic Egypt through her marriage to her cousin Ptolemy III Euergetes, Berenice became known for sacrificing locks of her hair as an offering to ensure her husband’s safe return from battle. Her husband did indeed return safely and her hair, which she had left in a Zephyrium temple, had disappeared — it had apparently been stolen and placed among the stars.
Should it be located in NGC 4455, it travelled a long way. The galaxy is about 45 million light-years away. This image was taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, I. Karachentsev et al.; CC BY 4.0
M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy, in Canes Venatici.
Thoughts?
150mm f/7 telescope
5D2, ISO 1600
42x6min (4.2hr)
2018.05.04-05
Here is a combined view of the Cigar Galaxy (M82) and Bode’s Galaxy (M81) taken during imaging session in February 2017.
Tech Specs: Bode’s Galaxy (on the right) composed of 53 x 60 second images, Cigar Galaxy (on the left) composed of 28 x 60 second exposures. All at ISO 3,200 with 5 x 60 second darks and 5 x 1/4000 second bias frames (captured using BackyardEOS software) using a Meade LX90 12” telescope and Canon 6D camera mounted on a Celestron CGEM-DX mount. Guided using an ASI290MC mounted on a Canon 400mm f/5.6 lens using PHD2 software. Imaging was done on February 20 and 26, 2017 from Weatherly, Pennsylvania. Manually aligned.
My Peaceful Universe
Interplanetary Travel
Youtube: June 6, 2020 Full Moon "Moonrise" 1080p HD Full Moon video and Relaxing Ambient Music - Canon
Camera: Canon EOS Kiss X7i
Photograph by Yusuf Alioglu
Location: Outer space (space)
Galaxies abound in this spectacular Hubble image; spiral arms swirl in all colours and orientations, and fuzzy ellipticals can be seen speckled across the frame as softly glowing smudges on the sky. Each visible speck of a galaxy is home to countless stars. A few stars closer to home shine brightly in the foreground, while a massive galaxy cluster nestles at the very centre of the image; an immense collection of maybe thousands of galaxies, all held together by the relentless force of gravity.
Galaxy clusters are some of the most interesting objects in the cosmos. They are the nodes of the cosmic web that permeates the entire Universe — to study them is to study the organisation of matter on the grandest of scales. Not only are galaxy clusters ideal subjects for the study of dark matter and dark energy, but they also allow the study of farther-flung galaxies. Their immense gravitational influence means they distort the spacetime around them, causing them to act like giant zoom lenses. The light of background galaxies is warped and magnified as it passes through the galaxy cluster, allowing astronomers insight into the distant — and therefore early — Universe.
This image was taken by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide-Field Camera 3 as part of an observing programme called RELICS (Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey). RELICS imaged 41 massive galaxy clusters with the aim of finding the brightest distant galaxies for the forthcoming NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to study.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, RELICS, CC BY 4.0
NGC 2903 is a barred spiral galaxy about 30 million light-years away in the constellation Leo. It was discovered by William Herschel who cataloged it on November 16, 1784. NGC 2905 is a bright star cloud within this galaxy.
Tech Specs: Meade 12” LX-90, Canon 6D (stock), 60 x 60 second exposures, ISO 3200, guided using a ZWO ASI290MC and Orion 60mm guide scope. Captured using Sequence Generator Pro and processed using PixInsight. Image date: February 22, 2020. Location: The Dark Side Observatory, Weatherly, PA, USA.
A delicate tracery of dust and bright star clusters threads across this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. The bright tendrils of gas and stars belong to the barred spiral galaxy NGC 5068, whose bright central bar is visible in the upper left of this image. NGC 5068 lies around 17 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo.
This portrait of NGC 5068 is part of a campaign to create an astronomical treasure trove, a repository of observations of star formation in nearby galaxies. Previous gems from this collection can be seen here and here. These observations are particularly valuable to astronomers for two reasons. The first is because star formation underpins so many fields in astronomy, from the physics of the tenuous plasma that lies between stars to the evolution of entire galaxies. By observing the formation of stars in nearby galaxies, astronomers hope to kick-start major scientific advances with some of the first available data from Webb.
The second reason is that Webb’s observations build on other studies using telescopes including the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and some of the world’s most capable ground-based observatories. Webb collected images of 19 nearby star-forming galaxies which astronomers could then combine with catalogues from Hubble of 10 000 star clusters, spectroscopic mapping of 20 000 star-forming emission nebulae from the Very Large Telescope (VLT), and observations of 12 000 dark, dense molecular clouds identified by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). These observations span the electromagnetic spectrum and give astronomers an unprecedented opportunity to piece together the minutiae of star formation.
With its ability to peer through the gas and dust enshrouding newborn stars, Webb is the perfect telescope to explore the processes governing star formation. Stars and planetary systems are born amongst swirling clouds of gas and dust that are opaque to observations in visible light, like many from Hubble or the VLT. The keen vision at infrared wavelengths of two of Webb’s instruments — MIRI and NIRCam — allowed astronomers to see right through the gargantuan clouds of dust in NGC 5068 and capture the processes of star formation as they happened. This image combines the capabilities of these two instruments, providing a truly unique look at the composition of NGC 5068.
NGC 5068 MIRI image
NGC 5068 NIRCam image
[Image description: A close-in image of a spiral galaxy, showing its core and part of a spiral arm. Thousands upon thousands of tiny stars that make it up can be seen, most dense in a whitish bar that forms its core. Clumps and filaments of dust form an almost skeletal structure that follows the twist of the galaxy and its spiral arm. Large, glowing bubbles of red gas are hidden in the dust.]
Credit:
ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-JWST Team
The galaxy NGC 4380 looks like a special effect straight out of a science fiction or fantasy film in this Hubble Picture of the Week, swirling like a gaping portal to another dimension.
In the grand scheme of things, though, the galaxy is actually quite ordinary. Spiral galaxies like NGC 4380 are one of the most common types of galaxy in the Universe. These colossal collections of stars, often numbering in the hundreds of billions, are shaped like a flat disc, sometimes with a rounded bulge in the centre. Graceful spiral arms outlined by dark lanes of dust wind around the bulging core, which glows brightly and has the highest concentration of stars in the galaxy.
Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, P. Erwin; CC BY 4.0