When I spotted this, I imagined it could be a special 'ice-frog', who was being fed by a secret food-line……..but of course it isn't that at all ;-))

Marian Jenkins told me in a respons on a previous photo that this phenomenon is called "Star formation or web formation".

Thank you, Marian, also for the info here below:

"Such star patterns often surround holes in ice, but the origin of their shape has always been a mystery. ... The star patterns are formed when a hole in a recently-frozen lake allows water to swell up from beneath and spread over the snow-covered surface, leaving dark “fingers” of melted ice stemming from a central point.

Asterism (astronomy)" - Wikipedia

Messier 51

science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/explore-the-night...

I had been shooting more difficult targets from my light polluted yard on this night and figured I would go for something less frustrating before packing up. Few objects reveal as much detail as the Orion Nebula in short exposures. This is a stack of 27 20 s Hα exposures and 26 30 s [O III] exposures. The filters and camera (414-EX mono) are from Atik. Telescope is a Celestron Edge HD 925 at f/2.3 with Hyperstar. Images were pre-processed in Nebulosity, then registered and stacked in PixInsight. PI was also used for channel combination and further processing. Final touches in Photoshop.

I'm not sure how much time I'm going to get to play now that the semester has started, so I figured I'd get this out there. I hope I can add data over the next few months.

The Pleiades, aka Messier 45, embedded in the dusty nebulosity the star cluster is passing through in Taurus. The dust clouds are illuminated by light from the hot young blue stars.

This is a stack of just 12 x 4-minute exposures, as incoming Earth clouds spoiled some frames and prevented more exposures. Even so, some high haze hampered some of the images used in the final set.

All were with the Starfield Optics Géar115 f/7 apo refractor taken as part of testing the scope, with its 0.8x Adjustable Reducer for f/5.6 and with the stock 45-megapixel Canon R5 at ISO 800. Autoguided and dithered with the MGEN3 autoguider on the Astro-Physics Mach1 mount. No dark frames or LENR applied on this mild night in November.

I brought out the faint dust clouds with the application of luminosity masks created with Lumenzia extension panel in Photoshop, plus an application of the Nebula Filter action from the Photokemi Star Tools action set on a separate stamped layer and blended into the final image. Noise reduction with RC-Astro Noise XTerminator. All stacking, alignment and processing in Photoshop.

This is one of the best known regions of ionized hydrogen in our skies. Located in Sagittarius near the point of the winter solstice, the Lagoon Nebula is a sprawling region of active star formation about 4,000 light years away. Where are the stars forming? You have to look for the dark knots of material in this image. Those dusty regions are where the density is high enough to block the background light from nebula. That is where gravitational collapse is causing enough material to come together to make new stars.

I used Atk Hα and OIII narrowband filters with an Atik 414-EX monochrome camera on a Celestron Edge HD 925 with HyperStar to take sets of 2 minute guided exposures. The HyperStar filter slider system made it easy to switch from one filter to the other. This was shot entirely from light polluted skies in Long Beach, CA. Hydrogen data was mapped to R, and oxygen data to G and B. This is two panels combined as a mosaic. Preprocessing in Nebulosity; stacking, channel and mosaic combination, and processing in PixInsight; some final touches in Photoshop.

The image spans an area of 68' by 54' at a scale of 2.5"/pixel.

Image center is near RA 18h 3m 43s, DEC -24° 19'.

🌌 IC5070 – The Pelican Nebula in Narrowband 🌌 Captured over 17 hours using QHY286m, EQ8-R mount, and the Askar APO185 refractor, this reel showcases the stunning transitions between SII, H-alpha, and OIII filters—culminating in the full composite image.

IC5070, also known as the Pelican Nebula, lies about 1,800 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. Its shape resembles a pelican in profile, but what makes it truly fascinating is the intense star formation happening behind its dark dust clouds. The nebula is part of a larger star-forming region near the North America Nebula and is rich in ionized gases—perfect for narrowband imaging.

🔴 SII reveals sulfur-rich regions ❤️ H-alpha highlights hydrogen emissions 🔵 OIII brings out oxygen structures

This palette not only brings out the hidden beauty of IC5070 but also tells a story of cosmic chemistry and stellar birth.

🎯 General Astrophotography Hashtags

#Astrophotography

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The Pelican Nebula is an H II region associated with the North America Nebula in the constellation Cygnus. The gaseous contortions of this emission nebula bear a resemblance to a pelican, giving rise to its name. The Pelican Nebula is located nearby first magnitude star Deneb, and is divided from its more prominent neighbour, the North America Nebula, by a molecular cloud filled with dark dust. The nebula has a particularly active mix of star formation and evolving gas clouds. (Wikipedia)

Added SII and OIII subs to produce colour layer in Hubble palette to add to existing Ha luminance.

Acquisition: 31/5/15, 2/10/16

Luminance: Henley-on-Thames, UK

Colour: Chiswick, London, UK.

4 Hours total Exposure

6x1200sHa, 4x900sSII, 4x900sOIII

SII and OIII bin 2x2

Equipment:

T: Takahashi FSQ106ED

C: QSI683ws Mono CCD @-25C

F: Astronomik Ha (6nm)

M: Celestron Advanced Vx

G: QHY5-II

Software:

PHD2, Sequence Generator Pro, CCDStack, Photoshop CS6

MUST BE VIEWED

View On Black

I'm pretty damn happy with the way this one turned out. Of all my shots thus far, I finally feel sorta satisfied. Although there are plenty of things here I would like to be better.....I think the outcome was well worth the effort. It appears I got either a shooting star.....or a sattelite flash in the process....it was definitely not a plane.

This is a pure granite ridge near the house in Shaver Lake....a quick "whoop tee do" with the flashlight provided the foreground effect and mother nature, with the assistance of a 240 30 second shots, provided the rest. I don't think I'll ever tire of these shots.....

Some people ask me, why do you go out there all alone and sit there for 2 hours and shoot in the dark? What do you do all alone? I tell them this....do you see what the stars are doing??? They did that while I watched...my own private show for me and no one else in this spot....well aside from the mountain lion that was apparently stalking me.....

I hope you enjoy this one....

BTW I HAVE BEEN ASKED and absolutely NO PHOTO SHOP has been done on this other than a crop and white balance adjustment in RAW

A HaOIII narrowband image of the Eagle Nebula (catalogued as Messier 16, M16, or NGC 6611).

The Eagle Nebula is part of a diffuse emission nebula, or H II region, which is catalogued as IC 4703. This region of active current star formation is about 7,000 light-years from Earth.

A spire of gas that can be seen coming off the nebula in the north-eastern part is approximately 9.5 light-years or about 90 trillion kilometers long. The nebula contains several active star-forming gas and dust regions, including the "Pillars of Creation".

About this image:

This image consists of old narrowband Hα and OIII data, that I reprocessed after combining it with more data that I recently imaged.

The Hydrogen dust and gas (the most basic and abundant element in the Universe), emits in the Red part of the spectrum, and the doubly ionized Oxygen emits in the Blue part of the spectrum.

Wavelengths of light in this image:

Hydrogen Alpha line 656nm (7nm bandwidth).

OIII line 500.7nm (6.5nm bandwidth).

Processing:

Pre-Processing and Linear workflow in PixInsight,

and finished in Photoshop.

Plate Solving:

Platesolve 2 via Sequence Generator Pro.

Astrometry Info:

Center RA, Dec: 274.716, -13.820

Center RA, hms: 18h 18m 51.796s

Center Dec, dms: -13° 49' 11.111"

Size: 60.8 x 40 arcmin

Radius: 0.606 deg

Pixel scale: 2.21 arcsec/pixel

Orientation: Up is 9.62 degrees E of N

nova.astrometry.net/user_images/2794874#annotated

Martin

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Nestled among the vast clouds of star-forming regions like this one lie potential clues about the formation of our own solar system.

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features AFGL 5180, a beautiful stellar nursery located in the constellation of Gemini (the Twins).

At the center of the image, a massive star is forming and blasting cavities through the clouds with a pair of powerful jets, extending to the top right and bottom left of the image. Light from this star is mostly escaping and reaching us by illuminating these cavities, like a lighthouse piercing through the storm clouds.

Stars are born in dusty environments and although this dust makes for spectacular images, it can prevent astronomers from seeing stars embedded in it. Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) instrument is designed to capture detailed images in both visible and infrared light, meaning that the young stars hidden in vast star-forming regions like AFGL 5180 can be seen much more clearly.

Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)

Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. C. Tan (Chalmers University & University of Virginia), R. Fedriani (Chalmers University); Acknowledgment: Judy Schmidt

For more information: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2021/hubble-peers-into...

The Pacman Nebula, NGC281, is an H-II region in the constellation Cassiopeia and lies some 9500 light years away. It contains an open cluster as well as several Bok globules, small dark nebulae where dust and gas condense to form a molecular cloud where star formation can occur.

Details:

Scope: TMB130SS

Camera: QSI683-wsg8

Guide Camera: Starlight Xpress Ultrastar

Mount: Mach1 GTO

Ha: 28x15min

OIII: 32x15min

IC 5070

The Pacman Nebula, NGC281, is an H-II region in the constellation Cassiopeia and lies some 9500 light years away. It contains an open cluster as well as several Bok globules, small dark nebulae where dust and gas condense to form a molecular cloud where star formation can occur.

Details:

Scope: TMB130SS

Camera: QSI683-wsg8

Guide Camera: Starlight Xpress Ultrastar

Mount: Mach1 GTO

SII: 20x15min

Ha: 28x15min

OIII: 32x15min

NGC 488 is a face-on spiral galaxy in the constellation Pisces. It was discovered by German-British astronomer William Herschel on December 13, 1784. The New General Catalog (NGC) of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars is an astronomical catalog of deep-sky objects compiled by John Louis Emil Dreyer in 1888.

Despite its’ fairly small apparent size from Earth, at an estimated 90 million light years distant, it is nearly twice the diameter of our Milky Way Galaxy (185,000 light years vs the Milky Way’s 100,000).

With its’ tightly wound multiple spiral arms, NGC 488 is one of the most photogenic face-on spiral galaxies accessible to amateur telescopes. There are 3 small galaxies to the left of NGC 488, which, along with the featured galaxy here, form a small galaxy group, the “NGC 488 group”.

Galaxy cores are packed with red giant stars and other older stars that are cooler and emit light in the yellow-red spectrum. This contrasts with the bluer younger stars in the spiral arms where star formation is occurring.

Image info:

Location: SkyPi Remote Observatory, Pie Town NM US

Date: November 2025

Telescope: Officina Stellare RiDK 400mm

Camera: QHY600M

Mount: Paramount MEII

Data: LRGB approximately 40 hours total integration time

Processing: Pixinsight

I revisited a bunch of previous RGB data and now added about an hour of Hα data. This galaxy really needs it. All those pink areas are regions of intense star formation, where some of the most massive stars are being born. The particularly big pink blob in the upper right is known as NGC 604. It is an emission nebula in another galaxy that is so large and bright that it gets its own designation. Think of really outstanding examples like this in our own sky -- M17 or the Eta Carina Nebula. This one has both of them beat for size and luminance. It only looks small because it is 3 million light years away.

All subframes shot with a Celestron Edge HD 925 at f/2.3 with Hyperstar. RGB data taken over multiple nights with an Atik 314L+ color CCD; hydrogen-alpha data taken with an Atik 414-EX with Atik 7 nm bandpass filter. Preprocessing of images in Nebulosity; registration, channel combination, and processing in PixInsight; final touches in Photoshop.

The Orion Nebula is a combination of reflection and emission nebulae and lies some 1350 light years away, making it the closest region of intense star formation. Positioned in Orion's sword, this nebula is one of the most popular in the sky and is visible with the unaided eye. The Trapezium, a very young open cluster of stars is visible in the center of the nebula as four distinct closely huddled stars. The red and blue nebulosity throughout this region come from the emission and reflection nebulae. The blue comes from the light of the massive stars at the center of the nebula scattering off dust, while the red coloration comes from electrons in gaseous Hydrogen falling to lower orbital levels. Above the main nebulosity is the Running Man nebula which also contains emission and reflection nebulae providing it's distinctive outline. Throughout this frame the associated dust is also visible.

Lots of StarStuff...

A widefield mosaic of the Sagittarius Trio - M8, M20 and NGC 6559. This is a dense region of stars, interstellar dust clouds, and dark nebulae, reflection nebulae and emission nebulae.

Image Acquisition:

Sequence Generator Pro with the Mosaic and Framing Wizard.

Plate Solving:

Astrometry.net ANSVR Solver via SGP.

Processing:

Pre-Processing and Linear workflow in PixInsight,

and finished in Photoshop.

Astrometry Info:

View Annotated Sky Chart for this image.

RA, Dec center: 271.636470386, -23.829939492 degrees

Orientation: 2.08453689517 deg E of N

Pixel scale: 7.63283615011 arcsec/pixel

View this image in World Wide Telescope.

About the Milky Way, and Earth's place within it:

The Milky Way Galaxy is estimated to have over 400 billion stars. Stars are suns, and just like in our Solar System, many of the stars have planets and moons. Our sun is a middle aged Yellow Dwarf star, located in the Orion Arm (or Orion Spur) of the Milky Way Galaxy. It’s a minor side spiral arm, located between two larger arms of the Milky Way Galaxy's spiral. The Milky Way is merely one mid-sized barred spiral Galaxy, amongst over 100 billion other Galaxies in the observable Universe. When we look up at the night sky from Earth, we see a glimpse of the Carina–Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. It takes about 250 million years for the Milky Way Galaxy's spiral arms to complete one rotation.

The size, distance and age of the Universe is far beyond human comprehension. The known Universe is estimated to contain over One Billion Trillion stars (the latest estimates are substantially higher).

Billion Trillion Stars:

1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000

Flickr Explore:

explore-2016-12-22

Martin

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A widefield view of Orion's Belt and Sword showing the complex of nebulosity in the area.

The three Belt stars are at top (L to R): Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka, with the dark Horsehead Nebula (B33) below Alnitak. Above Alnitak is the pinkish Flame Nebula, NGC 2024. At bottom are Messiers 42 and 43, making up the Orion Nebula, with the bluish Running Man Nebula above it, aka NGC 1973-5-7. Above it is the star cluster NGC 1981. Messier 78 is just on frame at upper left.

Numerous other bits of emission and reflection nebulas populate the field amid a backdrop of faint emission nebulosity. The stars around the Belt belong to the large star cluster Collinder 70.

This is a blend of two stacks of images: 15 x 8 minutes through an IDAS NBX dual narrowband filter to bring out the faint nebulosity, and 15 x 4-minutes with no filter for the more natural star colours and colours of the Orion, Flame and Horsehead (IC 434) Nebulas. So a total of 3 hours of exposure time. I did not take shorter exposures for the Orion Nebula core.

All were with the William Optics RedCat 51mm astrograph at f/4.9 and filter-modified (by AstroGear) Canon EOS R at ISO 3200 for the filtered shots and ISO 800 for the unfiltered shots. Taken from home January 22, 2023 on a rare clear winter night. Autoguided and dithered with the Lacerta MGEN3 autoguider. No darks or LENR employed.

All stacking, alignment and masking in Photoshop. Luminosity masks with Lumenzia helped bring out the nebulosity, as did a mild application of the Nebula FIlter action in the PhotoKemi StarTools Actions set. Noise reduction with RC-Astro Noise XTerminator. The filtered set has had all the stars removed using RC-Astro Star XTerminator, so it contributed just the nebulosity, Stars come from the unfiltered set for tighter stars with more natural colours.

M78 (NGC 2068) and Barnard's loop in Orion along with lots of dust and gas in this star forming region. Other objects around M78 include NGC 2064, NGC 2067, NGC 2071. The cluster just at the left edge is NGC 2112.

I planned to get a good bit more exposure on this object, but thin clouds meant that time was better spent sleeping!

Exposure: 25x6min (2.5 hr)

Date: 2016.02.10

Telescope: 100mm f/5.5

Camera: 5D2 (unmodified), ISO 1600

Thoughts? [bad processing, will redo]

Nel cuore della costellazione del Serpente, a circa 7.000 anni luce da noi, si estende la maestosa Nebulosa Aquila (M16), una regione di formazione stellare vasta oltre 70 anni luce.

Al suo interno si trovano i celebri Pilastri della Creazione, colonne di gas e polveri scolpite dalla radiazione di giovani stelle massicce.

Queste strutture, alte fino a 5 anni luce, sono veri e propri “nidi cosmici” dove nuove stelle stanno nascendo all’interno dei bozzoli di idrogeno molecolare.

La luce che vediamo oggi partì quando la civiltà umana muoveva appena i primi passi, e nel frattempo i venti stellari hanno già iniziato a dissolvere parte delle colonne.

L’immagine inquadra non solo i Pilastri, ma anche l’intero ammasso aperto NGC 6611, la sorgente della loro intensa ionizzazione.

Creazione e distruzione, in equilibrio dinamico nel laboratorio naturale più spettacolare della Via Lattea.

Nota tecnica: scatto realizzato con rifrattore Tecnosky 72ED e camera ZWO ASI 533MC, integrazione totale di 1 ora con filtro dual band SV220, dalla città.

#M16 #NebulosaAquila #PilastriDellaCreazione #EagleNebula #PillarsOfCreation #Astrofotografia #Astrophotography #DeepSky #SpazioProfondo #ViaLattea #MilkyWay #CosmicNursery #Nebulae #Astronomia #SpaceArt #StarFormation #ZWOASI533MC #Tecnosky72ED #DualBandFilter #SV220

sternwarte.n-t-l.de

A star forming Region in our milky way, the great Orion nebula.

This is a Hydrogen gas cloud, in which new stars are currently born.

This Image was taken in my private astronomical observatory, using a cooled CCD camera (QHY10).

Total exposure time was 3hrs 47 minutes. The telescope was a 1000mm f/5.3 Maksutov Newtonian Flatfield Astrograph.

Added one single 120sec exposure to restore structure Rendering in the Center of the star forming Region.

Distance from Earth: 965 Light years.

NGC 1333 is a reflection nebula located in the northern constellation Perseus, positioned next to the southern constellation border with Taurus and Aries. It was first discovered by German astronomer Eduard Schönfeld in 1855.

Within the nebula are 20 young stellar objects producing outflows, including Herbig–Haro objects (in bright red), and a total of 95 X-ray sources that are associated with known members of embedded star clusters. [Wikipedia]

21 hours of imaging taken over 5 nights in February 2024 from the Complejo Astronómico Los Coloraos in Gorafe, Spain using my C11 f/7 Edge HD telescope with RGB filters.

Imaged with NINA, processed with PixInsight and Adobe Lightroom Classic.

For all the technical details and a full resolution image please visit my Astrobin page at: astrob.in/1lrjg2/0/

Thank you for looking!

39 minutes @5800 feet moon has set

With more experience and new techniques learned with my processing software, I find I can process some of my older data with superior results. Here, my new processing results in smaller stars, better colours overall, and more of the nebula revealed.

The older version is here.

Taken 2015.04.09

100mm f/5.5,

5D2, ISO 1600,

Exposure: 11x6min exposures (1.1hr)

Thoughts?

The nebula of many names! Swan Nebula, Checkmark Nebula, Omega Nebula, Lobster Nebula - any others?

The core is super bright - there are over 100 massive stars in all that gas and dust, though they are obscured at visible wavelengths by all the material surrounding them. There are about 50 of these giant HII regions in our Milky Way Galaxy (arxiv.org/abs/1912.02855), and this is the closest one to our solar system.

This was my first attempt at using Hα, OIII, and SII filters to create an image. I got 26 frames with Hα, and 31 frames with OIII. Clouds started to roll in after that, so I only managed 10 SII frames. All exposures were 2 minutes with a Celestron Edge HD 925 at f/2.3 with HyperStar and an Atik 414-EX camera. Preprocessing was in Nebulosity. I chose to go with combining Hα and SII for the red channel, and using OIII for blue and green. Registration, channel combination, and processing was done in PixInsight. Final touches were in Photoshop.

One thing other imagers might want to try that I stumbled upon by accident: have PixInsight create a 64-bit TIFF file that you open in Photoshop. I haven't found settings that open it in color, but the contrast in the nebula is quite rich in greyscale. Using it can make for a good final step for bringing out lots of detail.

My first attempt at star trails/ 25 min exp @ 5800 foot elevation/ thanks to california4life for his motivation to take these and his input

Stellar nurseries are cloudy and dusty places that shine brightly in infrared light. The G305 star-forming complex is no exception. It features a number of bright, intricate gas clouds heated by infant stars in their midst. In this spectacular image by ESA’s Herschel space observatory, these star-forming hotspots stand out in a blue tone that contrasts with the red-brownish colour of cooler regions.

While there are several star-formation sites dotted throughout this scene, the most striking ones surround the dark, heart-shaped area in the top right of the image. Hidden at the centre of the dark region lie the massive star WR48a and its two neighbours, stellar clusters Danks 1 and 2. All three play an important role in triggering the formation of new stars, even if they themselves are relatively young objects no older than a few million years (for comparison, the Sun is around 4.6 billion years old).

Strong winds and radiation from WR48a and the high-mass stars in the two clusters have pushed away the gas remnants from the cloud where they originated. The swept-away gas, gathered together at the edge of the heart-shaped bubble, is now forming new stars.

Using Herschel, astronomers have identified 16 sites where high-mass stars are forming in this stellar nursery. The region is one of the brightest and most plentiful star-forming complexes in the Milky Way, and an ideal ground to observe and study massive stars at different stages of formation and evolution.

The G305 complex is about 12 000 light-years away and gets its name from its location at around 305º longitude in the plane of our Galaxy. In the night sky, it appears near the Coalsack Nebula, a large interstellar cloud of dust visible to the naked eye and located in the constellation of Crux, the Southern Cross. A very prominent dark nebula, Coalsack shows up in the southern skies as a black patch against the bright, starry backdrop of the Milky Way.

This image, obtained as part of Hi-GAL – the Herschel infrared Galactic Plane Survey, combines observations at three different wavelengths: 70 microns (blue), 160 microns (green) and 250 microns (red).

Launched in 2009, Herschel operated for four years observing at far infrared and submillimetre wavelengths. This spectral range allowed it to observe the glow of dust in gas clouds where stars are born to investigate this process and observe their early evolution.

Credits: ESA/Herschel/PACS, SPIRE/Hi-GAL Project. Acknowledgement: UNIMAP / L. Piazzo, La Sapienza – Università di Roma; E. Schisano / G. Li Causi, IAPS/INAF, Italy

Colorful stars and clouds of gas and dust in visible and near-infrared light. The bright, blueish cloud on the left is NGC 1936, and the bright, white cluster of stars and cloud on the right is NGC 1935.

The reasons for the different colors can be difficult to discern, but in general: Dark, brownish areas are dark dust. Bright, red areas can be warm dust, hydrogen alpha emission or dust-reddened stars and young stellar objects. Blue areas are probably dominated by [O III] emission or reflection. White areas are likely a mixture. Remember that with infrared imagery, context is just as important as color for determining what you're looking at.

These two objects are a particularly beautiful part of a larger structure referred to as LHA 120-N44, or N44 for short, which is a star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud. N44 is described as a superbubble due to the void it has cleared away at its center, visible as the dark patch at the upper left of the image. The dusty brown cloud in the middle is full of little red dots which are young stellar objects or dust-obscured stars.

The near-infrared data really only covers the upper left 2/3rd of the image or so, but the composition benefited greatly by extending the frame to the right. I blended the 3-color region into the 2-color region using the channel mixer and curves to smooth out the edges where the filters didn't match up in brightness. Some of the stars I ended up giving a red coloration to them in this area because they looked strangely yellow, and because they would have been bright red had the near-infrared data extended to them anyway. In any case, I doubt anyone who knows what I'm talking about really gives a damn.

This image is a small part of the mosaic created for the MYSST program. I find these data to be exquisite even for Hubble and most pleasant to work with. The near-infrared bit is just a happy coincidence added in from a parallel observation.

MYSST: Mapping Young Stars in Space and Time - The HII Complex N44 in the LMC

A Direct CO/H2 Abundance Measurement in Diffuse and Translucent LMC and SMC Molecular Clouds

Red: WFC3/IR F160W

Green: WFC3/UVIS F814W

Blue: WFC3/UVIS F555W

North is NOT up. It is 25.5° clockwise from up.

Hidden from our sight, the Westerhout 43 star-forming region is revealed in full glory in this far-infrared image from ESA’s Herschel space observatory. This giant cloud, where a multitude of massive stars come to life in the billowing gas and dust, is almost 20 000 light-years away from the Sun, in the constellation of Aquila, the Eagle.

Massing more than seven million Suns, this region is home to over 20 stellar nurseries, which are being heated by the powerful light from newborn stars within. These hubs of star formation stand out in blue hue against the cooler yellow and red surroundings.

Nestled in the glowing blue bubble of gas at the centre of the image is a cluster of extremely hot and massive Wolf-Rayet and OB stars, which together are over a million times brighter than our Sun. This bubble, hosting the seeds that will grow into several new stellar clusters, is one of the most prolific birthplaces of stars in our Galaxy.

A less extreme but still very active stellar factory is the large complex of blue bubbles visible in the image towards the right. Scrutinising the Herschel images, astronomers have found evidence of what appears like a network of filaments linking these two intense hubs of star formation.

Located in a very dynamic region of the Milky Way, at the transition between the central bar of the Galaxy and one of its spiral arms, Westerhout 43 is an excellent laboratory to study how stars – especially massive ones – take shape at the collision of two large flows of interstellar matter.

Investigating star-forming regions across our Galaxy in unprecedented detail was one of the main goals of Herschel, which was launched in 2009 and operated for almost four years, observing the sky at far-infrared and submillimetre wavelengths. Sensitive to the heat from the small fraction of cold dust mixed in with the clouds of gas where stars form, imaging such regions points astronomers to dense areas of gas where new stars are being born, enabling them to study the action in detail, just as in this image.

This three-colour image combines Herschel observations at 70 microns (blue), 160 microns (green) and 250 microns (red), and spans about 3º on the long side; north is up and east to the left. The image was obtained as part of Herschel’s Hi-GAL key-project, which imaged the entire plane of the Milky Way in five different infrared bands. A video panorama compiling all Hi-GAL observations was published in April 2016.

Credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS, SPIRE/Hi-GAL Project. Acknowledgement: UNIMAP / L. Piazzo, La Sapienza – Università di Roma; E. Schisano / G. Li Causi, IAPS/INAF, Italy

A final reprocessing of these data ... one day I'll reshoot this and get more exposure.

Thoughts ?

100, f/5.5

5D2, ISO 1600.

19x6min (1.9hr)

2016.02.26

The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula situated in the Milky Way, being south of Orion's Belt in the constellation of Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae in the Northern Hemisphere and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky with apparent magnitude 4.0.

Generally considered a constellation of winter, Orion is still visible in the northern hemisphere now (late March) low in the southwest after sunset. It is 1,300 light years away, the closest region of massive star formation to Earth.

The Orion Nebula is one of the most scrutinized and photographed objects in the night sky and is among the most intensely studied celestial features. The nebula has revealed much about the process of how stars and planetary systems are formed from collapsing clouds of gas and dust.

The Orion Nebula is in turn surrounded by the much larger Orion molecular cloud complex which is hundreds of light years across, spanning the whole Orion Constellation.

At the top of the image is Sh2-279 (alternatively designated S279 or Sharpless 279). It is a bright nebulae that includes a reflection nebula . It is the northernmost part of the asterism known as Orion's Sword, lying 0.6° north of the Orion Nebula. The reflection nebula embedded in Sh2-279 is popularly known as the Running Man Nebula.

Capture info:

Location: Las Cruces, NM US

Telescope: Takahashi FSQ106N

Mount: RST 135E

Camera: QHY268C

Data: 72 x 180sec

Processing: Pixinsight

Stack of 39 images of exposures varying from 150s to 300s, shot from Death Valley, the Santa Monica Mountains, and Joshua Tree Lake campground. Celestron Edge HD 9.25" at f/2.3 with Hyperstar and an Atik 314L+ color CCD. Preprocessing in Nebulosity, stacking and the majority of processing in PixInsight, and a few final steps in PS CS 5.1.

Image center (J2000):

RA 5h 41m 27s

DEC -2° 5' 43"

My first wide field Galaxy photo, 6 months after getting my first Telescope (a small inexpensive GSO 6" Newtonian Reflector) .

Ancient light from a Galaxy far, far away (situated 11.42 million light years from Earth).

The Sculptor Galaxy, also known as the Silver Coin or Silver Dollar Galaxy (NGC 253), is an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Sculptor. It is a Starburst galaxy, which means that it is undergoing a period of intense star formation (well it was 11.42 million years ago, as the light took that long to reach us).

Recent research suggests the presence in the centre of this Galaxy of a Supermassive Black Hole, with a mass estimated to be 5 million times that of our Sun.

Photographed at the West Rand Astronomy Club's Annual Star Party at Mountain Sanctuary Park (North-West Province, South Africa). A special thank you to Neil Viljoen from "The Telescope Shop" for his assistance.

Astrometry info:

Center RA, Dec: 11.885, -25.297

Center RA, hms: 00h 47m 32.295s

Center Dec, dms: -25° 17' 48.899"

Size: 74.4 x 56.8 arcmin

Radius: 0.780 deg

Pixel scale: 4.36 arcsec/pixel

Orientation: Up is 18.2 degrees E of N

View the Annotated Astrometry Sky Chart.

View in the World Wide Telescope.

Gear:

GSO 6" f/4 Imaging Newtonian Reflector Telescope (Astrograph).

Celestron Advanced VX Equatorial Mount.

Orion 50mm Guide Scope.

Orion StarShoot AutoGuider (Guiding in PHD2).

Image Acquisition via Sequence Generator Pro.

Canon 60Da DSLR (sensitive to IR light at 656.28 nm).

Astronomik CLS Light Pollution Filter.

Processed in PixInsight & Photoshop.

Lights/Subs:

30 x Stacked 5 min. RAW exposures at ISO 1600.

Calibration Frames:

30 x Darks (Dark frames)

30 x Flats (Flat-field frames)

40 x Bias (Offset frames)

Martin

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✨ M16 — The Eagle Nebula and the Pillars of Creation ✨

Lights: 69x300" (Halpha, OIII, SII)

Telescope: Planewave CDK24

Camera: QHY 600M

Filters: Astrodon

Processed: Pixinsight

Date: 31/05/2024

This image reveals the heart of M16, the iconic Eagle Nebula, located in the constellation Serpens at a distance of about 7,000 light-years. It is one of the most celebrated stellar nurseries in our galaxy, where vast clouds of gas and dust are sculpted by radiation and stellar winds from young, massive stars.

Dominating the scene are the legendary Pillars of Creation—towering columns of cold molecular gas and dust, slowly eroded by intense ultraviolet light. Within these dark structures, new stars are being born, hidden from view, while others have already emerged, illuminating the nebula with a delicate interplay of light and shadow.

The contrasting colors tell a physical story:

🔹 Blue tones trace ionized oxygen and energetic radiation.

🔹 Warm orange and brown hues reveal hydrogen emission and dense dust lanes, where gravity quietly works to ignite future suns.

This is not a static landscape, but a dynamic environment shaped over millions of years—creation and destruction intertwined in a fragile cosmic balance.

✨ Constellation: Serpens

📏 Distance: ~7,000 light-years

💫 Apparent magnitude: ~6.0

🌌 Object type: Emission nebula & star-forming region

Alessandro Motta

@ale_motta_astrofotografia

#M16 #EagleNebula #PillarsOfCreation #StarFormation #EmissionNebula #DeepSky #Astrophotography #CosmicDust #NightSky

🌌 Here, stars are born in silence—carved from darkness by light, time, and gravity, writing the next chapter of the Milky Way.

Download full size image 11184x4275 here: www.flickr.com/photos/192271236@N03/54461687302/sizes/o/ See license below

Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/j.Roger/AndreaLuck CC BY

NASA/ESA JWST Webb Space Telescope

Target: : Unveiling the Early Stages of Massive Binary Formation with JWST

Distance: 8900 light years

Date: 2024-04-15

Instrument: NIRCam

Filters: f150w2-f162m, f182m, f212n, f360m, f405n-f444w, f444w-f470n, f480m

Colours Assigned: Blue, Cyan, Teal, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red

PI: Yichen Zhang

PI Institution: Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Proposal ID: 3907 www.stsci.edu/jwst-program-info/program/?program=3907

Product IDs:

jw03907-o002_t002_nircam_f150w2-f162m

jw03907-o002_t002_nircam_clear-f182m

jw03907-o002_t002_nircam_clear-f212n

jw03907-o002_t002_nircam_clear-f360m

jw03907-o002_t002_nircam_f405n-f444w

jw03907-o002_t002_nircam_f444w-f470n

jw03907-o002_t002_nircam_clear-f480m

Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/j.Roger/AndreaLuck CC BY

Feel free to share, giving the appropriate credit and providing a link to the original media on Flickr: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

I love the painting effect this gives to the image especially with heavy noise reduction.

nexstar 8se

canon 70d

old data taken back in 2016 and 2017

This is the Large Magellanic Cloud, the main Local Group member and a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way, some 160,000 light years away, It is visible only from the southern hemisphere. Nowhere else in the sky do we see such a profuse collection of star-forming nebulas as here in this frame the width typical of binocular fields, about 7.5° by 5º.

The LMC is a dwarf irregular galaxy though with structures that resemble a barred spiral galaxy. Tidal disruptions caused by its passage near our Galaxy are sparking an intense level of star formation and star death – some of the nebulas are bubbles blown out by exploding or dying stars.

The main region of nebulosity is the massive Tarantula Nebula complex (NGC 2070) at left, with its twisted and tortured structure. The other main area is the NGC 1763 complex at upper right. At upper left are the nebulas NGC 2020 and NGC 1955, among many others. At lower right is the NGC 1748 complex. At lower left is NGC 2018.

However, the region is so rich it is hard to identify which object is which, especially as most atlases don't agree on the labels. Even amateur photos such as this reveal patches of nebulosity that are not plotted as such on star charts.

While many of the nebulas are red or pink from hydrogen alpha emission, many are cyan from predominant oxygen III emission.

This is a blend of images taken through a dual-band nebula filter and without any filter. This is a stack of 12 x 10-minute exposures at ISO 3200 through an IDAS NBZ dual-band (OIII and H-a) filter that adds most of the nebulosity, blended with a stack of 20 x 5-minute exposures at ISO 800 with no filter for the main "natural light" background content.

The Canon EOS R camera I used was modified by AstroGear.net to be more sensitive to H-a light. It was on the little Sharpstar 61mm EDPH III refractor with its Reducer for f/4.4, and on the Astro-Physics AP400 mount autoguided with the Lacerta MGEN III stand-alone auto-guider. Inter-frame dithering eliminated hot pixels on this warm night. No dark frames were employed.

Taken March 4, 2024 on a perfect autumn night at the Mirrabook Cottage near Coonabarabran, NSW, Australia and down the hill, literally, from the Siding Spring Observatory. While the camera was shooting I enjoyed touring the southern Milky Way with binoculars. It was stargazing heaven!

Ho approfittato del brutto tempo per completare l'elaborazione di un oggetto abbastanza difficile per il cielo della città.

La Nebulosa Gabbiano (IC 2177) distende le sue ali nella costellazione dell’Unicorno, a circa 3.800 anni luce da noi.

È una vasta nube di idrogeno ionizzato e altri gas, illuminata dalla radiazione ultravioletta di giovani stelle massicce.

Quello che appare come un delicato profilo d’uccello in volo è in realtà un laboratorio astrofisico su scala galattica: un ambiente dinamico dove la pressione della radiazione, i venti stellari e la gravità collaborano e competono, modellando il gas e preparando il terreno per nuove generazioni di stelle.

In questa ripresa di 120 minuti, realizzata con rifrattore 72ED e filtro SV220 dalla città, la posa ha isolato elementi chimici diversi.

Ogni sfumatura di colore traduce una lunghezze d’onda diversa, suggerendo la diversa composizione chimica e le condizioni fisiche della nube. Le tonalità più intense di rosso evidenziano le regioni dominate dall’idrogeno ionizzato, mentre le variazioni verso sfumature differenti indicano contributi di ossigeno e e zolfo.

Non solo bellezza, quindi, ma anche la possibilità di leggere, a colpo d'occhio, di cosa è fatta una zona della nostra Via Lattea

Buona giornata

#NebulosaGabbiano #IC2177 #Monoceros #UnicornConstellation #Astrofotografia #Astrophotography #DeepSky #NebulaLovers #HydrogenAlpha #NarrowbandImaging #FalseColor #InterstellarMedium #StarFormation #HIIRegion #CityAstrophotography #SV220Filter #72ED #SpazioProfondo #NightSkyPhotography #CosmicWings

Image release June 22, 2010

A spectacular new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image — one of the largest ever released of a star-forming region — highlights N11, part of a complex network of gas clouds and star clusters within our neighbouring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. This region of energetic star formation is one of the most active in the nearby Universe.

The Large Magellanic Cloud contains many bright bubbles of glowing gas. One of the largest and most spectacular has the name LHA 120-N 11, from its listing in a catalogue compiled by the American astronomer and astronaut Karl Henize in 1956, and is informally known as N11. Close up, the billowing pink clouds of glowing gas make N11 resemble a puffy swirl of fairground candy floss. From further away, its distinctive overall shape led some observers to nickname it the Bean Nebula. The dramatic and colourful features visible in the nebula are the telltale signs of star formation. N11 is a well-studied region that extends over 1000 light-years. It is the second largest star-forming region within the Large Magellanic Cloud and has produced some of the most massive stars known.

It is the process of star formation that gives N11 its distinctive look. Three successive generations of stars, each of which formed further away from the centre of the nebula than the last, have created shells of gas and dust. These shells were blown away from the newborn stars in the turmoil of their energetic birth and early life, creating the ring shapes so prominent in this image.

Beans are not the only terrestrial shapes to be found in this spectacular high resolution image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. In the upper left is the red bloom of nebula LHA 120-N 11A. Its rose-like petals of gas and dust are illuminated from within, thanks to the radiation from the massive hot stars at its centre. N11A is relatively compact and dense and is the site of the most recent burst of star development in the region.

Other star clusters abound in N11, including NGC 1761 at the bottom of the image, which is a group of massive hot young stars busily pouring intense ultraviolet radiation out into space. Although it is much smaller than our own galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud is a very vigorous region of star formation. Studying these stellar nurseries helps astronomers understand a lot more about how stars are born and their ultimate development and lifespan.

Both the Large Magellanic Cloud and its small companion, the Small Magellanic Cloud, are easily seen with the unaided eye and have always been familiar to people living in the southern hemisphere. The credit for bringing these galaxies to the attention of Europeans is usually given to Portuguese explorer Fernando de Magellan and his crew, who viewed it on their 1519 sea voyage. However, the Persian astronomer Abd Al-Rahman Al Sufi and the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci recorded the Large Magellanic Cloud in 964 and 1503 respectively.

Credit: NASA, ESA and Jesús Maíz Apellániz (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Spain)

To learn more about Hubble go to: www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/main/index.html

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is home to the nation's largest organization of combined scientists, engineers and technologists that build spacecraft, instruments and new technology to study the Earth, the sun, our solar system, and the universe.

Resto sempre affascinato di come il cielo notturno cittadino, apparentemente del tutto compromesso da luci e umidità, possa ancora rivelare tanta bellezza

Infatti, nel cuore della costellazione di Auriga si estende IC 410, una vasta nebulosa a emissione che ospita uno degli spettacoli più affascinanti del cielo profondo: i celebri Tadpoles”, i girini cosmici.

In questa immagine, ripresa con rifrattore 102ED e 120 minuti di integrazione, emergono con buona evidenza queste strutture allungate, lunghe anche diversi anni luce. Si vedono in basso come due piccole strutture serpeggianti di colore rosso.

Non sono vere forme “in movimento”, ma globuli densi di gas e polveri scolpiti dalla radiazione intensa e dal vento stellare provenienti dal giovane ammasso aperto NGC 1893, che illumina la nebulosa.

Il bagliore rossastro dominante è dovuto all’idrogeno ionizzato (Hα), mentre le tonalità più fredde rivelano l’ossigeno ionizzato, entrambi messi in risalto dal filtro a banda stretta.

#IC410 #TadpolesNebula #Auriga #DeepSky #Astrofotografia #Astrophotography #NebulaLovers #HAlpha #StarFormation #CosmicClouds #SpazioProfondo #NightSky #Telescopio #EmissionNebula #StelleNascoste #LongExposure #Universo #CieloNotturno #NGC1893 #ThroughMyTelescope

Here is the latest version of the mosaic:

Lagoon and Trifid Nebulae mosaic

This is my first attempt at expanding the Lagoon and Trifid mosaic I posted earlier this summer. My setup was not tracking well enough on the west side of the pier at this low altitude to finish it this year; however, barring a supernova, this will look the same again next summer. The nebula hangs at the bottom of the frame due to my desire to extend the picture northward to include the Trifid Nebula and M21. I didn't think it would look good to put an "Under Construction" banner at the top.

Celestron Edge HD 9.25"

f/2.3 with HyperStar

Atik 314L+ color CCD; no filters

Shot on 2017-06-25 and 2017-07-20

Initial preprocessing in Nebulosity (with darks and flats from the corresponding nights)

Processing and compositing in PixInsight

Final touches in PS CS 5.1

Image coverage:

1° 34' x 56'

Image center (J2000):

RA 18h 4m 10s

DEC -24° 11' 5"

Editor's note: LOVE this image! Definitely going to add it to the "NASA Goes Pink" gallery, for Breast Cancer Awareness month in October: www.flickr.com/photos/28634332@N05/sets/72157625045060125/

High-mass stars are important because they are responsible for much of the energy pumped into our galaxy over its lifetime. Unfortunately, these stars are poorly understood because they are often found relatively far away and can be obscured by gas and dust. The star cluster NGC 281 is an exception to this rule. It is located about 9,200 light years from Earth and, remarkably, almost 1,000 light years above the plane of the Galaxy, giving astronomers a nearly unfettered view of the star formation within it.

NGC 281 is known informally as the "Pacman Nebula" because of its appearance in optical images. In optical images the "mouth" of the Pacman character appears dark because of obscuration by dust and gas, but in the infrared Spitzer image the dust in this region glows brightly.

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/S.Wolk; IR: NASA/JPL/CfA/S.Wolk

Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2011/ngc281/

Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Read more about Chandra:

www.nasa.gov/chandra

p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!

_____________________________________________

These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...

Having fun with the anniversary data. The original observations were mostly narrowband, but I thought it would be fun to hack it a bit and give it a wideband look. Takes the focus away from the color patterns to allow one's mind to appreciate the weight and shape of the structures more easily.

ps - The original news release image is here, just in case you missed it. hubblesite.org/image/4150/news_release/2018-21

Data from the following proposal comprises this image:

ptical and infrared imaging of the Lagoon Nebula (M8)

There is also a WOW page providing direct access to data:

STScI Outreach Imaging of M8 (Lagoon Nebula) - April 2018

Red: WFC3/UVIS F658N

Orange: WFC3/UVIS F656N

White: WFC3/UVIS F547M

Cyan: WFC3/UVIS F502N

North is NOT up. It is 133.99° clockwise from up.

The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is one of the Milky Way's closest galactic neighbors. Even though it is a small, or so-called dwarf galaxy, the SMC is so bright that it is visible to the unaided eye from the Southern Hemisphere and near the equator. Many navigators, including Ferdinand Magellan who lends his name to the SMC, used it to help find their way across the oceans.

Modern astronomers are also interested in studying the SMC (and its cousin, the Large Magellanic Cloud), but for very different reasons. Because the SMC is so close and bright, it offers an opportunity to study phenomena that are difficult to examine in more distant galaxies. New Chandra data of the SMC have provided one such discovery: the first detection of X-ray emission from young stars with masses similar to our Sun outside our Milky Way galaxy. The new Chandra observations of these low-mass stars were made of the region known as the "Wing" of the SMC. In this composite image of the Wing the Chandra data is shown in purple, optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope is shown in red, green and blue and infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope is shown in red.

Astronomers call all elements heavier than hydrogen and helium -- that is, with more than two protons in the atom's nucleus -- "metals." The Wing is a region known to have fewer metals compared to most areas within the Milky Way. There are also relatively lower amounts of gas, dust, and stars in the Wing compared to the Milky Way.

Taken together, these properties make the Wing an excellent location to study the life cycle of stars and the gas lying in between them. Not only are these conditions typical for dwarf irregular galaxies like the SMC, they also mimic ones that would have existed in the early Universe.

Most star formation near the tip of the Wing is occurring in a small region known as NGC 602, which contains a collection of at least three star clusters. One of them, NGC 602a, is similar in age, mass, and size to the famous Orion Nebula Cluster. Researchers have studied NGC 602a to see if young stars -- that is, those only a few million years old -- have different properties when they have low levels of metals, like the ones found in NGC 602a.

Using Chandra, astronomers discovered extended X-ray emission, from the two most densely populated regions in NGC 602a. The extended X-ray cloud likely comes from the population of young, low-mass stars in the cluster, which have previously been picked out by infrared and optical surveys, using Spitzer and Hubble respectively. This emission is not likely to be hot gas blown away by massive stars, because the low metal content of stars in NGC 602a implies that these stars should have weak winds. The failure to detect X-ray emission from the most massive star in NGC 602a supports this conclusion, because X-ray emission is an indicator of the strength of winds from massive stars. No individual low-mass stars are detected, but the overlapping emission from several thousand stars is bright enough to be observed.

The Chandra results imply that the young, metal-poor stars in NGC 602a produce X-rays in a manner similar to stars with much higher metal content found in the Orion cluster in our galaxy. The authors speculate that if the X-ray properties of young stars are similar in different

environments, then other related properties -- including the formation and evolution of disks where planets form -- are also likely to be similar.

X-ray emission traces the magnetic activity of young stars and is related to how efficiently their magnetic dynamo operates. Magnetic dynamos generate magnetic fields in stars through a process involving the star's speed of rotation, and convection, the rising and falling of hot gas in the star's interior.

The combined X-ray, optical and infrared data also revealed, for the first time outside our Galaxy, objects representative of an even younger stage of evolution of a star. These so-called "young stellar objects" have ages of a few thousand years and are still embedded in the pillar of dust and gas from which stars form, as in the famous "Pillars of Creation" of the Eagle Nebula.

A paper describing these results was published online and in the March 1, 2013 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. The first author is Lidia Oskinova from the University of Potsdam in Germany and the co-authors are Wei Sun from Nanjing University, China; Chris Evans from the Royal

Observatory Edinburgh, UK; Vincent Henault-Brunet from University of Edinburgh, UK; You-Hua Chu from the University of Illinois, Urbana, IL; John Gallagher III from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI; Martin Guerrero from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Spain; Robert Gruendl from the University of Illinois, Urbana, IL; Manuel Gudel from the University of Vienna, Austria; Sergey Silich from the Instituto Nacional de Astrofısica Optica y Electr´onica, Puebla, Mexico; Yang Chen from Nanjing University, China; Yael Naze from Universite de Liege, Liege, Belgium; Rainer Hainich from the University of Potsdam, Germany, and Jorge Reyes-Iturbide from the Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz, Ilheus, Brazil.

Read entire caption/view more images: www.chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2013/ngc602/

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ.Potsdam/L.Oskinova et al; Optical: NASA/STScI; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Read more about Chandra:

www.nasa.gov/chandra

p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!

_____________________________________________

These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or

endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights please visit: www.nasa.gov/audience/formedia/features/MP_Photo_Guidelin...

From HST Proposal 17067

The diversity of protoplanetary disks: Imaging a complete sample of edge-on disks in four nearby star-forming regions

Principal Investigator: Gaspard Duchene

I was looking at this image at the nasa.gov website and wondering why it turned out like it did. It's a low signal image firstly, but secondly, when trying to bring out that low signal, the fringe pattern (Figure 5.4) in the F814W data becomes a big problem. I did away with the fringe pattern by using the F606W data for luminance in all the low signal areas. If you're into graphic design you might be more familiar with fringe patterns by the name of Moiré.

Other things of note: The chip gap is filled with cloned data. There are some old WFPC2 data in the archive that could have filled some of it, but it didn't seem worth it. I did use some rather heavy noise reduction, or at least I personally consider it heavy, but the image is still pretty noisy. That's just how it is. I don't think a better image results from trying to make it any smoother.

Red: WFC3/UVIS F814W

Green: Pseudo

Blue: WFC3/UVIS F606W

North is 37° clockwise from up.

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is adding a new dimension to our understanding of space.

Using a new X-ray tomography method, researchers have created the first 3D maps of molecular clouds in the center of the Milky Way - dubbed the “Stone” and the “Sticks” clouds. They used Chandra data spanning two decades to create their 3D models of the Stone and Sticks molecular clouds. While astronomers typically only see two spatial dimensions of objects in space, the X-ray tomography method allows us to measure the third dimension of the cloud because the X-rays illuminate individual slices of the cloud over time.

Visual Description:

This release features a panoramic image, approximately 1,100 light-years across, of the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Billowy clouds, in shades of mostly red and blue, stretch across the middle of the image which is much wider than it is tall. Toward the right side of the image is a tiny, bright ball of light. This ball of light is Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the core of our galaxy.

X-ray: NASA/CXC/UConn/D. Alboslani et al.; Infrared: NASA/ESA/JPL/CalTech/Herschel; NASA/ESA/JPL/CalTech/Spitzer; Radio: ASIAA/SAO/SMA; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk

#NASA #NASAChandra #ChandraXray #ChandraXrayObservatory #Chandra #3DMapping #Telescopes #Space #Galaxy #MilkyWay #StarFormation #CosmicWonders #SpaceTech #NASAUniverse #Universe

I have reprocessed this object with more experience and better skills with my processing software, and the new & improved version is here.

I think this is This was as far as I could push this one given the exposure time and my processing skills at the time. More H-alpha came through than I expected for the unmodified camera, and overall I have a result I'm pleased with.

11 6-minute exposures (66min total), 100mm, f/5.5, 5D2, ISO 1600.

2015.04.09.

The Tarantula Nebula is the most active starburst region known in the Local Group of Galaxies. The Local Group comprises more than 54 Galaxies (mostly dwarf Galaxies). The three largest members of the group (in descending order) are the Andromeda Galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy and the Triangulum Galaxy.

The Tarantula Nebula (also known as NGC 2070, the Doradus Nebula, or 30 Doradus) is a H II region in the very dense Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The LMC is one of the irregular satellite dwarf Galaxies of the Milky Way Galaxy, that is among the closest Galaxies to Earth. There is also a Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), both discovered by Magellan. The Magellanic Clouds are visible from the Southern Hemisphere with the naked eye.

About this image:

This wide field image consists of 12 x 2 minute exposures at ISO 3200. Photographed in the rural skies of North West Province, South Africa.

About the Star Colors:

You will notice that star colors differ from red, orange and yellow, to blue. This is an indication of the temperature of the star's Nuclear Fusion process. This is determined by the size and mass of the star, and the stage of its life cycle. In short, the blue stars are hotter, and the red ones are cooler.

About the Milky Way, and Earth's place within it:

The Milky Way Galaxy is estimated to have over 400 billion stars. Stars are suns, and just like in our Solar System, many of the stars have planets with moons orbiting them.

Our sun is a middle aged Yellow Dwarf star, located in the Orion Arm (or Orion Spur) of the Milky Way Galaxy. It’s a minor side spiral arm, located between two larger arms of the Milky Way Galaxy's spiral.

The Milky Way is merely one mid-sized barred spiral Galaxy, amongst over 100 billion other Galaxies in the observable Universe. When we look up at the night sky from Earth, we see a glimpse of the Carina–Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. It takes about 250 million years for the Milky Way Galaxy's spiral arms to complete one rotation.

The size, distance and age of the Universe is far beyond human comprehension. The known Universe is estimated to contain over One Billion Trillion stars.

1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000

Gear:

GSO 6" f/4 Imaging Newtonian Reflector Telescope.

Baader Mark-III MPCC Coma Corrector.

Astronomik CLS Light Pollution Filter.

Celestron SkySync GPS Accessory.

Orion Mini 50mm Guide Scope.

Orion StarShoot Autoguider.

Celestron AVX Mount.

QHYCCD PoleMaster.

Celestron StarSense.

Canon 60Da DSLR.

Tech:

Guiding in Open PHD 2.6.2.

Image acquisition in Sequence Generator Pro.

Lights/Subs: 12 x 120 sec. ISO 3200 CFA FIT Files.

Calibration Frames:

50 x Bias

33 x Darks

Linear workflow in PixInsight.

Finished in Photoshop.

Astrometry Info:

nova.astrometry.net/user_images/1278167#annotated

RA, Dec center: 84.5058051328, -69.30179156 degrees

Orientation: 0.880171695078 deg E of N

Pixel scale: 4.05301182595 arcsec/pixel

Martin

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