Our Beautiful Universe - Photos and Videos

[Andy Resnick]

The constellation Orion, captured @ 105mm f/2 (50mm refractor equivalent), total integration time 12 hours:

The full size image looks a lot better.....

A couple 1:1 crops:

 

[Astronuc]

Polar Crown Prominence - 60,000-mile-tall 'plasma waterfall' seen showering the sun
https://www.space.com/sun-plasma-waterfall-polar-crown-prominence

Eduardo Schaberger Poupeau, who is based near Rafaela in Argentina, captured a striking image on March 9 using specialized camera equipment. The plasma wall "rose some 100,000 km [kilometers, or 62,000 miles] above the solar surface," Poupeau told Spaceweather.com. For context, that is as tall as around eight Earths stacked on top of one another. "On my computer screen, it looked like hundreds of threads of plasma were dripping down a wall," Poupeau added.

The dazzling phenomenon is known as a polar crown prominence (PCP), according to Spaceweather.com. PCPs are similar to normal solar prominences, which are loops of plasma, or ionized gas, that are ejected from the solar surface by magnetic fields. However, PCPs occur near the sun's magnetic poles at latitudes between 60 and 70 degrees North and South, which often causes them to collapse back towards the sun because the magnetic fields near the poles are much stronger, according to NASA (opens in new tab). This collapse back to the sun has earned them the nickname "plasma waterfalls."

The plasma within PCPs is not actually in freefall because it is still contained within the magnetic field that initially spat them out. However, the plasma travels downwards at speeds of up to 22,370 mph (36,000 km/h), which is much faster than the magnetic fields should allow based on experts' calculations, according to NASA. Researchers are still trying to figure out how this is possible.

 

[Tom.G]

However, the plasma travels downwards at speeds of up to 22,370 mph (36,000 km/h), which is much faster than the magnetic fields should allow based on experts' calculations, according to NASA. Researchers are still trying to figure out how this is possible.

Cool! A cosmic mystery in our own backyard. (and after spending many $$$ on Bigger-n-Better telescopes )

 

[DennisN]

I just posted this video in the "First telescope" thread on PF", but I think it is worth posting here too .

I like that one of the points he is making is that you don't have to start with very expensive things if you want to try the hobby. He also has a number of videos on his channel about doing astrophotography with quite cheap equipment. I like this approach, since that's how I got hooked. I started with just a smartphone.

Busting Five MYTHS About Astrophotography in Ten Minutes (Nico Carver/Nebula Photos)

 

[Tom.G]

Another informative video at:

 

[DennisN]

Something unusual this time...

I saw that a team recently had used AI to generate better images of the M87 black hole, so I started wondering how well AI could render celestial bodies and space related stuff. So I asked of friend of mine who has got AI software if he would like to try it out, which he did, and I posted some of his pictures here: (post 1, post 2).

 

[Astronuc]

Eight planets and many worlds - from Galileo to New HorizonsI was interested in the Roche limit of Jupiter and other planets and objects
https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/r/Roche_limit.htm

 

[dlgoff]

Eight planets and many worlds - from Galileo to New HorizonsI was interested in the Roche limit of Jupiter and other planets and objects
https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/r/Roche_limit.htm

I was a student of the professor who taught Clyde Tombaugh at the University of Kansas after he discovered Pluto.
See: https://union.ku.edu/planetary-man

 

[timmdeeg]

The Leo-Triplet

I love it because each galaxy has it's own "personality".

Taken April 14. 2023 with

Sony A7III
UNC 200 f/4 Newton on HEQ5 - guiding with StarAid - no Filter
DSS - Siril - LightZone

Frames 32x180s 1.6 h - ISO 800

 

[Andy Resnick]

Heh... I was getting ready to post my image of the same region of sky :)

Deets: Nikon D810 + Nikkor 800/8 ơn a Losmandy GM-8, 8s subs, total integration time 8.3 hours. Stacking with AstroPixel Processor. Guess I have a thing for the number '8'....

There's a plethora of faint galaxies everywhere in this image, I haven't had a chance to upload it to Astrometry.net and see what's what.

 

[Astronuc]

The outer planets Uranus and Neptune have some interesting characteristics and features.

Voyager 2's Discoveries On Neptune and Uranus [4K] | Zenith | Spark​

The first 20 minutes cover early missions to Mercury and Venus, and only the last 7 minutes cover Uranus and Neptune. Nevertheless, it's interesting to see where missions failed and what was learned in order to improve subsequent missions.

Uranus And Neptune | A Travellers Guide To Planet​

 

[timmdeeg]

Heh... I was getting ready to post my image of the same region of sky :) View attachment 325140

Deets: Nikon D810 + Nikkor 800/8 ơn a Losmandy GM-8, 8s subs, total integration time 8.3 hours. Stacking with AstroPixel Processor. Guess I have a thing for the number '8'....

There's a plethora of faint galaxies everywhere in this image, I haven't had a chance to upload it to Astrometry.net and see what's what.

Indeed, lots of galaxies!

 

[Structure seeker]

Eight planets and many worlds - from Galileo to New Horizons

At the ending phrase, "perhaps life is just next door": I'm certain it is! I can hear my neighbours at this very moment.

 

[collinsmark]

Bode's Galaxy (M81), captured from my back patio from February through April, 2023. Bode's Galaxy is about 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. It is a grand design spiral galaxy: a galaxy who's arms are prominent, well defined spirals.

M81 is named after Johann Elert Bode, who discovered the galaxy at the tail end of the year 1774. It's a bit unusual for a nearby, bright galaxy's common name be that of its discoverer. But here we are for M81. His name stuck.

Bode was pretty famous astronomer in his time. He may be most famous for his Titus-Bode law, which hypothesizes planets orbiting a star should be spaced roughly exponentially; i.e., each planet should be about twice the distance to the star as the one before. This works out pretty well, more-or-less, for the planets in our solar system, sort of. Time will tell how well it applies generally once we get more data from exoplanets.

Bode is known for quite a few other things too, such as creating a star atlas, determining the orbit of Uranus, and even suggesting the planet be named Uranus. So if you're wondering whom we ultimately have to thank for all the Uranus jokes, that honor goes to Bode.

Equipment:
Meade 10" LX200-ACF fork mounted on an equatorial wedge.
Off-axis guider (OAG) with guide camera.
Optolong broadband filter set.
Optolong L-Pro filter
Optolong 3 nm Hα filter
ZWO ASI6200MM-Pro main camera.

The weather weather did not cooperate with my imaging of M81. It was cloudy and rainy nearly every day for months.

Software:
Nighttime Imaging 'N' Astronomy (N.I.N.A.)
PHD2 guiding
PixInsight with RC-Astro plugins

I think I spent more time on this object than any other so far in terms of days/weeks waiting for the skies to clear, and almost the most time in terms of total hours of exposure/integration when it was.

Integration:
Bortle class 7 (maybe 8 ) skies
All subframes binned 3×3
R: 210×4 min = 14.00 hrs
G: 116×4 min = 7.73 hrs
B: 136×4 min = 9.07 hrs
L-Pro: 244×4 min = 16.27 hrs
Hα: 35×10 min = 5.83 hrs
Total integration time: 52.90 hours
.

 

[timmdeeg]

Thanks for commenting on Bode! And for this great image, almost 53 hrs with such weather conditions.

 

[Devin-M]

I heard that Jupiter will pass behind the moon on May 17 (occultation)…

 

[Devin-M]

It looks like Jupiter will pop out from behind the moon at about 5:30 AM May 17 Pacific time USA based on Stellarium.

 

[DennisN]

A set of beautiful photos here... some inspiration, perhaps?

36 Awe-Inspiring Sun, Moon, and Milky Way Photos of 2020 (PetaPixel)
https://petapixel.com/2021/02/01/36-awe-inspiring-sun-moon-and-milky-way-photos-of-2020/

Some examples:

Man over the solar eclipse in the Andes (Chile) by Michael Ostaszewski

Man over the Milky Way reflected on the Salar de Uyuni (Bolivia) by Jheison Huerta

Comet Neowise over Stonehenge (Wiltshire, UK) by Declan Deval

 

[Structure seeker]

Very beautiful!

 

[Devin-M]

Wow, magnetic field lines of sun visible??

Man over the solar eclipse in the Andes (Chile) by Michael Ostaszewski

 

[Borg]

You're seeing Earthshine on the moon's surface also.

 

[berkeman]

Man over the Milky Way reflected on the Salar de Uyuni (Bolivia) by Jheison Huerta

Sorry for the dumb question, but why is the Milky Way curved in that picture? I think I've only seen it as a straight line of stars across the night sky when I've been lucky enough to see it (camping, etc.).

 

[Devin-M]

It’s a 360 photo so like a map, it gets stretched because it’s a sphere projected on a flat surface

 

[collinsmark]

Sorry for the dumb question, but why is the Milky Way curved in that picture? I think I've only seen it as a straight line of stars across the night sky when I've been lucky enough to see it (camping, etc.).

I think it's just a matter of the shot taken with a very wide angle lens -- specifically, a full frame sensor (36×24mm) paired with a 16 mm focal length lens.

 

[Devin-M]

I have a 14mm DSLR lens, that shot is wider, it’s a stitched panorama…

https://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/category/360pano/?sort=-release_date

 

[Devin-M]

PS 14-16mm lenses are “rectilnear” so unless labeled “fisheye” they don’t curve straight lines.

 

[Devin-M]

 

[bdrobin519]

Just saw Venus lit up so bright it was the first visible object in the sky.

 

[collinsmark]

I don't think I ever posted a proper photo of my secondary astro-rig. So here's a recent pic:

There's obviously some cable management on the to-do list. But there's some other tweaks, like cone error reduction, that I'm planning to do first. I'm waiting for clear skies with a full moon for that stuff though. In the mean time, it works well enough as it is -- well, if the clouds will just go away.

 

[collinsmark]

Bode's Galaxy (M81), The Cigar Galaxy (M82), and the Garland Galaxy (NGC 3077) gathered from my back patio in March-April, 2023. I was able to sneak this acquisition in during the few clear nights within the last couple of months using my secondary astro-rig.

You might recognize Bode's Galaxy (M81, center) from a recent post (post 2009), and the Cigar Galaxy (M82, lower-left) from a post I made almost a year ago (post 1681), where both of those images were acquired using my primary setup.

The Garland Galaxy (NGC 3077, lower-right) is new to me, however. The galaxy gets its name for the dwarf structure nearby the NGC 3077 galaxy itself. Either that or it gets its name from another group of stars (most in our Milky Way Galaxy) that appears -- at first glance -- as though it's about to be wrapped around NGC 3077 like a string of garland about to be wrapped around a Christmas tree. Anyway, the extra-galactic dwarf structure has been nicknamed, the "Garland." It should be noted that most of the background stars in the image (aside from the galaxies themselves) are not actually in the background at all, but rather they are quite close to us in the foreground of our own Milky Way Galaxy. The Garland, on the other hand, is not in the Milky Way; it really is in the M81 group, near NGC 3077. What appears to be just a handful of dim stars and nebulous knots are actually some exceptionally bright stars in and around star clusters and active regions of star formation in a whole 'nother galaxy system, some 13 million light-years away.

Here's a 1:1 crop of NGC 3077 and its nearby "Garland" structure. (My little 80 mm refractor isn't able to resolve The Garland into individual stars. Anyway, The Garland is the faint area just to the right of the galaxy):

The formation of the Garland is still an area of active study; it presents a few mysteries that haven't been fully solved yet. That said, the conventional wisdom is that the Garland was formed by chaotic, tidal interactions involving a "close call" between M81 and NGC 3077 whipping past each other eons ago.

Equipment:
Explore Scientific 80ED-FCD100
Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro
Orion Field Flattener for Short Refractors
Off-axis guider (OAG) with guide camera
Optolong L-Pro filter
Baader Hα 3.5nm Ultra-Narrowband filter
ZWO LRGB filter set
ZWO ASI2600MM-Pro main camera

Software:
N.I.N.A.
PHD2 guiding
PixInsight with RC-Astro plugins

Integration:
Location: San Diego
Bortle class 7 (maybe 8 ) skies.
All subframes binned 1x1
L-Pro: 239×120s = 7.97 hrs
Hα: 59×600s = 9.83 hrs
R: 125×120s = 4.17 hrs
G: 63×120s = 2.10 hrs
B: 100×120s = 3.33 hrs
Total integration time: 27.4 hours.

(Here's a link to more information on The Garland: https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1985MNRAS.217..731K/0000731.000.html)

"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,..." Hold on, the M81 group isn't all that far away from us comparatively. 13 million light-years is actually pretty close in terms of galaxy cluster scales. Let me start over. "A long time ago in a galaxy that isn't really all that too terribly far away, galaxy-wise that is, ..." Hmm. 'Doesn't have the same ring to it. ... I'm just going to stop now.

Here's a crop of the image showing just M82 and M81.

 

[Andy Resnick]

It's been cloudy for nearly an unbroken month, but last week I was able to get some imaging time on M101:

Nikon D810 + 800/8 lens, 13s subs, total integration time of 15 hours. Definitely happy how this is coming along- M101 is nicely framed by NGC 5474, NGC 5422, and NGC 5485, and a lot more are easily visible in the image. Here's a 1:1 crop of the area near NGC 5474, a "peculiar" dwarf galaxy:

The trio of galaxy blobs to the left of NGC 5474. These are, from the leftmost, "Gaia DR3 1609195779046805376", the center one is apparently nameless, and the rightmost is "SDSS J140458.21+534358.3".

 

[timmdeeg]

Testing Optolong L-Ultimate 3 nm dual band

I choose Abell 12 to see how the promised halo suppression of stars works. Abell12, the “Hidden” planetary nebula in the Orion constellation is close Mu Orionis. The halo suppression seems to work but a comparison is missing.

Unfortunately clouds prevented longer exposure, so no colors of the nebula.

Abell 12: size 37", distance ,~ 7000 LJ

Date 21. March 2023
Frames 14x180s ISO 1600
Sony A7III
UNC 200 f/4 Newton on HEQ5 - guiding with StarAid
DSS - Siril - LightZone

 

[DennisN]

I don't think I ever posted a proper photo of my secondary astro-rig. So here's a recent pic:

A very impressive rig!
Lots of cables and technology... where's the flux capacitor located?

 

[TonyStewart]

Flower pot holders?

 

[Devin-M]

I’m only about 120 miles from the 2023 Annular Solar Eclipse. 9:20am Sat Oct. 14, 2023. I hope they test launch Starship from Boca Chica, TX during the eclipse.