A Beginner’s Star-book, An Easy Guide To The Stars And To The Astronomical Uses Of The Opera-glass,

2023 September 28

The Deep Lagoon Image Credit & Copyright: Josep Drudis, Christian Sasse

Explanation: Ridges of glowing interstellar gas and dark dust clouds inhabit the turbulent, cosmic depths of the Lagoon Nebula. Also known as M8, The bright star forming region is about 5,000 light-years distant. It makes for a popular stop on telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius toward the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Dominated by the telltale red emission of ionized hydrogen atoms recombining with stripped electrons, this deep telescopic view of the Lagoon’s central reaches is about 40 light-years across. The bright hourglass shape near the center of the frame is gas ionized and sculpted by energetic radiation and extreme stellar winds from a massive young star.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230928.html

Image of Saturn and some of its moons, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam instrument on June 25, 2023.

Credits: NASA

 Venus and Pleiades

New Horizons – Scientist of the Day 

The New Horizons spacecraft, bound for Pluto, blasted off its launch pad aboard an Atlas V rocket on Jan. 19, 2006. 

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NGC 2244, Within the Rose

The Sun’s corona during a solar-eclipse.

Markarian's Chain

Two spiral galaxies, NGC 6040 and NGC 6039, are merging together at the right side of this Hubble image. NGC 6039 is seen face-on and is circular in shape. NGC 6040 seems to lie in front of the first one. In the lower-left corner, cut off by the frame, the elliptical galaxy NGC 6041 — a central member of the galaxy cluster that Arp 122 resides in — appears as light radiating from a point. The color image was made from separate exposures taken in the visible and infrared regions

Moon, Jupiter and its satellites

l Josselin Desmars l France l June 14, 2023

Galaxies can merge, collide, or brush past one another — each of which has a significant impact on their shapes and structures. As common as these interactions are thought to be in the Universe, it is rare to capture an image of two galaxies interacting in such a visibly dynamic way. This image, from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, feels incredibly three-dimensional for a piece of deep-space imagery.

The subject of this image is named Arp 282, an interacting galaxy pair that is composed of the Seyfert galaxy NGC 169 (bottom) and the galaxy IC 1559 (top).

Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton, Dark Energy Survey, J. Schmidt