Latest Posts by ad-astra-affecte-spe - Page 7

NGC 6744

via APOD/NASA; Credit: NASA, ESA, and the LEGUS team 

Inneston, South Australia, Australia | blntpencil

Lunar Closeup l Andrew McCarthy

the new composite james webb image is so beautiful ive been staring at it for 10 minutes straight

featuring jupiters rings, europa (along with a bunch of other moons), the northern and southern auroras, and the great red spot

Saturn, Cassini

M31 Adromeda Galaxy (Visible Light) by NASA Goddard Photo and Video

I'm having too much fun taking Skye sky photos on a cloudless winter's night. From May until the end of July it doesn't get dark enough for stars. (Pixel 5 in Night Mode / Astrophotography AI on.)

For ten years the stargazer dreamed of taking a picture like this. The dreamer knew that the White Desert National Park in Egypt's Western Desert is a picturesque place hosting numerous chalk formations sculpted into surreal structures by a sandy wind. The dreamer knew that the sky above could be impressively dark on a clear moonless night, showing highlights such as the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy in impressive color and detail. So the dreamer invited an even more experienced astrophotographer to spend three weeks together in the desert and plan the composite images that needed to be taken and processed to create the dream image. Over three days in mid-March, the base images were taken, all with the same camera and from the same location. The impressive result is featured here, with the dreamer -- proudly wearing a traditional Bedouin galabyia -- pictured in the foreground.

Do you ever think about the infinite

L1527 IRS - Protostar

Stars form when bodies of dust and gas create enough mass to create a gravitational effect that's able to then pull in more gas, the process continues and the mass increases until the pressure at the centre is sufficient for fusion to begin.

There's many examples of protostars, in fact back in 2012,  NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope focused in on L1527 IRS, believed at the time to be the youngest forming star ever found.

Recently, the JWST re-visited this protostar, and the title image was the result.

The forming star cannot be visually spotted, but is thought to be around 20-40% the mass of our own Sun already.

If you look closely, you can see there's a dark patch in the centre, this is actually the accretion disk around the newly formed star, what is left over after the formation, may go on to form the planets, in fact, they may be actually starting to be created already, as recent evidence does point to planets being born around the same time as the star does in many cases.

The protostar is only 450 light years from Earth in the Constellation of Taurus, and is thought to be around 100,000 years old, a blink of an eye in the life of a star, particularly of this mass.

Star clusters shine in the universe l Hubble

Saturn has a mysterious hexagon at its north pole that has refused to give up its secrets, probably because neither Voyager 1 nor Cassini was able to plunge that deep and survive. Harvard scientists Rakesh Yadav and Jeremy Bloxham might have finally started to figure out what causes this peculiar feature. They believe that vortexes occur at the planet’s north pole because of atmospheric flows deep within the gas giant, and that these vortexes pinch an intense horizontal jet near the equator—which is what warps the storm into a hexagon. It still looks unnatural though.....!!!

Saturn observed by space probe Voyager 1 on November 16, 1980

Credit: NASA

JWST Breaks New Ground - Twice

Between the orbit of Jupiter and Saturn lies a small 151Km wide asteroid/minor planet called Chariklo. This left over from our early solar system hasn't been imaged before, and was too small for JWST to image too, however, the JWST team were waiting for an opportunity to do some science.

Because of it's size, the only way they could do this was if a star passed directly behind the asteroid from the location of JWST, so it was put on a watch list, and in October, this is exactly what happened.

This is the first time any telescope has been able to see an object it wouldn't ordinarily be able to image, simply due to a chance occultation, so marks a first and interesting method for looking at some of these far off objects.

The asteroid happens also happens to sport a small ring of debris, and as the star didn't quite make a direct occultation, it did pass through the debris rings, being picked up twice as it passed through.

But what really was impressive was the second bit of data gathered, as the occultation occurred JWST was able to record the composition, detecting water ice.

Up until now, it had been assumed that the asteroid would have a significant water ice component, but this is the first time anybody has been able to take some real data from it.

Objects like Chariklo tell us so much about the early solar system, how Earth got it's water, and what other systems and exoplanets are likely made from.

2023 February 22

Our Increasingly Active Sun Image Credit & Copyright: Mehmet Ergün

Explanation: Our Sun is becoming a busy place. Only two years ago, the Sun was emerging from a solar minimum so quiet that months would go by without even a single sunspot. In contrast, already this year and well ahead of schedule, our Sun is unusually active, already nearing solar activity levels seen a decade ago during the last solar maximum. Our increasingly active Sun was captured two weeks ago sporting numerous interesting features. The image was recorded in a single color of light called Hydrogen Alpha, color-inverted, and false colored. Spicules carpet much of the Sun’s face. The brightening towards the Sun’s edges is caused by increased absorption of relatively cool solar gas and called limb darkening. Just outside the Sun’s disk, several scintillating prominences protrude, while prominences on the Sun’s face are known as filaments and show as light streaks. Magnetically tangled active regions are both dark and light and contain cool sunspots. As our Sun’s magnetic field winds toward solar maximum over the next few years, whether the Sun’s high activity will continue to increase is unknown.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230222.html

[...] while compartmentalization and replication are important, they are aspects of what life is and does, but they do not address the why of life. The why of life is metabolism. By completing the circuit of life, biology harnesses energy from its environment. Technically speaking, this means that biology actually helps the universe cool faster; it increases the entropy of the universe. This is why the universe needs life.

Alien Oceans by Kevin Peter Hand

2023 February 25

Crescent Moon Occultation Image Credit & Copyright: Fefo Bouvier

Explanation: On February 22, a young Moon shared the western sky at sunset with bright planets Venus and Jupiter along the ecliptic plane. The beautiful celestial conjunction was visible around planet Earth. But from some locations Jupiter hid for a while, occulted by the crescent lunar disk. The Solar System’s ruling gas giant was captured here just before it disappeared behind the the Moon’s dark edge, seen over the Río de la Plata at Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay. In the serene river and skyscape Venus is not so shy, shining brightly closer to the horizon through the fading twilight. Next week Venus and Jupiter will appear even closer in your evening sky.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230225.html

Wide-Field Spiral

Interacting galaxies

an actual true color photograph showing Saturn, its rings, and one of its moons taken by the Cassini space probe orbiting 23.8k miles away, October 11, 2005

Andromeda, If It Was Brighter

One of the largest structures in the night sky is visible with the naked eye, but if you live in a city, it's literally hiding just out of sight. Even in a dark area, it's not the easiest to immediately see, but the above image has brightened it up for us, to show us what the galaxy would look like, if only the sky was dark enough and the galaxy was a bit brighter.

The moon comparison is the best one, that is something we can all see in the night sky (unless you live in the UK, where you see mostly clouds).

Now imagine that galaxy stretching several moon-spans across the sky. That I hope gives you a minor taste of what it's like when using a small telescope or even binoculars, you first come across it.

If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, then it's well worth the search.

Near sunset, look for 3 objects which should be easy to locate, Venus and Jupiter (I'll come to this in a moment) low in the sky, the W of Cassiopeia and the Seven Sisters (Pleiades), and from that, you should find the location. Bare in mind it's several times the size of the moon, so you don't have to be too accurate, but if you can find the stars of Andromeda, that will help refine your search.

And finally that brings me on to the real star of the sky currently, Jupiter and Venus, the two brightest planets, very close together.

In fact, if you do have a really good pair of binoculars, or small telescope, this is a great time to view them. Venus often appears as a crescent like a phase of the moon, and Jupiter has it's 4 Galilean moons to spot.

Happy Spotting !