Cha Moon... Faithful, Beautiful, Powerful

star cluster NGC 602 in the wing of the Small Magellanic Cloud

This is my first shot of Orion Nebula from home (Nice, France) on Nov 14th. Taken with C8 EdgeHD, Nikon D750, ISO6400,10s. My next step is to fine tune my mount tracking (was done in a rush), take longer exposures and stack several shots. Hopefully this week-end.

The Dark River to Antares : A dark river seems to flow through this sky from the horizon toward colorful clouds near red giant star Antares. Murky looking, the dark river is a dusty nebula obscuring background starlight near the central Milky Way, although the dark dust nebula contains mostly hydrogen molecular gas. Dust scattering starlight around Antares, alpha star of Scorpius, creates the unusual yellow-hued reflection nebula. Above it, bright blue double star Rho Ophiuchi is embedded in more typical dusty bluish reflection nebulae, with red emission nebulae also scattered through the interstellar space. Globular star cluster M4 looks almost like a bright star just above and right of Antares, though it lies far behind the colorful clouds, at a distance of some 7,000 light-years. The dark river itself is about 500 light years away. To create the startling night sky view, all background and foreground exposures were made back to back with the same camera and telephoto lens on the same night from the same location. In combination they produce a stunning image that reveals a range of brightness and color that your eye can’t quite perceive. Recorded in the early hours of January 31, the composite also captures Mars still near the eastern horizon and rising to join rival Antares on the celestial stage. Bright Mars and its watery reflection are left of a lonely tree in the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, New Mexico, planet Earth. via NASA

The Fish Head Nebula, NGC 896 // Frank Dibbell

Focus on a small portion of the Milky Way, above Canadian forest, August 2019, showing North American nebula and part the Cygnus constellation. Taken with Nikon D750, 50mm, ISO1600, 10s. I did not have a tripod, it was tricky to keep the camera still.

re-edited my pic to reveal more details

Our graceful and faithful Moon

A 2.5 Hour Exposure of the Rho Ophiuchi Region From a Dark Sky Site [OC]

Space.com

Hubble captures a 'Cosmic Reef' in stunning 30th anniversary image

"This image is amazing, it's really showing how powerful Hubble is."

Happy Birthday Hubble !

The Full Moon of 2021 via NASA https://ift.tt/3FWxNTm

Every Full Moon of 2021 shines in this year-spanning astrophoto project, a composite portrait of the familiar lunar nearside at each brightest lunar phase. Arranged by moonth, the year progresses in stripes beginning at the top. Taken with the same camera and lens the stripes are from Full Moon images all combined at the same pixel scale. The stripes still looked mismatched, but they show that the Full Moon’s angular size changes throughout the year depending on its distance from Kolkata, India, planet Earth. The calendar month, a full moon name, distance in kilometers, and angular size is indicated for each stripe. Angular size is given in minutes of arc corresponding to 1/60th of a degree. The largest Full Moon is near a perigee or closest approach in May. The smallest is near an apogee, the most distant Full Moon in December. Of course the full moons of May and November also slid into Earth’s shadow during 2021’s two lunar eclipses.

(Published January 01, 2022)

“There’s as many atoms in a single molecule of your DNA as there are stars in the typical galaxy. We are, each of us, a little universe.”

—

Neil deGrasse Tyson, Cosmos