Astro Photos, Astronomy and The Deep Space

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Similarly, every depiction of a 'asteroid belt' in movies is false. The average distance between objects larger than a grain of sand is like 10's of miles in our asteroid belt. When NASA flies a satellite to the outer solar system, they just go right through it with incident.... yet.

Space is really really fricken big.

Exactly. And that is why we have to use light as a distance measuring tool. Think about it… the sun is 93 million miles away and sunlight takes 8 minutes to reach us on earth.

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This is an image of the Needle Galaxy. The galaxy is around 50 million l.y away. Remember the further away from us the more difficult it is to capture detail. We see this spiral galaxy edge on. I like this one because of the many colors present. Red dwarf stars dominate the population distribution. The blue areas in this image (you may have to stretch the image) is where stars are being formed. Other more distant galaxies are also visible in this image.

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This stuff is just super fascinating to me. Glad you guys are sharing!

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This is the well known Horsehead Nebula. Another object that is found in Orion, the Great Hunter. (You probably will want to stretch the image to see the Horsehead more clearly.) Orion is visible this time of year. I remember when I was a kid learning about locating a few constellations in the night sky. First the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, the Seven Sisters and Orion. I was amazed at how much of the sky was taken up by each constellation.

The nebula is located just south of Alnitak, the bright star on the left in Orion’s Belt. In this picture Alnitak is the bright blue star left of center. The nebula is about 1375 light years away. Note, not million light years, just over a thousand. It is located in our galaxy just as all of the stars are that we see at night. It is a dark nebula, or cloud of dust, that is illuminated by star formation that is in process in the region. Hubble Telescope has taken some incredible images of the Horsehead Nebula. With a pair of binoculars in a dark sky area it will look like a little diffuse object.

The Horsehead Nebula

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Should've called it the Dragon's Head Nebula. With that awesome backdrop and the rearing of it's head, it seems more fitting...and dramatic.

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Should've called it the Dragon's Head Nebula. With that awesome backdrop and the rearing of it's head, it seems more fitting...and dramatic.

Thanks Trudge and APB…

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It’s been too long since I’ve posted anything here. I’ve been dabbling with obtaining Milky Way images. Different acquisition set up. Here’s one from this summer. Taken in Western CO dark skies.

2023 Summer Milky Way

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Here are a couple photos taken during the Annular Eclipse on October 14, 2023. If you look closely you will see sunspots in the first image.

These photos were taken with a Nikon Mirrorless and a telephoto lens mounted on a tripod.

My apologies for the different image scaling.

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Solar activity has a maximum that has a cycle between 9 to 14 years. We are nearing a solar maximum. When this occurs the Aurora Borealis increase. There is also a risk that communications on earth can be impacted. This photo was taken today 11-25-23.

Get your camera ready Sal.

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Two photos from the April 2024 total eclipse.

The first image is during totality. Obtaining good quality was an incredible challenge due to the clouds. I drove to TX first. Since clouds were predicted I then drove to Arkansas. Still had some upper level clouds that caused problems, but did the best I could with the situation. The second image is a collage of the progression of the eclipse. Notice the clouds in the first frame in the second row. Gives an idea of the density of the clouds and the challenge of the situation.

Totality 4-8-24

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Totali Eclipse Collage 4-8-24

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This is a 15 sec single frame exposure of comet C/2024 A3. I have a total of 30 minutes LRGB exposures but I have to process the data. Comets are a challenge because they are moving so fast relative to the background star field. The trick is to remove the background stars from all the single frames, stack and align the comet images, then add the starfield background back into the image. I’ll share the integrated image when it is completed.

C/2024 A3

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