Day Thirtyeight - The Sun

-
Some sunspots visible today.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Night Thirtyfive - The Gulf of Mexico Nebula

-
Image
Take a moment to examine the first image. On the left side is a nebula that allows us to imagine the entire North American Continent. Florida and Mexico are clearly visible. On the right side of the image is imagined to be a pelican with its head and beak facing across the Atlantic Ocean towards North America. The Gulf of Mexico Nebula is a dark nebula located in the constellation Cepheus, approximately 500 light-years away from Earth. Unlike emission nebulae, dark nebulae do not emit light and are visible only by blocking out the light from background stars . This is one of the largest dark nebulae in the night sky and spans over 5 degrees in the sky, equivalent to roughly 10 times the size of the full moon. The dark nebula appears as a large, irregularly shaped cloud of dust and gas obscuring the background stars’ light. This makes it a fascinating object for both amateur and professional astronomers to study, as it provides a glimpse into the hidden world of interstellar gas and ...
Read more

Night Fortythree - The Whirlpool Galaxy

-
Image
First night out in a long while between health and weather. Returned to M 51, The Whirlpool Galaxy. Wikipedia says - What later became known as the Whirlpool Galaxy was discovered on October 13, 1773, by Charles Messier while hunting for objects that could confuse comet hunters, and was designated in Messier's catalogue as M51.[13] William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, employing a 72-inch (1.8 m) reflecting telescope at Birr Castle, Ireland, found that the Whirlpool possessed a spiral structure, the first "nebula" to be known to have one.[14] These "spiral nebulae" were not recognized as galaxies until Edwin Hubble was able to observe Cepheid variables in some of these spiral nebulae, which provided evidence that they were so far away that they must be entirely separate galaxies.[15] The advent of radio astronomy and subsequent radio images of M51 unequivocally demonstrated that the Whirlpool and its companion galaxy are indeed interacting.
Read more

Night - Fortynine - Return to the scene of the crime Comet PanSTARRS

-
Image
Comet Pan STARRS 2025 R3   This is a repeat of the previous morning's work. Basically to see if the telescope was still functioning as I hoped. All went well at a little after 4 AM. The telescope has a ding or two where it hit the gravel but all is functioning well. I thought the threads on the tripod shoe might have been plastic but they are definitely metal. So the failure was just in setting down the tripod too hard without giving the telescope any support and the scope simply ripped itself off the threads and fell to the ground. In the future, all movement of the tripod will happen with support for the telescope.   The first imaging still caught some trees as the comet was remaining a bit low on the horizon. But the second capture gave me this image (and a cropped version) which was clean without too many satellites criss crossing the image.   .
Read more