Interesting Astronomy & Astrophysics news from the week of 6/13/2021

Next week’s night sky: The moon will officially reach its full phase on Thursday, June 24 at 2:39 p.m. EDT (1839 GMT). The June full moon, colloquially known as the Strawberry Moon, Mead Moon, Rose Moon, or Hot Moon, always shines in or near the stars of southern Ophiuchus, the Serpent-Bearer. The indigenous Ojibwe people of the Great Lakes region call this moon Ode’miin Giizis, the Strawberry Moon. For the Cree Nation it’s Opiniyawiwipisim, the Egg Laying Moon (referring to the activities of wild water-fowl). The Mohawks […]

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The Eastern Veil Nebula

The Eastern Veil nebula (also known as Caldwell 33) is a cloud of heated and ionized gas and dust in the constellation of Cygnus and is located at around 1470 light-years from Earth. It is part of the Cygnus Loop which is a faint supernova remnant that exploded aproximately 7000 years ago. From the moment the source star exploded and until now, the Cygnus Loop supernova remnant expanded to a diameter of roughly 3° on the sky (that almost 6 full moons). The red hues in this […]

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Interesting Astronomy & Astrophysics news from the week of 6/6/2021

Next week’s night sky: When the moon completes the first quarter of its orbit around Earth at 11:54 p.m. EDT on Thursday, June 17 (0354 June 18 GMT) its 90-degree angle away from the sun will cause us to see it half-illuminated — on its eastern side. In the first quarter, the moon always rises around noon and sets around midnight, so it is also visible in the afternoon daytime sky. The evenings surrounding the first quarter are the best ones for seeing the lunar terrain when […]

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The Tadpole galaxy, taken by Hubble and processed by me

The Tadpole Galaxy is a disrupted barred spiral galaxy located 420 million light-years from Earth in the northern constellation Draco. Its most dramatic feature is a massive trail of stars about 280,000 light-years long; the size of the galaxy has been attributed to a merger with a smaller galaxy that is believed to have occurred about 100 million years ago. The galaxy is filled with bright blue star clusters. Image: Processing: I created this image with 3 filters taken by the Hubble ACS camera: near- infrared (814nm), […]

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IC 1396 – the Elephant’s trunk nebula

Image: Equipment/software: Nikon D90 (Astro-Mod) Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Sky-Watcher Tripod Sigma 300mm F2.8 lens Bahintov Mask Intervalometer Laptop All Sky Plate Solver Sharpcap Stellarium Acquisition: 102 x 2′ Frames – total around .43 hours integration time 199 bias frames 34 flat frames 12 dark frames Processing: Manually stacked in pixinsight Crop DBE Photometric color calibration deconvolution John Rista Denoise EZ soft stretch Starnet EZ soft stretch sharpening with MLT curves with range mask to push nebulosity curves with color mask to adjust colors Local Histogram Equalization added […]

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LBN 534 – Faint dust in Andromeda

Image: Equipment/Software: Nikon D90 Nikon 100 F2 Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Star Adventurer tripod Intervalometer Bahintov mask Laptop Stellarium All Sky plate solver Aquisition: 229 x 3′ light frames, total around 11.5 hours (taken across 2 nights) 47x darks – taken across 2 nights, temperature matched 500 bias 200x flats each nights, matched to each session Processing: Calibrated each light frame with the correct dark and flat frames stacked manually in pixinsight Dynamic crop DBE Photometric color calibration Deconvolutino Noise reduction Histogram stretch Masked Stretch to finalize Star […]

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Gas and Dust around Scorpius

The Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex is a dark nebula of gas and dust that is located 1° south of the star ρ Ophiuchi of the constellation Ophiuchus. At an estimated distance of 131 ± 3 parsecs, it is one of the closest star-forming regions to the Solar System. Image: Equipment/software: Nikon D90 Nikon 85mm f1.4 Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Star Adventurer tripod Intervalometer Bahintov mask Laptop Stellarium All Sky plate solver Acquisition: Bortle 2 for 2 panels, bortle 3/4 for the other 2 4 panel mosaic – around […]

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The Cygnus Loop

The Cygnus Loop (radio source W78, or Sharpless 103) is a large supernova remnant (SNR) in the constellation Cygnus, an emission nebula measuring nearly 3° across. Some arcs of the loop, known collectively as the Veil Nebula or Cirrus Nebula, emit in the visible electromagnetic range. Radio, infrared, and X-ray images reveal the complete loop. Image: Equipment/software: Nikon D90 Sigma 300mm prime lens Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Star Adventurer Tripod Bahnitov Mask Intervalometer DIY diffraction spikes so that 52 cyg wasn’t horrible to look at Stellarium All Sky […]

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The Lagoon and Trifid Nebulae

The Lagoon Nebula (catalogued as Messier 8 or M8, NGC 6523, Sharpless 25, RCW 146, and Gum 72) is a giant interstellar cloud in the constellation Sagittarius. It is classified as an emission nebula and as an H II region. The Trifid Nebula (catalogued as Messier 20 or M20 and as NGC 6514) is an H II region in the north-west of Sagittarius in a star-forming region in a nearby spiral arm’s Scutum-centered part. It was discovered by Charles Messier on June 5, 1764. Its name means […]

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