Category: General & Interesting info

Galaxy Triplet NGC 6769-71

This is another image from telescope live, of an interacting galaxy triplet plus some friends in the background. It was a really tough dataset to process – the data was badly undersampled and slighly out of focus. Very careful work with GHS and MMT helped a lot with this image, and I’m pretty happy with the amount of detail I got out considering the lack of data. Galaxy Triplet NGC 6769-71 is a gravitational interacting triplet of galaxies, located about 190 million light years away in the […]

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Dust and starbirth in Perseus: NGC 1333 and IC 348

This is another image from telescope live – a widefield of the Perseus region, including IC 328 and NGC 1333. It was a pretty tough dataset to work with, as there were a ton of gradients that were hard to get rid of. I decided to try SPCC in pixinsight on this dataset, and it seems to work pretty well. I couldn’t notice a really significant different between PCC and SPCC, but SPCC seems to work faster for me. IC 348 is a star-forming region in the […]

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Theoretical Vs. Observational Astronomy

Astronomy is one of the oldest existing sciences, started when humans first looked at the night sky. The study of the sky is split into two main parts, observational astronomy and theoretical astronomy. Observational astronomy deals with the study of electromagnetic radiation from space. This simply means taking photos of the sky and then analyzing these photos. Theoretical astronomy uses tools of physics and chemistry to create analytical models. This branch tries to explain why things happen. How do these branches work together? The two branches complement […]

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The key differences between a space and ground telescope.

Astronomy hinges on that ability to observe the sky, and to do that we need telescopes. Astronomers have telescopes nearly everywhere on Earth and many more telescopes in orbit.  But why do we need telescopes both on the Earth and in space? Why not just figure out which location is better, and just put all our telescopes there? The answer is much more complicated than it seems. There are numerous arguments for space telescopes and numerous arguments for ground telescopes. Advantages of space telescopes The biggest advantage […]

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The top ten coolest things in space

This is a list of what I consider to be the top ten coolest things in space! 1. Thorne-Zytkow object First is a Thorne-Zytkow object. These objects form when a pulsar worms its way into the body of a different star. Although these objects would appear to be almost normal, they would house all sorts of strange elements that would never appear in a regular star. The only one that we know of in the entire universe is called HV 2112. 2. The Fermi Bubbles Second, the […]

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All about exoplanets

An exoplanet is a planet that is not orbiting our star. An exoplanet could look like Earth, Mars, or even Jupiter.  To be classified as an exoplanet, a body must fulfill almost all of the requirements to be a planet: it must be rounded by its own gravity and have cleared its own orbit. Exoplanets are interesting for several reasons. First, they give researchers insights into how other planets might interact with stars. We only have seven planets to study in our solar system. But by looking […]

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All about spectroscopy

Spectroscopy is probably the most important tool the scientist can use to find out more about our universe. What is spectroscopy? In its simplest form, spectroscopy is the measurement of light coming off of an object. We can graph this information in spectrum to make it easier for us to understand. Below is an example of a graphed spectra: These dips and spikes happen at a certain wavelength. Because wavelengths correspond to color, we can visualize the data in a graph like this. What causes these lines? […]

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All about comets, meteorites, and asteroids

So what really are the differences between a comet, a meteorite, and an asteroid? What is a comet? A comet is a collection of gas and dust that is frozen together in deep space. These objects spend most of their lives in clouds with other comets. However, sometimes a stray comet gets pulled into a closer orbit around the sun. When that happens, something spectacular happens! The comet starts to melt, shooting off two enormous tails: one made of dust, the other, gas. Most of the time […]

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All about nebulae and supernovae

You might have heard about supernovae as the largest explosions in the galaxy, or seen beautiful pictures of nebulae, but what really are they? What is a nebula? In one sentence, a nebula is the remnants of an old star that provides a birthplace for new stars. A supernova is a gigantic explosion that happens when the largest stars in the universe explode. How are nebulae formed? Stars are constantly in the middle of a tug of war, with the internal forces of the star trying to […]

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All about neutron stars and pulsars

You might have heard about neutron stars and pulsars referred to as exotic deep space objects, but what actually are they? Neutron stars Let’s start with neutron stars. Neutron stars are formed from the stars in the universe that are almost the heaviest, but not quite. When these massive stars collapse, the product is called a neutron star. To learn more about the process of collapsing, click here: https://theastroenthusiast.com/all-about-black-holes/. Usually, the stars that make neutron stars are 400 Million miles across, but these stars are squished into […]

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