Cool astronomy photos

[Witness]

https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautifu ... _orbit_in/

[Witness]

https://i.imgur.com/xzIimnK.jpg
Apollo 15 / Hadley Rille site on the Moon.

Spoiler:

It's a radar picture. :shock:

A newly installed planetary radar system on the Green Bank Radio Telescope will probe the solar system in detail.

[Anaxagoras]

How time flies. Curiosity landed way back in August of 2012. Since then it has traveled a grand total of 24 kilometers (15 miles). Roughly 2 miles or 3 kilometers per year.

Later this month of course, we're going to get another Mars rover based on the same design, but new and improved. Hopefully it lands safely, but the landing system was successful last time, so I'm hopeful that it will work again. If not, that would be a disappoint.

[Witness]

↑ Mars is the only planet populated only by robots (as far as we know :mrgreen: ).

---

https://i.imgur.com/RGEJCjp.jpg

[Bruce]

Beautiful picture. Really shows that galaxies are the universe's bathtub drains. Many of us thought there had to be a black hole in the center. We turned out to be correct.

[Witness]

↑ :figamagee: for poetic metaphor.

[Witness]

The blather ends at 0:50.

[Witness]

https://i.imgur.com/fsAA24H.jpg

Technical details: https://old.reddit.com/r/Astronomy/comm ... r_surface/

[Anaxagoras]

Wouldn't it be cool if we could somehow see exoplanets in high resolution?



It sounds like science fiction, but maybe it will someday be possible.

[Witness]

Mars relief map:

https://preview.redd.it/7pegoe666xk61.p ... 4813fb833d

[Witness]

https://i.imgur.com/m5ZNaoT.jpg

Pleiades - Mars conjunction (Friday). Technical details: https://old.reddit.com/r/Astronomy/comm ... njunction/

[Witness]

https://i.imgur.com/sBY3Ece.jpg

[Fid]

Imagine the pics from "Galileo" had they been able to deploy the high-gain antenna. Sigh...the universe is a harsh mistress.

[Witness]

https://i.imgur.com/oAgC1kk.jpg

Hubble Captures Stunning View of a Spiral Galaxy

NGC 2336 is approximately 100 million light-years away and located in the northern constellation of Camelopardalis (which depicts a giraffe). With its eight prominent spiral arms, NGC 2336 measures some 200,000 light-years across. By contrast, the Milky Way—another spiral galaxy—is around half that size, measuring 105,000 light-years in diameter.

The gigantic galaxy is filled with young stars, which appear in blue, while older stars, many located toward the center, shine in red.

Interestingly, NGC 2336 produced a visible supernova, which astronomers detected on August 16, 1987. It was later determined to be a type 1a supernova, in which the exploding member of a binary pair is a white dwarf.

https://gizmodo.com/hubble-captures-stu ... 1846415774

[Witness]

https://i.imgur.com/stYUHu5.jpg

[Anaxagoras]

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TqRxEAjrDYI/YFCLF-H8K3I/AAAAAAAAS-E/rj_avOwDgw0TP66RQURSDcDIOPPxJIscgCLcBGAsYHQ/s7023/000-GrandeMosaic120DegreesLONG.jpg
Click to enbiggen.

https://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/2021/ ... -1250.html

[Witness]

https://i.imgur.com/WLj8bBj.jpg


Jupiter's south pole (Cassini Juno, of course).

Edit: "of course", ha ha!

[Anaxagoras]

Jupiter's south pole (Cassini, of course).

Not Juno?

[Witness]

You're right, Juno. I mindlessly copied from the site. :oops:

[Witness]

First image of black hole in polarized light catches glimpse of its invisible forces

https://i.imgur.com/byND5By.png

https://academictimes.com/first-image-o ... le-forces/ for the text.

[Witness]

Keck Telescope Views of Uranus

https://i.imgur.com/60tbKLS.jpg

An infrared composite image of the two hemispheres of Uranus obtained with Keck Telescope adaptive optics. The component colors of blue, green, and red were obtained from images made at near infrared wavelengths of 1.26, 1.62, and 2.1 microns respectively. The images were obtained on July 11 and 12, 2004. The North pole is at 4 o'clock.

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/ ... ets_uranus


And now Chandra has added to that:

First X-rays From Uranus Discovered

https://i.imgur.com/8hYvpwc.jpg

Astronomers have detected X-rays from Uranus for the first time, using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. This result may help scientists learn more about this enigmatic ice giant planet in our solar system.

Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun and has two sets of rings around its equator. The planet, which has four times the diameter of Earth, rotates on its side, making it different from all other planets in the solar system. Since Voyager 2 was the only spacecraft to ever fly by Uranus, astronomers currently rely on telescopes much closer to Earth, like Chandra and the Hubble Space Telescope, to learn about this distant and cold planet that is made up almost entirely of hydrogen and helium.

In the new study, researchers used Chandra observations taken in [sic!] Uranus in 2002 and then again in 2017. They saw a clear detection of X-rays from the first observation, just analyzed recently, and a possible flare of X-rays in those obtained fifteen years later. The main graphic shows a Chandra X-ray image of Uranus from 2002 (in pink) superimposed on an optical image from the Keck-I Telescope obtained in a separate study in 2004. The latter shows the planet at approximately the same orientation as it was during the 2002 Chandra observations.

https://i.imgur.com/KJGk00U.jpg

2017 HRC Composite Image

https://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2021/uranus/

[ed]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EzyEHZtWQAA ... ame=medium

The Sun

[robinson]

fake!


(The sun is actually white, with the peak of the spectrum in green)

[ed]

Racist!!!

[Witness]

https://i.imgur.com/zOoxLjV.jpg

[Witness]

[Witness]

https://i.imgur.com/QjTwcb4.jpg

[Anaxagoras]

Galactic Center: Magnetized Threads Weave Spectacular Galactic Tapestry

https://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2021/ ... er_525.jpg

This is a composite of X-ray and radio wave images. Follow the link above to see each separately and to toggle the captions on/off.

[Witness]

[Witness]

Hubble Catches a Spiral Galaxy in Disguise

https://i.imgur.com/u6uaFVr.jpg

Resembling a wizard’s staff set aglow, NGC 1032 cleaves the quiet darkness of space in two in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

NGC 1032 is located about a hundred million light-years away in the constellation Cetus (the Sea Monster). Although beautiful, this image perhaps does not do justice to the galaxy’s true aesthetic appeal: NGC 1032 is actually a spectacular spiral galaxy, but from Earth, the galaxy’s vast disk of gas, dust and stars is seen nearly edge-on.

A handful of other galaxies can be seen lurking in the background, scattered around the narrow strip of NGC 1032. Many are oriented face-on or at tilted angles, showing off their glamorous spiral arms and bright cores. Such orientations provide a wealth of detail about the arms and their nuclei, but fully understanding a galaxy’s three-dimensional structure also requires an edge-on view. This gives astronomers an overall idea of how stars are distributed throughout the galaxy and allows them to measure the “height” of the disk and the bright star-studded core.

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/godd ... n-disguise

[Witness]

Tycho supernova (1572):

https://i.imgur.com/nAjX2KH.gif

[robinson]

[Witness]

I captured photos of Saturn for 2 years to show how its angle changes relative to Earth. This video is from images captured from my backyard with a small telescope.

https://new.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/ ... s_to_show/

[Anaxagoras]

https://i.imgur.com/nolLpe9.jpg

Einstein ring captured by Hubble.

Two galaxies with a distant quasar behind them.

ETA: Looks like there might be a second Einstein ring in the lower right?

Linky

And, the JWST now has an "official" launch date of December 18th:

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58498676

The $10bn James Webb Space Telescope is expected to launch on 18 December.

Yes, countless targeted lift-offs have come and gone in the past, but this one has a reality to it that the others didn't: the successor observatory to Hubble is now actually built.

All that is required is to ship the finished telescope to French Guiana, put it on the top of an Ariane rocket, light the engines and stand well back.

[Fid]

ETA: Looks like there might be a second Einstein ring in the lower right?

Maybe but I'm guessing a diffraction artifact. Assuming we are looking at the same object.

[Anaxagoras]

ETA: Looks like there might be a second Einstein ring in the lower right?

Maybe but I'm guessing a diffraction artifact. Assuming we are looking at the same object.

Yeah, probably just that. It looks like there's a red circle around it and 4 spikes. I wondered if it might be an Einstein cross/ring.

But looking at other examples of diffraction artifacts, it looks like probably just that.

[Anaxagoras]

Amazing views of an amazing planet. Best viewed full screen.

I admit I only watched about 5 minutes of it, but it's quite beautiful.