Cool astronomy photos

[Witness]

[Fid]

I've always thought that looked like two guys holding their dicks together and a little dog getting in on the action.

[Anaxagoras]

I've always thought that looked like two guys holding their dicks together and a little dog getting in on the action.

Thanks. Now I can't unsee it.

[robinson]

I was just coming to post that

[robinson]

heh

[Fid]

I apologize for lowering the tone of this august thread to Shemp level.
mine's on the right with the little dog

[Witness]

The classic Sombrero Galaxy (M104/Hubble):

[Witness]

Milky Way Arch at Refugio Punta de los Roques / La Palma 2019 - 6840 ft / 2085 m [2050x1365]

Source & technical details: https://old.reddit.com/r/Astronomy/comm ... t_refugio/

[Anaxagoras]

Taken in Rovaniemi, Finland. The week in pictures, BBC

[ed]

I only saw the aurora once. Impressive stuff.

[Witness]

Andromeda galaxy with and without foreground stars:

[sparks]

What are the two white blobs top and bottom?

[Anaxagoras]

What are the two white blobs top and bottom?

Other galaxies. Much farther away. The Andromeda galaxy is one of the relatively close ones. In fact, other than some dwarf galaxies, I think it's the closest large galaxy.

[Witness]

What are the two white blobs top and bottom?

Other galaxies. Much farther away. The Andromeda galaxy is one of the relatively close ones. In fact, other than some dwarf galaxies, I think it's the closest large galaxy.

Not "much farther away": these are satellite galaxies of M31/Andromeda.

The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) has satellite galaxies just like the Milky Way. Orbiting M31 are at least 13 dwarf galaxies: the brightest and largest is M110, which can be seen with a basic telescope. The second-brightest and closest one to M31 is M32. The other galaxies are fainter, and were mostly discovered only starting from the 1970s.

The Andromeda Galaxy with M110 at upper left and M32 to the right of the core.

List of satellite galaxies of Andromeda: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_A ... e_galaxies
Ditto for our own: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite ... _Milky_Way

[Anaxagoras]

Not "much farther away": these are satellite galaxies of M31/Andromeda.

Oh dear, it seems I have spoken ignorantly.

I mistakenly thought they were large elliptical galaxies but far away. I should have checked.

I think they are elliptical, but small ones.

[asthmatic camel]

Not "much farther away": these are satellite galaxies of M31/Andromeda.

Oh dear, it seems I have spoken ignorantly.

I mistakenly thought they were large elliptical galaxies but far away. I should have checked.

I think they are elliptical, but small ones.

You're forgiven. None of us knows everything, do we?

[Witness]

Lunar analemma:

Photographic stack of the lunar phases obtained every day at the same time, plus 51 minutes of offset to compensate the Earth's translation, in a total period of 29.5 days, carried out at a distance of 8 kilometers from Toledo. This peculiar shape is due to the synodic curve formed by the inclined and elliptical orbit of our satellite, whose aspect changes gradually each lunar cycle.

Due to adverse weather conditions, some of these photos could not be taken during the same period as the rest, so they were obtained from a previous lunar cycle, and to achieve the position at the same time, several of them were taken during the day for what they were digitally treated to give them a nocturnal appearance. Also indicate that, to adapt it to the landscape, the relative dimensions of the complete analema have been reduced proportionally, but maintaining the aspect and the real size of the Moon in relation to the city, as observed at that distance.

https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasf ... ledo_over/

[Bruce]

Not "much farther away": these are satellite galaxies of M31/Andromeda.

Oh dear, it seems I have spoken ignorantly.

I mistakenly thought they were large elliptical galaxies but far away. I should have checked.

I think they are elliptical, but small ones.

You're forgiven. None of us knows everything, do we?

No! Not forgiven. I shall hold disdain for you for this gross negligence forever! Some things can never be forgiven.


Not really. I was just looking for an excuse to post that.

[Anaxagoras]

This guy has some nice stuff:

https://www.johnkrausphotos.com

[shemp]

Not "much farther away": these are satellite galaxies of M31/Andromeda.

Oh dear, it seems I have spoken ignorantly.

I mistakenly thought they were large elliptical galaxies but far away. I should have checked.

I think they are elliptical, but small ones.

You're forgiven. None of us knows everything, do we?

Speak for yourself.

[Witness]

The first-ever image of a black hole is now a movie

Pictures created from old observations show the void’s stormy evolution over the past decade.



The historic first image of a black hole unveiled last year has now been turned into a movie. The short sequence of frames shows how the appearance of the black hole’s surroundings changes over years as its gravity stirs the material around it into a constant maelstrom.

The images show a lopsided blob of light swirling around the supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy M87. To create them, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration — which harnesses a planet-wide network of observatories — exhumed old data on the black hole and combined these with a mathematical model based on the image released in April 2019, to show how the surroundings have evolved over eight years. Although it relies partly on guesswork, the result gives astronomers rich insights into the behaviour of black holes, the intense gravity of which sucks in matter and light around them.

“Because the flow of matter falling onto a black hole is turbulent, we can see that the ring wobbles with time,” says lead author Maciek Wielgus, a radio astronomer at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586- ... 479NdPP3E0

[Witness]

93.6Hrs total exposure time over 7nights - The Squid Nebula

https://old.reddit.com/r/Astronomy/comm ... time_over/

Fid dick comment in 3… 2… 1…

[Bruce]

Cosmic dog shit........











......from Sirius, of course.

[Fid]

93.6Hrs total exposure time over 7nights - The Squid Nebula

https://old.reddit.com/r/Astronomy/comm ... time_over/

Fid dick comment in 3… 2… 1…

Looks to be a double header. You know me too well sir.

[Fid]

Orion never does clean up after that damn dog.

[Witness]

Enceladus in Infrared



One of our Solar System's most tantalizing worlds, icy Saturnian moon Enceladus appears in these detailed hemisphere views from the Cassini spacecraft. In false color, the five panels present 13 years of infrared image data from Cassini's Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer and Imaging Science Subsystem. Fresh ice is colored red, and the most dramatic features look like long gashes in the 500 kilometer diameter moon's south polar region. They correspond to the location of tiger stripes, surface fractures that likely connect to an ocean beneath the Enceladus ice shell. The fractures are the source of the moon's icy plumes that continuously spew into space. The plumes were discovered by by Cassini in 2005. Now, reddish hues in the northern half of the leading hemisphere view also indicate a recent resurfacing of other regions of the geologically active moon, a world that may hold conditions suitable for life.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap200924.html

[Fid]

At some point these enlarged, throbbing, pulsating fountains of salty water will...
will...

ahem...

astronomy...Mars is at opposition.

[sparks]

Mars is always at opposition, he's the Gawd of war after all.

[Skeeve]

Chang’e 4 successfully landed on the far side of the moon.

First photos published:

https://www.businessinsider.com/photos- ... ing-2019-1

UPDATE: New measurements show moon has hazardous radiation levels

Say WHAT?

Future moon explorers will be bombarded with two to three times more radiation than astronauts aboard the International Space Station, a health hazard that will require thick-walled shelters for protection, scientists reported Friday.

China's lander on the far side of the moon is providing the first full measurements of radiation exposure from the lunar surface, vital information for NASA and others aiming to send astronauts to the moon, the study noted.

A Chinese-German team reported on the radiation data collected by the lander—named Chang'e 4 for the Chinese moon goddess—in the U.S. journal Science Advances.

"This is an immense achievement in the sense that now we have a data set which we can use to benchmark our radiation" and better understand the potential risk to people on the moon, said Thomas Berger, a physicist with the German Space Agency's medicine institute.

Astronauts would get 200 to 1,000 times more radiation on the moon than what we experience on Earth—or five to 10 times more than passengers on a trans-Atlantic airline flight, noted Robert Wimmer-Schweingruber of Christian-Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany.

"The difference is, however, that we're not on such a flight for as long as astronauts would be when they're exploring the moon," Wimmer-Schweingruber said in an email.

Cancer is the primary risk.

"Humans are not really made for these radiation levels and should protect themselves when on the moon," he added.

Radiation levels should be pretty much the same all over the moon, except for near the walls of deep craters, Wimmer-Schweingruber said.

"Basically, the less you see of the sky, the better. That's the primary source of the radiation," he said.

Wimmer-Schweingruber said the radiation levels are close to what models had predicted. The levels measured by Chang'e 4, in fact, "agree nearly exactly" with measurements by a detector on a NASA orbiter that has been circling the moon for more than a decade[/highlight], said Kerry Lee, a space radiation expert at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"It is nice to see confirmation of what we think and our understanding of how radiation interacts with the moon is as expected," said Lee, who was not involved in the Chinese-led study.

In a detailed outline released this week, NASA said the first pair of astronauts to land on the moon under the new Artemis program would spend about a week on the lunar surface, more than twice as long as the Apollo crews did a half-century ago. Expeditions would last one to two months once a base camp is established.

NASA is looking to put astronauts on the moon by the end of 2024, an accelerated pace ordered by the White House, and on Mars sometime in the 2030s.

The space agency said it will have radiation detectors and a safe shelter aboard all Orion crew capsules flying to the moon. As for the actual landers, three separate corporate teams are developing their own craft with NASA oversight. For the first Artemis moon landing, at least, the astronauts will live in the ascent portion of their lander.

The German researchers suggest shelters built of moon dirt—readily available material—for stays of more than a few days. The walls should be 80 centimeters (about 2 1/2 feet) thick, they said. Any thicker and the dirt will emit its own secondary radiation, created when galactic cosmic rays interact with the lunar soil.

"So in this sense—I think the walls of European Castles would be too thick!" Berger wrote in an email.

So, was there less radiation in 1969, or did all that jumping around and stuff help those dudes fight cancer...
If there was less radiation back then, what happened?
Is global warming to blame?

Inquiring minds want to know!

[Witness]

↑ Not really fresh news, the whole of space is full of radiation (fast protons and hard UV from the Sun + cosmic rays, which can be anything), so we fragile meatbags better stay under our cushy atmosphere. And send robots.

---

Equinox in the Sky



Does the Sun set in the same direction every day? No, the direction of sunset depends on the time of the year. Although the Sun always sets approximately toward the west, on an equinox like today the Sun sets directly toward the west. After today's September equinox, the Sun will set increasingly toward the southwest, reaching its maximum displacement at the December solstice. Before today's September equinox, the Sun had set toward the northwest, reaching its maximum displacement at the June solstice. The featured time-lapse image shows seven bands of the Sun setting one day each month from 2019 December through 2020 June. These image sequences were taken from Alberta, Canada -- well north of the Earth's equator -- and feature the city of Edmonton in the foreground. The middle band shows the Sun setting during the last equinox -- in March. From this location, the Sun will set along this same equinox band again today.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap200922.html

[Fid]

Well duhh... the moon landing hoaxtards say the Van Allen radiation belt would have fried anyone. This is true but (slaps ample butt) it wasn't like they lounged around there.

[Witness]

Filaments of the Cygnus Loop



What lies at the edge of an expanding supernova? Subtle and delicate in appearance, these ribbons of shocked interstellar gas are part of a blast wave at the expanding edge of a violent stellar explosion that would have been easily visible to humans during the late stone age, about 20,000 years ago. The featured image was recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope and is a closeup of the outer edge of a supernova remnant known as the Cygnus Loop or Veil Nebula. The filamentary shock front is moving toward the top of the frame at about 170 kilometers per second, while glowing in light emitted by atoms of excited hydrogen gas. The distances to stars thought to be interacting with the Cygnus Loop have recently been found by the Gaia mission to be about 2400 light years distant. The whole Cygnus Loop spans six full Moons across the sky, corresponding to about 130 light years, and parts can be seen with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus).

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

[Bruce]

This is one of the coolest discoveries I've ever seen...

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap200929.html

It's a solar system with 3 stars. Besides being cool, it shouldn't even exist. There is a classic physics conundrum called the Three Body Problem.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem

Basically, the whole reason we only see single and binary solar systems is because three stars don't seem to form a stable orbit. One of the three quickly gets chucked. There are special and bizarre mathematical solutions to the 3 body problem, but this is the first real life example that I'm aware of.

The painfully brief paragraph about this system indicates that it could break apart in the near future, or that it may be in the process of breaking apart, but the fact that the system formed such beautiful concentric rings indicates that it has remained relatively stable for quite a long time. Would love to see more study on this system and would love to know if the orbits follow on of the mathematical 3 body solutions.

[Anaxagoras]

Not to be pedantic, but I don't think the three body problem means that trinary star systems don't exist. It just means that it's difficult to predict how they will behave using Newton's laws of motion. Not impossible, but difficult.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_system#Trinary

[Bruce]

[robinson]

The earth moon and sun is a three body problem

[Bruce]

The earth moon and sun is a three body problem

It's a 3 body solution, thanks to GOWD.

[Bruce]

Robinson is a one body problem.

[sparks]

He simply excludes that we are fortunate in that the bodies in our planetary system are largely in the same plane. A fact easily overlooked by any unimaginative street-fool.

[Witness]

HubbleESA

This video shows a unique time-lapse of the supernova in galaxy NGC 2525. The supernova is captured by Hubble in exquisite detail within this galaxy in the lower left portion of the frame. It appears as a very bright star located on the outer edge of one of its beautiful swirling spiral arms. This new and unique time-lapse of Hubble images shows the once bright supernova initially outshining the brightest stars in the galaxy, before fading into obscurity during the telescope’s observations. This time-lapse consists of observations taken over the course of one year, from February 2018 to February 2019.

NGC 2525 is located nearly 70 million light-years from Earth and is part of the constellation of Puppis in the southern hemisphere. Hubble captured this series of images of NGC2525 in 2018 as part of one of its major investigations; measuring the expansion rate of the Universe, which can help answer fundamental questions about our Universe’s very nature.

The whole galaxy for reference: