So Far, The Forecast This Wednesday Doesn't Look Good, But We'll Wait Til That Day To Make The Announcement.

Young Stars, Stellar Jets via NASA https://ift.tt/mUE9hQK

July 2024 Public Nights

The observatory will be open to the public, weather allowing, on Wednesdays July 24 and 31 from 9:00 pm - 10:00 pm. Please check back the afternoon of the event for our weather decision!

The 2023 Annular Eclipse as seen from Albuquerque, NM // Jordan Martin

Please, forecast, be right about tomorrow night.

(For where we live, that's clear).

Webb + Hubble > peanut butter + chocolate? We think so!

In this image of galaxy cluster MACS0416, the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes have united to create one of the most colorful views of the universe ever taken. Their combination of visible and infrared light yields vivid colors that give clues to the distances of galaxies (blue = close, red = far).

Looking at the combined data, scientists have spotted a sprinkling of sources that vary over time, including highly magnified supernovas and even individual stars billions of light-years away.

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Diego (Instituto de Fisica de Cantabria, Spain), J. D’Silva (U. Western Australia), A. Koekemoer (STScI), J. Summers & R. Windhorst (ASU), and H. Yan (U. Missouri).

ALT TEXT: A field of galaxies on the black background of space. In the middle, stretching from left to right, is a collection of dozens of yellowish spiral and elliptical galaxies that form a foreground galaxy cluster. They form a rough, flat line along the center. Among them are distorted linear features, which mostly appear to follow invisible concentric circles curving around the center of the image. The linear features are created when the light of a background galaxy is bent and magnified through gravitational lensing. At center left, a particularly prominent example stretches vertically about three times the length of a nearby galaxy. A variety of brightly colored, red and blue galaxies of various shapes are scattered across the image, making it feel densely populated. Near the center are two tiny galaxies compared to the galaxy cluster: a very red edge-on spiral and a very blue face-on spiral, which provide a striking color contrast.

Is it me or does Jupiter in this also look like calcifer from howls moving castle

Skyshark

Man sees what he wants to see, and so it is with the Dark Nebula LDN 1235. This collection of dust in the constellation Cepheus is very reminiscent of a shark. At just 650 light years away, it is just around the corner.

Object type: Dark nebula

Constellation: Cepheus

Total exposure: 720 minutes

Image data:

- RGB 144 x 300s / Gain 100

- 25 flats

- 25 Bias

- 25 Darks

Setup:

- Skywatcher 150/750 F5 PDS

- Omegon 571C

- Skywatcher EQ6R Pro

- Two Asi 178mm as guide cam

“What in the world is that?” That’s a natural reaction when you first see this Hubble Space Telescope image of LL Pegasi. The extremely dim spiral pattern is real, and its regularity suggests a periodic origin for the nebula’s shape.

The spiral is thought to arise because LL Pegasi is a binary system, with a star that is losing material and a companion star orbiting it. The companion’s gravitational influence helps sculpt the nebula. The spacing between layers in the spiral reflects the 800-year orbital period of the binary.

Credit: ESA/NASA & R. Sahai.

ALT TEXT: At center left, a faint spiral structure with wide bands has a dark, dusty center. To its right, a bright white star displays four prominent diffraction spikes. A handful of smaller, more distant background galaxies are also scatted throughout the image.

2023 October 4

IC 2118: The Witch Head Nebula Image Credit & Copyright: Abdullah Alharbi

Explanation: Does this nebula look like the head of a witch? The nebula is known popularly as the Witch Head Nebula because, it is said, the nebula’s shape resembles a Halloween-style caricature of a witch’s head. Exactly how, though, can be a topic of imaginative speculation. What is clear is that IC 2118 is about 50 light-years across and made of gas and dust that points to – because it has been partly eroded by – the nearby star Rigel. One of the brighter stars in the constellation Orion, Rigel lies below the bottom of the featured image. The blue color of the Witch Head Nebula and is caused not only by Rigel’s intense blue starlight but because the dust grains scatter blue light more efficiently than red. The same physical process causes Earth’s daytime sky to appear blue, although the scatterers in planet Earth’s atmosphere are molecules of nitrogen and oxygen.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap231004.html

A reminder that our public Spring events start this week!

Public nights are here!