2025 April 5

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

The Hidden Galaxy, IC 342 // Ondřej Pešák

The Spaghetti Nebula, Sh2-240 // Wolfgang Bernhardt

I'm sure the visitors will arrive soon

In case of confusion, the observatory is not open this Wednesday.

As consolation, here's the 'Great Turkey Nebula' of 2020 from Astronomy Picture Of The Day. I wonder what APOD's cooking this year?

The Great Turkey Nebula Imagination Credit & Copyright:Eric Coles

Explanation: Surprisingly reminiscent of The Great Nebula in Orion, The Great Turkey Nebula spans this creative field of view. Of course if it were the Orion Nebula it would be our closest large stellar nursery, found at the edge of a large molecular cloud a mere 1,500 light-years away. Also known as M42, the Orion Nebula is visible to the eye as the middle "star" in the sword of Orion the Hunter, a constellation now rising in planet Earth's evening skies. Stellar winds from clusters of newborn stars scattered throughout the Orion Nebula sculpt its ridges and cavities seen in familiar in telescopic images. Much larger than any bird you might be cooking, this Great Turkey Nebula was imagined to be similar in size to the Orion Nebula, about 13 light-years across. Stay safe and well. (APOD, 2020 Nov. 16).

Source: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap201126.html

2023 October 23

Moon Io from Spacecraft Juno Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, SwRI, MSSS; Processing & Copyright: Ted Stryk & Fernando García Navarro

Explanation: There goes another one! Volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io keep erupting. To investigate, NASA’s robotic Juno spacecraft has begun a series of visits to this very strange moon. Io is about the size of Earth’s moon, but because of gravitational flexing by Jupiter and other moons, Io’s interior gets heated and its surface has become covered with volcanoes. The featured image is from last week’s flyby, passing within 12,000 kilometers above the dangerously active world. The surface of Io is covered with sulfur and frozen sulfur dioxide, making it appear yellow, orange and brown. As hoped, Juno flew by just as a volcano was erupting – with its faint plume visible near the top of the featured image. Studying Io’s volcanoes and plumes helps humanity better understand how Jupiter’s complex system of moons, rings, and auroras interact. Juno is scheduled to make two flybys of Io during the coming months that are almost 10 times closer: one in December and another in February 2024.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap231023.html

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!

We'll be closed tonight, Wednesday Oct. 11. We expect up to 70% cloud coverage depending on which forecast you believe, and the satellite images look terrible.

HOWEVER keep an eye out this Saturday for the solar eclipse! If the weather is clear, we'll start giving out information and eclipse glasses around classes at 10:30 am and set up some solar telescopes on the observing decks. The eclipse lasts from12:18 to 2:34 pm. In the case of clouds, we'll only stream the eclipse in the lobby on the first floor.

2023 October 10

Hidden Orion from Webb Image Credit & License: NASA, ESA, CSA, JWST; Processing: M. McCaughrean & S. Pearson

Explanation: The Great Nebula in Orion has hidden stars. To the unaided eye in visible light, it appears as a small fuzzy patch in the constellation of Orion. But this image was taken by the Webb Space Telescope in a representative-color composite of red and very near infrared light. It confirms with impressive detail that the Orion Nebula is a busy neighborhood of young stars, hot gas, and dark dust. The rollover image shows the same image in representative colors further into the near infrared. The power behind much of the Orion Nebula (M42) is the Trapezium - a cluster of bright stars near the nebula’s center. The diffuse and filamentary glow surrounding the bright stars is mostly heated interstellar dust. Detailed inspection of these images shows an unexpectedly large number of Jupiter-Mass Binary Objects (JuMBOs), pairs of Jupiter-mass objects which might give a clue to how stars are forming. The whole Orion Nebula cloud complex, which includes the Horsehead Nebula, will slowly disperse over the next few million years.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap231010.html

Picture of the Day!

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has captured a stunning image of the iconic Pillars of Creation, a region where new stars are being born within thick clouds of gas and dust. The three-dimensional pillars resemble towering rock formations, yet they are much more porous. Composed of cool interstellar gas and dust, they sometimes appear semi-transparent in near-infrared light.