Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca@octodon.social

‪Again covered in cat and child. ‬

‪Forgot to make bread last night. To the freezer! Bunwiches all around!‬

‪Watching the ice cream maker is kind of cathartic...‬

Soon there will be ice cream

Nebulae can be classified by being either emission (glowing because the gas is being excited by nearby hot stars), reflection (light reflected from nearby stars) or dark (no light getting through). M20, shown, has all three. Emission is red, reflection blue, and dark-well dark. #astrophoto

Messier 108 is a barred spiral galaxy in Ursa Major. It is about 46 million light years away.

The image on the left is the famous Hubble "Pillars of Creation", a cloud of dust inside the Eagle Nebula that is being shaped by the stellar winds of hot young stars. The image on the right shows the scale of the pillars (near the centre of the image) compared to the nebula.

Henrietta Swan Leavitt discovered the Cepheid variable period-luminosity relationship. This relationship ties the period of the stars variability to its absolute brightness. This allows us to use these types of stars to determine distances out to to nearly 100 million ly.

‪S’mores and a fire to end the evening. ‬

‪Trailer winterized. Thus endeth the camping season. ‬

This is a temperature map of the Cosmic Microwave Background as measured by the Planck satellite. The temperature difference from the coldest to the warmest part is 1 mK. This minute difference in temperature during the Big Bang eventually allowed galaxies to form.

Some images from the Alberta Star Party.

All set up at the Alberta Star Party.

That moment when you're in bed and just about to fall asleep when you remember you forgot to load the bread machine so that there's bread for lunches in the morning...

Modern charge coupled device (CCD) sensors have caused huge strides forwards in astronomy. Even the least expensive of these sensors are 6 times more efficient in collecting light than the best emulsion films were. This means more data in less time.

As we head in to northern hemisphere autumn, only a few months until M42 is again visible. Located in the constellation of Orion and being about 1300 ly from Earth this is one of the closest star formation regions to us. #astrophoto

The black blobs seen in this image of the Lagoon Nebula (M8) are Bok globules. Inside these dark blobs of dust and gas stars are being born. #astrophoto

NGC 7442 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation of Pegasus. NGC 7442 is about 300 million light years away from our Galaxy. #astrophoto

Charles Messier's eponymous list of 110 deep sky objects only lists 4 planetary nebula, M27 (The Dumbbell Neb.), M57 (The Ring Neb.), M76 (the Little Dumbbell Neb.) and M97 (the Owl Neb.) M27, which Messier discovered, was the first Planetary Nebula ever discovered. #astrophoto

At a little over 2 million light years away, M31 - the Andromeda Galaxy, is the closest large galaxy that looks kind of like our own Galaxy. It and our Galaxy will collide in about 4.5-5 billion years from now. #astrophoto