Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca@octodon.social
Teacher, astronomer, political scientist and father.
The Moon from last night. RGB image from 11 each R,G, and B images at 1/1000s exposure. 0.2m f3.9 Newtonian telescope.
Open clusters are groups of stars that were formed together in the more recent past. They are just now beginning to spread out into the Galaxy. (M11-Wild Duck cluster shown)
M78 is a nebula in Orion. It is a reflection nebula, that is we see it because it is reflecting light from some nearby stars. As the gas and dust of the nebula preferentially reflect blue light the nebula appear bluish.
M42 - the Great Nebula in Orion is a large star formation region. It is fairly close, only about 1500 ly away.
DUCK! M31 - the Andromeda Galaxy - is heading towards our own Galaxy and will collide with us in about 4 billion years.
The lunar surface has more craters than the Earth because on Earth weather and geological processes erase craters in relatively short order.
Globular clusters are balls of thousands to hundreds of thousands of generally older stars that orbit our Galaxy. We've also detected globular clusters orbiting other galaxies as well. Globular cluster M2 shown.
M51 or the Whirlpool galaxy is an interacting galaxy about 23 million light years from us.
Beautiful as they are planetary nebulae are quite ephemeral things lasting only 50-100 thousand years.
https://octodon.social/media/uoK2sa3T5SjKVTMqAZM
Bet the memory stick you back your observation data and writing to doesn't look this cool..
Many planetary nebula, such as M 2-9 shown here in this Hubble image, are bipolar, that is have two lobes to each side of the central star. We don't have a clear idea on why this happens. https://octodon.social/media/lnQC6wZJSj9ExCE8yM4
M87 is a massive elliptical galaxy in the Virgo supercluster. https://octodon.social/media/3RzAfzpP_PtPefs40O8
The difference telescope f ratio makes. Cluster M37, image on the left is a 12.7cm f12 telescope; on the right a 20 cm f3.9 telescope. Same imager and exposure for both. https://octodon.social/media/xy1n8AAYCRsZ_s8qcjc https://octodon.social/media/oHfVLP6n_eplQ-D1j5M
The North America Nebula and the smaller Pelican Nebula (lower right) are actually part of the same large HII region. They appear separate because a dark nebula of dust and gas are between them and us, creating the shape of what we see as two individual nebulae. https://octodon.social/media/OLy3zEoSv4jgioDViM8
NGC 4361 is a planetary nebula in the constellation Corvus. A close examination shows some interesting structure in this PN that is classified as elliptical. https://octodon.social/media/AWFOUBYxmMpyv3m2_xw
M97 - The Owl Nebula is a planetary nebula located in the constellation Ursa Major. One of only a handful of PNe cataloged by Messier, it can be found beside the lower pointer star of the Big Dipper. https://octodon.social/media/q1KMIO56P5MynoSuYik
Cratering is one way we judge how old a surface is. More craters tell us the surface is older. https://octodon.social/media/_HvIBEL_zOTRjdPH01w
Kinematic studies suggest that M57, the Ring Nebula, is actually barrel shaped and that we're looking down one end. https://octodon.social/media/l7avkBa0ZM9QykQ9tHg
Planetary nebulae are important contributors to Galactic chemical enrichment. Upwards of 50% of the carbon added to the Galaxy come from these objects.
M31 is the closest large galaxy to ours that looks like our Galaxy. It will collide with our Galaxy in about 4.5 billion years.
