Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca@octodon.social
Teacher, astronomer, political scientist and father.
Squeeee!
In the 1920s Edwin Hubble used his discovery of Cepheid variable stars in both M31 and M33 to work out the distance to these two galaxies. This showed that the then called "spiral nebulae" were actually galaxies outside of our own - making our universe much larger.
Seeing is caused by the moving of our atmosphere. It causes stars to twinkle and causes images to be blurry. It can be seen in this movie of Saturn. Good seeing has less motion. Hubble avoids this problem by being in space.
M51 is an interacting galaxy in Canes Venatici. It is located just off the furthest handle star in the Big Dipper. It is about 24 Mly away.
Most of the things on Charles Messier's eponymous list look fuzzy through a small telescope and hence could be mistaken for a comet, which Messier was trying to find. So M40, the only double star on the list, is a bit of a puzzle as to why he added it.
This shot of M101 is from the @RAOastronomy Baker-Nunn telescope. M101 is visible below centre. The arrows point to other galaxies that I was able to identify in the image.
Spectroscopy tells us many things including what things are made of. The dark lines in this spectrum of Aldebaran are made by the various elements in it. Each element has a unique set of lines which identifies it.
Another frustrating night of guidance problems...
NGC 6826 is known as the blinking planetary as its brightness is such that in a small telescope it seems to disappear or blink when you look directly at it. It's about 5000 ly distant.
A focusing mask is often used in astrophotography to ensure a sharp focus. With this mask, when a line appears in the middle of the created image, the telescope is focused.
Artificial satellites are a bit of a hazard when imaging the sky. This one went right through the target, making the image useless.
The space between stars in galaxies is so great that when galaxies collide there are hardly any collisions if any at all between stars.
This is what happens when the autoguide system goes haywire during a 10 minute exposure on a telescope...
From Saturday - the Galaxies M66 (L) and M65 (R) in the constellation Leo. 0.2m telescope. 5 min L, 2 min each RGB.
M66 is ~31 Mly from Earth, M65 is ~40 Mly away.
From 2 weekends ago. Barred spiral galaxy M109. 14 minutes L, 4 min each R, G, and B. M019 is about 67 Mly away in the constellation of Ursa Major.
Whooohooo!
Messier 101 is a galaxy in Ursa Major. It is about 22 million light years from Earth. Image from last Saturday. 13 minutes L, 5 minutes each R, G and B. 0.2m f3.9 telescope.
Tonight's project complete.
Messier 34 is an open cluster in the constellation of Perseus. It's about 1500 ly away and on the order of about 200 million years old making it fairly young.
From Saturday night, galaxy M108 in Ursa major. 19 minutes L, 4 minutes each R, G, and B. 0.2m f3.9 Newtonian telescope.
