Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca@octodon.social
Teacher, astronomer, political scientist and father.
DUCK! M31 - the Andromeda Galaxy - is heading towards our own Galaxy and will collide with us in about 4 billion years.
Now the reverse. Time lapse of yesterday's snowfall reversing the previous couple of days melt...
https://youtu.be/KOlQGzTvktw
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.
Time lapse of today's snow melt: https://youtu.be/zxNkRsIkdqE
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
For those interested in the memory stick, here's the website of artist who created it: http://www.byblackbirddesigns.com/Collections.html
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
Hmmm getting 502 bad gateway errors when trying to upload pics here...
We classify stars based on their spectra. The sequence of spectral classes in essence tells us the temperature of the star. From hottest to coolest the classes are O, B, A, F, G, K, M.
Because of the distances involved the further we look into space, the farther back in time we are seeing. For every light-year away an object is, a year farther back in time is how we are seeing it. So an object 2000000 ly away we are seeing as it was 2000000 years ago.
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
We don't have very accurate distance determination to most planetary nebulae. This is due to most of our standard candle methods of distance determination not working on this class of objects.
