Astronomy

[krummholz]

Keep in mind (and I failed to mention this), the nebula in my picture is narrow band so RGB are attributes of various narrowband wavelengths.  The first try at processing, I gave Ha red which as you state, the region is very heavy in that wavelength, so the image was overall very reddish (still beautiful but different).  I checked my notes again and saw Hubble uses Sii (Sulphur II=Red), Ha (Hydrogen Alpha=Green), Oiii (Oxygen III=Blue) which is what I used here.  The stars are true color and from the RGB images.  Notice the very black spots above center left.  Those caught my eye and I wonder what is going on there? 

OK- could be emissions from OIII then (twice-ionized oxygen). The black spots could be Bok globules, as @steve ridgway says, but as they appear tiny in your photo, it's very hard to say.

[LKB]

OK- could be emissions from OIII then (twice-ionized oxygen). The black spots could be Bok globules, as @steve ridgway says, but as they appear tiny in your photo, it's very hard to say.

When I saw those " little " objects ( bearing in mind the scale ), I also thought of star formation...

[relm1]

Astronomy and astrophotography are full of mystery and wonder!  While I was processing my recent picture of the Crab Nebula, I noticed this strange artifact.  In the red box is a UFO (I have no idea what it is).  It is a very distant object moving during the exposures so was in different spots during the R, G, B imaging.  Hence, when the frames are combined, it appears as only red, green, or blue.  This image is the combination of long exposures and object is far too slow and distant for a satellite.  I capture satellites all the time (too often frankly) and instantly know what they are.  Aircraft are less common because we're looking at a very tiny part of the sky but they are also instantly recognizable.  So, what was this distant moving object?  An as of yet undetected extinction level asteroid on a collision course with earth?  Perhaps.  Maybe an extra-terrestrial alien vehicle of unknown origin...one hoping to remain undetected.  I'm very, very curious what it was.  Maybe it came from another solar system. 

Coincidently, the nebula at the bottom is the Crab Nebula which was an early example of what scientists' thought was an alien signal sending pulses at rapidly repeating intervals of 30 times per second.  Objects in nature don't repeat like that - or so it was thought.  It ended up being a new type of star never imagined before, the Pulsar which spins so fast that we detect electromagnetic pulses thirty times per second.  That pulsar is at the heart of this nebula.  The supernova that created this nebula was also fascinatingly recorded by dark ages scholars and astronomers from China, Japan, Arabia, and the Americas.  Curiously, there is no mention of this bright new star that was visible in the daytime for about a month from anywhere in Europe.  I guess they had other things going on then. 

For those interested in the wall writings from Native American's about this new daytime star, here is an interesting article. 

EDIT: further details, some will notice a break between the colors.  That is simply because it takes four minutes for the sensor to change filters so the still moving object isn't being captured until the new color filter is set, configured, and focused.  From this we can conclude the entire distance it moved in about 54 minutes of time across the three color filters.  It is a very, very small part of the frame and wouldn't be noticed in the full image so must be extremely distant.  I wish I knew who to contact to try to identify it.

[LKB]

Astronomy and astrophotography are full of mystery and wonder!  While I was processing my recent picture of the Crab Nebula, I noticed this strange artifact.  In the red box is a UFO (I have no idea what it is).  It is a very distant object moving during the exposures so was in different spots during the R, G, B imaging.  Hence, when the frames are combined, it appears as only red, green, or blue.  This image is the combination of long exposures and object is far too slow and distant for a satellite.  I capture satellites all the time (too often frankly) and instantly know what they are.  Aircraft are less common because we're looking at a very tiny part of the sky but they are also instantly recognizable.  So, what was this distant moving object?  An as of yet undetected extinction level asteroid on a collision course with earth?  Perhaps.  Maybe an extra-terrestrial alien vehicle of unknown origin...one hoping to remain undetected.  I'm very, very curious what it was.  Maybe it came from another solar system. 

Coincidently, the nebula at the bottom is the Crab Nebula which was an early example of what scientists' thought was an alien signal sending pulses at rapidly repeating intervals of 30 times per second.  Objects in nature don't repeat like that - or so it was thought.  It ended up being a new type of star never imagined before, the Pulsar which spins so fast that we detect electromagnetic pulses thirty times per second.  That pulsar is at the heart of this nebula.  The supernova that created this nebula was also fascinatingly recorded by dark ages scholars and astronomers from China, Japan, Arabia, and the Americas.  Curiously, there is no mention of this bright new star that was visible in the daytime for about a month from anywhere in Europe.  I guess they had other things going on then. 

For those interested in the wall writings from Native American's about this new daytime star, here is an interesting article. 

EDIT: further details, some will notice a break between the colors.  That is simply because it takes four minutes for the sensor to change filters so the still moving object isn't being captured until the new color filter is set, configured, and focused.  From this we can conclude the entire distance it moved in about 54 minutes of time across the three color filters.  It is a very, very small part of the frame and wouldn't be noticed in the full image so must be extremely distant.  I wish I knew who to contact to try to identify it.

I could easily be wrong, but perhaps a geosynchronous satellite in an inclined orbit?

[relm1]

I could easily be wrong, but perhaps a geosynchronous satellite in an inclined orbit?

Hmmm, maybe.  An astro friend told me to report it to a site that tracks asteroids to see if it is a known object.  Perhaps it is unknown and will be named after me!   

I looked through the individual frames and sure enough, a tiny speck slowly moves frame by frame.  Very curious.

[relm1]

The mysterious moving object has been identified!  It is an asteroid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter called 3262 Miune.  It is 21 km across and was only recently discovered in 1983.  Let's hope it never hits earth because that makes it twice as large as the dino ending Chicxulub meteor.  This was the first time I saw and imaged an asteroid and was quite fun to figure out what it was.  I now want to find one that's never been seen before.

[krummholz]

The mysterious moving object has been identified!  It is an asteroid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter called 3262 Miune.  It is 21 km across and was only recently discovered in 1983.  Let's hope it never hits earth because that makes it twice as large as the dino ending Chicxulub meteor.  This was the first time I saw and imaged an asteroid and was quite fun to figure out what it was.  I now want to find one that's never been seen before.

Neat! How did you manage to figure it out?

I found a reference to 3262 Miune on the German version of Wikipedia that says it has an albedo of only 0.15, making it a fairly dark object. Given that it's only some 22 km in diameter, that you managed to image it at all is pretty impressive!

[relm1]

Neat! How did you manage to figure it out?

I found a reference to 3262 Miune on the German version of Wikipedia that says it has an albedo of only 0.15, making it a fairly dark object. Given that it's only some 22 km in diameter, that you managed to image it at all is pretty impressive!

I guessed.  Nah, an astronomer friend told me to report it to the minor planetary object site and to my surprise, someone replied back within hours asking for more specifics like date/time duration.  They replied back that their database said what it was and helped me learn how to use it if/when I see a moving object next time.   It basically tells you what objects are within 5 arcminutes (or whatever you enter) from a coordinate at a set time.  There are alot of strange objects up there.  One other thing that was interesting, I created an animation of it moving (2 hours of exposure down to 1 second) and you can barely make out other objects slightly moving too!   That reminds me of when I dropped a gopro camera to the bottom of the ocean once.  It looked like just sand but when you fast forward it greatly, you see strange movement in the sand like worms crawling around that you wouldn't notice in regular tempo.

[LKB]

I guessed.  Nah, an astronomer friend told me to report it to the minor planetary object site and to my surprise, someone replied back within hours asking for more specifics like date/time duration.  They replied back that their database said what it was and helped me learn how to use it if/when I see a moving object next time.  It basically tells you what objects are within 5 arcminutes (or whatever you enter) from a coordinate at a set time.  There are alot of strange objects up there.  One other thing that was interesting, I created an animation of it moving (2 hours of exposure down to 1 second) and you can barely make out other objects slightly moving too!  That reminds me of when I dropped a gopro camera to the bottom of the ocean once.  It looked like just sand but when you fast forward it greatly, you see strange movement in the sand like worms crawling around that you wouldn't notice in regular tempo.

Grats, you may not have made an astronomical discovery but you a) solved the mystery, b) discovered a knowledge base and c) will know how to proceed if this should occur in the future. 

[krummholz]

I guessed.  Nah, an astronomer friend told me to report it to the minor planetary object site and to my surprise, someone replied back within hours asking for more specifics like date/time duration.  They replied back that their database said what it was and helped me learn how to use it if/when I see a moving object next time.   It basically tells you what objects are within 5 arcminutes (or whatever you enter) from a coordinate at a set time.  There are alot of strange objects up there.  One other thing that was interesting, I created an animation of it moving (2 hours of exposure down to 1 second) and you can barely make out other objects slightly moving too!   That reminds me of when I dropped a gopro camera to the bottom of the ocean once.  It looked like just sand but when you fast forward it greatly, you see strange movement in the sand like worms crawling around that you wouldn't notice in regular tempo.

Hmmm... I wonder what those "other objects" were? (Unless, of course, it was ALL other objects in the field of view, in which case it would likely be a limitation of your tracking mechanism - but I'm sure you'd know about that!)

[relm1]

Hmmm... I wonder what those "other objects" were? (Unless, of course, it was ALL other objects in the field of view, in which case it would likely be a limitation of your tracking mechanism - but I'm sure you'd know about that!)

I think they were smaller/dimmer asteroids just barely visible. Each frame was 120 seconds so might have been more visible/smearing at 600 seconds.  But then I almost always get a satellite, so the frame is lost in stacking. 

Went out to the dark sky spot with the club this weekend.  It was a beautiful night.  The center photo is the scope I've been using for my deep sky astro imaging.  The milky way was taken with my iphone!  It was visible all night.  There were some mighty big scopes there too!  I played around with the 26" behemoth.  Was looking at M13 globular cluster which you could see thousands of individual stars before it sort of looked like a fuzz ball and when looking at it, a bright object streaked across the field of view making me audibly gasp!  I tried to find the moving satellite visually but couldn't see it.  Overall, that night I saw Saturn and six of its moons.  You could see Titan in color, not just a star and three moons were in a very tight formation near the rings.  I also saw the Veil Nebula, M-51 whirlpool galaxy (both galactic cores were clearly visible and some faint spirals were also noticeable), Lagoon nebula, Dumbbell nebula, a few others I'm sure I'm forgetting.  Plus two or three shooting stars and a dozen satellites. I seemed to be the only one who got excited about the satellites.   Yes, yes, in astrophotography they are the bane of my existence but are fun to see at night.  I was surprised how bright and detailed the veil nebula was.  It is very, very large in the sky, maybe two or three full moons across.

[krummholz]

Your description reminds me of observing at Stellafane! A couple of years ago I hung around there until after midnight, getting views of M13, M59, and several other late summer deep-sky objects that I've forgotten through telescopes a bit larger than any I have access to at work. I recall distinctly that it was the first time I'd seen M31 with the naked eye - Stellafane isn't an official "Dark Sky" site but it's plenty dark, and the convention is always timed to coincide with new moon.

(The wildcard, of course, is weather, which was both smoky and forecast to be cloudy this year, so I decided not to go. I think they did have one good observing night though - despite the smoke.)

[relm1]

My latest astrophoto is of the mighty Andromeda Galaxy (M-31).  This is a real beauty.  Our nearest major galactic neighbor, at two million ly away, it is barely visible to the eye in a dark sky and is quite large in the sky.  If you zoom in, you can see individual stars in that galaxy!

[LKB]

My latest astrophoto is of the mighty Andromeda Galaxy (M-31).  This is a real beauty.  Our nearest major galactic neighbor, at two million ly away, it is barely visible to the eye in a dark sky and is quite large in the sky.  If you zoom in, you can see individual stars in that galaxy!

Lovely image, thanks. 

[Elgarian Redux]

My latest astrophoto is of the mighty Andromeda Galaxy (M-31).  This is a real beauty.  Our nearest major galactic neighbor, at two million ly away, it is barely visible to the eye in a dark sky and is quite large in the sky.  If you zoom in, you can see individual stars in that galaxy!

Oh congratulations. Magnificent image!

It made me turn back again to the notebook I kept as a schoolboy. Here's my drawing of M31 using a 4" reflector, back in 1964. You've captured a little bit of extra detail in your wonderful photograph!

[relm1]

Oh congratulations. Magnificent image!

It made me turn back again to the notebook I kept as a schoolboy. Here's my drawing of M31 using a 4" reflector, back in 1964. You've captured a little bit of extra detail in your wonderful photograph!

Thank you.  That is amazingly accurate drawing you made and I wish I could steel your handwriting skills.  You should scan your whole book, it is detailed and you must have been very obsessed with observation to capture so many objects.

[Elgarian Redux]

you must have been very obsessed with observation to capture so many objects.

Obsessed? In a way. I was overwhelmed by what I saw as a schoolboy, with that little 4" reflector. Most especially there was one particular moment in 1963, which I wrote about in an article many years later:

[For drawing see below. Note the bad spelling!]

"It was to the Pleiades that I first turned my new telescope. It wasn't easy to sweep them up, looking into the side of the tube instead of directly along it. I lined it up roughly first, then moved the instrument slowly from side to side, peering into the eyepiece. I saw a sprinkling of unfamiliar stars; then another sprinkling, and still more. I began to wonder what the Pleiades would look like, magnified thirty times. Would I even recognise them? And then, suddenly, unmistakably, they were there.

This moment was to have a profound influence on my life, but I still don't know how to describe it adequately. I've sometimes compared it to seeing a thousand tiny diamonds scattered onto black velvet. I knew they were stars, but they looked like jewels – the brightest jewels that ever were. It was the loveliest, the most mysterious, the most astonishing sight I'd ever seen. I moved away from the telescope because my eyes had filled with tears, and I couldn't see, and I stood, trembling a little, in the darkness of the garden. Howard Carter must have felt like this when he pushed his torch through the hole and took his first look into the tomb of Tutankhamun. 'What can you see?' his companions asked. 'Wonderful things,' he replied. There was no one there to ask me what I'd seen; but standing alone in the shadows of the garden that night, I knew that here, as never before, was something I had to get to the bottom of. What was this thing, this Pleiades, that could shake me with such intensity? It was the wrong question, though I didn't know it then. But it turned me into an astronomer."

[Iota]

My latest astrophoto is of the mighty Andromeda Galaxy (M-31).  This is a real beauty.  Our nearest major galactic neighbor, at two million ly away, it is barely visible to the eye in a dark sky and is quite large in the sky.  If you zoom in, you can see individual stars in that galaxy!

Wow, a stunning image @relm1, bravo!

Obsessed? In a way. I was overwhelmed by what I saw as a schoolboy, with that little 4" reflector. Most especially there was one particular moment in 1963, which I wrote about in an article many years later:

[For drawing see below. Note the bad spelling!]

"It was to the Pleiades that I first turned my new telescope. It wasn't easy to sweep them up, looking into the side of the tube instead of directly along it. I lined it up roughly first, then moved the instrument slowly from side to side, peering into the eyepiece. I saw a sprinkling of unfamiliar stars; then another sprinkling, and still more. I began to wonder what the Pleiades would look like, magnified thirty times. Would I even recognise them? And then, suddenly, unmistakably, they were there.

This moment was to have a profound influence on my life, but I still don't know how to describe it adequately. I've sometimes compared it to seeing a thousand tiny diamonds scattered onto black velvet. I knew they were stars, but they looked like jewels – the brightest jewels that ever were. It was the loveliest, the most mysterious, the most astonishing sight I'd ever seen. I moved away from the telescope because my eyes had filled with tears, and I couldn't see, and I stood, trembling a little, in the darkness of the garden. Howard Carter must have felt like this when he pushed his torch through the hole and took his first look into the tomb of Tutankhamun. 'What can you see?' his companions asked. 'Wonderful things,' he replied. There was no one there to ask me what I'd seen; but standing alone in the shadows of the garden that night, I knew that here, as never before, was something I had to get to the bottom of. What was this thing, this Pleiades, that could shake me with such intensity? It was the wrong question, though I didn't know it then. But it turned me into an astronomer."

Boy, @Elgarian Redux, what a many stringed bow you have! I find the passion with which you threw yourself at astronomy such a striking and  admirable a thing, and your eloquent description above of the moment you saw Pleiades just stopped me in my tracks, absolutely beautiful!

[Elgarian Redux]

Boy, @Elgarian Redux, what a many stringed bow you have! I find the passion with which you threw yourself at astronomy such a striking and  admirable a thing, and your eloquent description above of the moment you saw Pleiades just stopped me in my tracks, absolutely beautiful!

As always, you're very kind! Some of the strings on the bow were not so great, sadly. I turned out to be a poor astronomer (long story), and eventually went on to explore other pastures.

[krummholz]

My latest astrophoto is of the mighty Andromeda Galaxy (M-31).  This is a real beauty.  Our nearest major galactic neighbor, at two million ly away, it is barely visible to the eye in a dark sky and is quite large in the sky.  If you zoom in, you can see individual stars in that galaxy!

Beautiful photo! I admire the resolution of your image - the dust lanes in the galaxy's disk are so well-defined - and the nucleus positively glows. I couldn't make out individual stars inside M31 - at least not in the posted image (did you have to reduce the quality to make it small enough to post?) - I think all of the individual stars I'm seeing are just foreground stars in our Milky Way.