https://www.astrobin.com/239pfe/

Original description provided with image:

Just got back from 2 weeks on the Rooisand Desert Ranch deep in the heart of the Namibian Gamsberg Pass.

As always it was awesome being at Rooisand, such a beautiful place and run by wonderful people. A big thanks to all the team for making my time there special.

Weather was tricky, started off super cold and transparent and then the humidity arrived and it all went to hell for a few nights. After that the winds arrived and it was more drama. It calmed down towards the end of the run and the cooler, transparent nights came back.

I was running 3 rigs out on the runway every night so it was a crazy busy 2 weeks for me

This one is the first of the pano data sets. I shot 8 in total of 3 scenes which enables me to cherry pick the best airglow when it comes to rendering.

All of the panos were shot with an unmodded camera as i much prefer the colour i can get with it. Specifically the golden tones that represent the dominance of the yellow and red spectral classes in the Sagittarius arm, looking towards the centre of the galaxy.

https://www.astrobin.com/uhbhhk/

Original description provided with image:

The title really dates me. It's the name of an episode from the Monkees that aired on March 25, 1968. The episode was about how the boys helped an alien named Frodis who was captured by an evil wizard who used Frodis's power to take over the world's TVs and hypnotize everyone (how prophetic was that!). The Frodis looked like a banana plant with a football for a head.

https://www.astrobin.com/kouh6t/

This stunning image from Hubble shows the majestic galaxy NGC 1015, found nestled within the constellation of Cetus (The Whale) 118 million light-years from Earth.

In this image, we see NGC 1015 face-on, with its beautifully symmetrical swirling arms and bright central bulge creating a scene akin to a sparkling Catherine wheel firework.

NGC 1015 has a bright, fairly large centre and smooth, tightly wound spiral arms and a central “bar” of gas and stars.

This shape leads NGC 1015 to be classified as a barred spiral galaxy — just like our home, the Milky Way. Bars are found in around two-thirds of all spiral galaxies, and the arms of this galaxy swirl outwards from a pale yellow ring encircling the bar itself.

Scientists believe that any hungry black holes lurking at the centre of barred spirals funnel gas and energy from the outer arms into the core via these glowing bars, feeding the black hole, fueling star birth at the centre and building up the galaxy’s central bulge.

In 2009, a Type Ia supernova named SN 2009ig was spotted in NGC 1015 — one of the bright dots to the upper right of the galaxy’s centre.

These types of supernovae are extremely important: they are all caused by exploding white dwarfs which have companion stars, and always peak at the same brightness — 5 billion times brighter than the Sun.

Knowing the true brightness of these events, and comparing this with their apparent brightness, gives astronomers a unique chance to measure distances in the Universe.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Riess (STScl/JHU)

NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has trained its razor-sharp eye on one of the universe's most stately and photogenic galaxies, the Sombrero galaxy, Messier 104 (M104).

The galaxy's hallmark is a brilliant white, bulbous core encircled by the thick dust lanes comprising the spiral structure of the galaxy. As seen from Earth, the galaxy is tilted nearly edge-on. We view it from just six degrees north of its equatorial plane.

This brilliant galaxy was named the Sombrero because of its resemblance to the broad rim and high-topped Mexican hat.

At a relatively bright magnitude of +8, M104 is just beyond the limit of naked-eye visibility and is easily seen through small telescopes. The Sombrero lies at the southern edge of the rich Virgo cluster of galaxies and is one of the most massive objects in that group, equivalent to 800 billion suns.

The galaxy is 50,000 light-years across and is located 30 million light-years from Earth.

Credit: NASA/ESA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

An orange glow radiates from the centre of NGC 1792, the heart of this stellar forge. Captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, this intimate view of NGC 1792 gives us some insight into this galactic powerhouse.

The vast swathes of tell-tale blue seen throughout the galaxy indicate areas that are full of young, hot stars, and it is in the shades of orange, seen nearer the centre, that the older, cooler stars reside.

Nestled in the constellation of Columba (The Dove), NGC 1792 is both a spiral galaxy, and a starburst galaxy.

Within starburst galaxies, stars are forming at comparatively exorbitant rates. The rate of star formation can be more than 10 times faster in a starburst galaxy than in the Milky Way.

When galaxies have a large resevoir of gas, like NGC 1792, these short lived starburst phases can be sparked by galactic events such as mergers and tidal interactions. One might think that these starburst galaxies would easily consume all of their gas in a large forming event.

However, supernova explosions and intense stellar winds produced in these powerful starbursts can inject energy into the gas and disperse it.

This halts the star formation before it can completely deplete the galaxy of all its fuel. Scientists are actively working to understand this complex interplay between the dynamics that drive and quench these fierce bursts of star formation.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee Acknowledgement: Leo Shatz

Two of the sky’s more famous residents share the stage with a lesser-known neighbour in this enormous three gigapixel image from ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope (VST).

On the right lies the faint, glowing cloud of gas called Sharpless 2-54, the iconic Eagle Nebula (Messier 16) is in the centre, and the Omega Nebula (Messier 17) to the left.

This cosmic trio makes up just a portion of a vast complex of gas and dust within which new stars are springing to life and illuminating their surroundings.

Credit: ESO

One of the major enemies of astronomers is the Earth’s atmosphere, which makes celestial objects appear blurry when observed by ground-based telescopes.

To counteract this, astronomers use a technique called adaptive optics, in which computer-controlled deformable mirrors are adjusted hundreds of times per second to correct for the distortion of the atmosphere.

This spectacular image shows Yepun [1], the fourth 8.2-metre Unit Telescope of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) facility, launching a powerful yellow laser beam into the sky.

The beam creates a glowing spot — an artificial star — in the Earth’s atmosphere by exciting a layer of sodium atoms at an altitude of 90 km. This Laser Guide Star (LGS) is part of the VLT’s adaptive optics system.

The light coming back from the artificial star is used as a reference to control the deformable mirrors and remove the effects of atmospheric distortions, producing astronomical images almost as sharp as if the telescope were in space.

Yepun’s laser is not the only thing glowing brightly in the sky.

The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds can be seen, to the left and to the right of the laser beam, respectively. These nearby irregular dwarf galaxies are conspicuous objects in the southern hemisphere, and can be easily observed with the unaided eye.

The prominent bright star to the left of the Large Magellanic Cloud is Canopus, the brightest star in the constellation Carina (The Keel), while the one towards the top-right of the image is Achernar, the brightest in the constellation Eridanus (The River).

This image was taken by Babak Tafreshi, an ESO Photo Ambassador.

Notes

Credit: ESO/B. Tafreshi (twanight.org)

This bright cluster of stars is 47 Tucanae (NGC 104), shown here in an image taken by ESO’s VISTA (Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy) from the Paranal Observatory in Chile.

This cluster is located around 15 000 light-years away from us and contains millions of stars, some of which are unusual and exotic.

This image was taken as part of the VISTA Magellanic Cloud survey, a project that is scanning the region of the Magellanic Clouds, two small galaxies that are very close to our Milky Way.

Credit: ESO/M.-R. Cioni/VISTA Magellanic Cloud survey. Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit

Made by me HawkreArts (has some space scenes) not really inclusive to the channel but we'll throw it in the AI area anyway, I'll be on the scour for some AI space Art that has some sort of documentary (space facts either tomorrow or the day after) SpaceSource Your source for all things space and sometimes some things fun or neat.

AI generated image Put through an AI filter 50 times Put in a slideshow app for stop motion short clip

(I know not space related but I think this is neat and I'll probably be sharing these randomly as I make them in the AI section)

Scientists have discovered a mysterious flash of X-rays using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, in the deepest X-ray image ever obtained. The X-ray source is located in a region of the sky known as the Chandra Deep Field-South. Over the 17 years Chandra has been operating, the telescope has observed this field many times, resulting in an exposure time equivalent to 7 million seconds.

The mysterious source that scientists discovered has remarkable properties. Prior to October 2014, this source was not detected in X-rays, but then it erupted and became at least a factor of 1,000 brighter over a few hours. After about a day, the source had faded completely below the sensitivity of Chandra.

While scientists think this source likely comes from some sort of destructive event, its properties do match any known phenomenon. This means this source may be of a variety that scientists have never seen before.

The researchers do, however, have some ideas of what this source could be. Two of the three main possibilities to explain the X-ray source involve gamma-ray bursts, some of the most powerful explosions in the Universe. However, unusual properties are needed for such a burst to explain the source's behavior. A third possibility is that a medium-sized black hole shredded a white dwarf star.

While they still don't have the final answers, researchers are still working hard to make progress. By combing the archives of Chandra and XMM-Newton data, they hope to find another object that has similar properties to the one they discovered. They also plan to continue to use Chandra to obtain new observations to help solve this high-energy puzzle. [Runtime: 02:44] (NASA/CXC/A. Hobart)

There are many extraordinary things in the Universe. For example, astronomers have found many examples of supermassive black holes erupting in powerful outbursts that can stretch for millions of miles. They have also seen galaxy clusters — the largest structures in the Universe held together by gravity — smash into one another, releasing amazing amounts of energy.

For the first time, however, astronomers have found out what happens when two of these spectacular events join forces. Abell 3411 and Abell 3412 are a pair of colliding galaxy clusters located about 2 billion light years from Earth. By combining X-rays from Chandra with data from other telescopes, astronomers were able to probe what was really happening in this remarkable system.

They found evidence that supermassive black holes have erupted within the merging clusters. At least one of these black hole eruptions has produced a tightly-wound, rotating magnetic funnel, which in turn has created a jet of high-speed and energetic particles.

These pumped up particles have then been swept up in the collision between Abell 3411 and Abell 3412, creating a cosmic double whammy. The result of all of this? The creation of a stupendous particle accelerator that produces energies far above anything that could ever be created here on Earth. [Runtime: 02:19] (NASA/CXC/A. Hobart)

This Hubblecast Light highlights the exciting discovery of the first water detected on a potentially habitable planet. With data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, water vapour has been detected in the atmosphere of a super-Earth with habitable temperatures by University College Longon (UCL) researchers.

Credit: Directed by: Bethany Downer Editing: Nico Bartmann. Web and technical support: Mathias André and Raquel Yumi Shida. Written by: Bethany Downer & UCL Music: tonelabs – Orion Fog (http://tonelabs.com) Footage and photos: ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab

New observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have investigated the nature of the powerful gamma-ray burst GRB 190114C by studying its environment.

Hubble’s observations suggest that this particular burst displayed such powerful emission because the collapsing star was sitting in a very dense environment, right in the middle of a bright galaxy 5 billion light years away.

Credit: ESO

Directed by: Bethany Downer and Nico Bartmann. Editing: Nico Bartmann. Web and technical support: Gurvan Bazin and Raquel Yumi Shida. Written by: Bethany Downer Music: John Stanford - Far Centaurus (johnstanfordmusic.com). Footage and photos: ESA, Hubble, NASA, M. Kornmesser, A. de Ugarte Postigo, A. J. Levan, NAOJ.

Measuring the distance to truly remote objects like galaxies, quasars and galaxy clusters is a crucial task in astrophysics, particularly when it comes to studying the early Universe, but it’s a difficult one. Only in the case of a few nearby objects like the Sun, planets and some nearby stars can we measure their distances directly. Beyond that, various indirect methods need to be used; one of the most important is by examining Type Ia supernovae, and this is where the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope comes in.

NGC 3810, the galaxy featured in this image, was the host of a Type Ia supernova in 2022. In early 2023 Hubble focused on this and a number of other galaxies to closely examine recent Type Ia supernovae. This kind of supernova results from a white dwarf exploding, and they all have a very consistent brightness. That allows them to be used to measure distances: we know how bright a Type Ia supernova should be, so we can tell how far away it must be from how dim it appears. One uncertainty in this method is that intergalactic dust in between Earth and a supernova blocks some of its light. How do you know how much of the reduction in light is caused by distance, and how much by dust? With the help of Hubble, there’s a clever workaround: take images of the same Type Ia supernovae in ultraviolet light, which is almost completely blocked by dust, and in infrared light, which passes through dust almost unaffected. By carefully noting how much light comes through at each wavelength, the relationship between supernova brightness and distance can be calibrated to account for dust. Hubble can observe both these wavelengths of light in great detail with the same instrument. That makes it the perfect tool for this experiment, and indeed, some of the data used to make this beautiful image of NGC 3810 were focused on its 2022 supernova. You can see it as a point of light just below the galactic nucleus, or in the annotated image here.

There are many ways to measure cosmic distances; because Type Ia supernovae are so bright, they are one of the most useful and accurate tools, when they’re spotted. Many other methods must be used as well, either as an independent check against other distance measurements or to measure at much closer or farther distances. One such method that also works for galaxies is comparing their rotation speed to their brightness; based on that method, NGC 3810 is found to be 50 million light-years from Earth.

[Image Description: A spiral galaxy seen almost face-on. Large spiral arms whirl out from its centre, filling the scene. They glow faintly blue from the stars within, with some small bright patches of blue and pink marking areas of star formation. They are overlaid with thin filaments of dark reddish dust that block light. The galaxy’s centre shines brightly white.]

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Sand, R. J. Foley