Perseus Double Cluster, Had Still Some Time Left At The End Of The Night After The Main Sequence Of Photos

same picture with a better post treatment of the original data.

in astrophotography, a lot the work is in the post treatment step. that step does not add details or actual alter the actual data, it's all about how do you reduce the noise in the image as much as posible while keeping the data as visible as possible (in short a lot of math hidden behind what looks like simple fonction such as ''deconvolution'').

This is M51, also known as the Whirlpool Galaxy it is a pair a galaxy currently interacting together. If you look at the two arms of the spiral, you will see that the one on the left is somewhat deformed (near the other galaxy) this is due to the gravitational interaction between the two galaxies. Those interaction are also the reason why the left galaxy (NGC 5195) is this irregular. Some of the models have proposed that both galaxies have passed through each other at some point in the past. In the future both galaxie will slowly fuse together, but this will take at least a few hundred million years. Multiple other interacting galaxies also exist, such as the butterfly galaxies or the antenna galaxies.

This photo was supposed to be a test of my new equatorial mount but the result was WAY BETTER than expected so here you go (the post-treatment of the photos is not the best ever but I had to work with a limited amount a data). I will probably post more photos this summer since I now have access to better skys and a better mount than in Munich (If the weather complies).

Picture of IC59 and IC63. This is a pair of nebula located near the star γ Cassiopeia, the big star at the bottom, which is responsible for making the nebula glow. Both nebula are composed of ionise hydrogen responsible for the red colour (especially on IC63) and colder dust/gas responsible for the blue colour (most visible on IC59). γ Cassiopeia can make taking photos of those nebula difficult due to the halos it produces, I did my best to limit its impact during processing, but there is still a faint blue halo around it. IC63 is also known as the Ghost of Cassiopeia due to its shape, it was discovered in 1893 by the German astronomer Max Wolf.

Image taken using a CarbonStar 150/600 newtonian telescope with a 0.95 coma corrector, ZWO ASI294 monochrome camera. 12x300s image for each filter (LRGBHa), total imaging time 5h, stacking and processing done in PixInsight. Details of both objects: IC63

IC59

I've worked in a chemistry lab, they had a room with all the analysis and purification equipment. There was a constant noise due to the various pumps (vacuum, solvent, ...) and valves. After just a few days working there I could telle exactly with machin was doing what task and at what point it was in that process just based upon the noise they made.

In my new scale, °X, 0 is Earths' record lowest surface temperature, 50 is the global average, and 100 is the record highest, with a linear scale between each point and adjustment every year as needed.

Temperature Scales [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

Temperature Scales

[A table with five columns, labelled: Unit, water freezing point, water boiling point, notes, cursedness. There are eleven rows below the labels.]

[Row 1:] Celsius, 0, 100, Used in most of the world, 2/10 [Row 2:] Kelvin, 273.15, 373.15, 0K is absolute zero, 2/10 [Row 3:] Fahrenheit, 32, 212, Outdoors in most places is between 0–100, 3/10 [Row 4:] Réaumur, 0, 80, Like Celsius, but with 80 instead of 100, 3/8 [Row 5:] Rømer, 7.5, 60, Fahrenheit precursor with similarly random design, 4/10, [Row 6:] Rankine, 491.7, 671.7, Fahrenheit, but with 0°F set to absolute zero, 6/10 [Row 7:] Newton, 0, 33-ish, Poorly defined, with reference points like "the hottest water you can hold your hand in", 7-ish/10 [Row 8:] Wedgewood, –8, –6.7, Intended for comparing the melting points of metals, all of which it was very wrong about, 9/10 [Row 9:] Galen, –4?, 4??, Runs from –4 (cold) to 4 (hot). 0 is "normal"(?), 4/–4 [Row 10:] ''Real'' Celsius, 100, 0, In Anders Celsius's original specification, bigger numbers are ''colder''; others later flipped it, 10/0 [Row 11:] Dalton, 0, 100, A nonlinear scale; 0°C and 100°C are 0 and 100 Dalton, but 50°C is 53.9 Dalton, 53.9/50

I took another photo of the crescent nebula (C27) this time using my monochrome camera and processed similarly to my photos of the veil nebula. The H-alpha photos really helped to enhance the ionised hydrogen present in this region of space (deep red clouds in the background). Still not completely satisfied with how the stars turned out (too much halo visible around them), could have been mitigated if the clouds had not come half way through the imaging session or if I do another night of imaging of this target.

sometimes astronomy camera companies will post about their horrible attempts to fix hardware problems with software. normally these are unremarkable.

and then sometimes they contain a beautiful single sentence that will live in your brain forever

This is the heart nebula (or at least as much of it as I can take with my setup without doing a mosaic) also known as IC 1805 or NGC 896. It is around 7 000 light years from us, in the constellation Cassiopeia. Despite its distance to us it still appears about twice as big as the moon in the sky, which speaks volumes when it comes to its actual size (about 200 light years in diameter).

This being an emission nebula its light mostly comes from gasses ionised by nearby stars.

This nebula also has an open cluster at it's center (a bit closer to us than the rest of the nebula), Melotte 15:

This cluster is bout 1,5 million years old which is very young for such a stellar object. It is composed a a few very heavy and bright stars and many fainter lighter stars.

The starless version :

(Image taken using a CarbonStar 150/600 newtonian telescope with a 0.95 coma corrector, ZWO ASI294 monochrome camera and Baader 6.5nm narrowband filter. 25x300s for the Ha filter, 26x300s for the SII filter and 26x300s for the OIII filter, total imaging time 6h 25min, stacking and processing done in PixInsight. Photo taken mid-January) Other versions with a different colour combinations (a bit less pleased of how they turned out).

If you want to see the nebula in its entirety, you can check out this NASA Astronomy picture of the day made by Adam Jensen.

Since the weather has been cloudy and rainy for about a month now (not a single night where I could take decent photos), here is a photo of the sun from last summer.

Despite the sun just looking like a bright ball of light at first glance, there are actually quite a lot of things to see on it.

This photo was taken using a specific light filter that enhances the details of the sun's surface. All of those black spots are sunspots, regions of the sun that are colder due to local magnetic fields preventing some of the heat from reaching the surface. The slightly brighter regions visible on the side of the sun are solar plage, zones that are slightly hotter, also due to the local magnetic fields.

Finally, the surface of the sun in the picture looks a bit granular/wrought, that is due to solar granulation, smaller (around 1000 km in width) convection currents (basically bubble of plasma) at the surface. (The resolution isn't great so the granulation is not super clearly visible, unfortunately).

This reminded me of the isonitrile freezer at my previous internship.

For those who don't know, isonitriles (aka isocyanides) are a class of compounds that contain this motif:

They are known to smell very bad and many synthesis pathways to those compounds were discovered because of their stench. (I personally think they smell like a mixture of rotten cabbage and burned rubber but more ''artificial'')

So in that lab, we had a freezer dedicated to them, and even with sealed bottles in à -20°C freezers in a separated and ventilated cabinet, you would still be able to detect their odour if you stood next to it (not strongly, but still detectable).

We had to move that freezer to a new lab, it stayed unplugged for 15 to 20 minutes, and in the 5 minutes we need to power it back in the new lab, the entire room had filled with that isonitrile stench (mind you that freezer had not been open during the entire operation). Thankfully we did that on a Friday afternoon and by Monday the smell had disappeared.

Just for reference this is from the MSDS of benzyl isonitrile :

found on a fridge in my lab, haha

There might not be sound in space, but there is quite a lot to listen to in the radio frequencies (especially when it comes to the planets of the solar system).

(the full article : https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-juno-spacecraft-enters-jupiters-magnetic-field ) Some ''similar'' sounds are also present on earth with for example the reverberation if radio waves emitted by lightning.

I'm trying to find a clean, concise, factual video of pulsar pulses but the top results on youtube are all fake clickbait bullshit. Where are the videos from professor so-and-so with 10 subscribers of simple black and white graphs.

(this page has what I'm looking for but afaik none of these videos are on youtube)