Ok, So I Was Searching For Information On Some Of The Objects Visible In My Photo Of The Horse Head Nebula

Photo of NGC 7000 / the North American nebula (southern part), the bright star on the top left corner is ξ Cygni. Might rework it later since this one still has a bit too much gradient/haze due to the full moon when I took the photos. In most cases, emission nebula are the result of gas clouds being ionised by the high energy UV radiation coming from very Hot (and often massive) stars/star cluster. In the case of NGC 7000 the star(s) responsible for most of the ionisation was an unknown for quite a long time, it is only in 2004 that the star responsible for the ionisation was located. This star (actually a binary system according to later publication) known as J205551.3+435225 is located behind the dark region of the nebula (bottom right corner of the photo) which explains why it was only recently identified.

(My best guess of the position of J205551.3+435225 in my picture according to what I can find in the original publication and in the SIMBAD database)

One last thing, that star was later nicknamed Bajamar Star, which comes from the original Spanish name for the Bahamas island.

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

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 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).

This is a photo of the Andromeda galaxy I took nearly 5 years ago. The dark parts of the galaxy are gigantic clouds of dust and gas in which no stars and planets are born. This galaxy is one the closest one to our own, and yet it's 2.55 million light years from us, It's composed of about 1000 billion stars, in a few billion years it will collide with our own galaxy.

The two lighter blotches around Andromeda are two satellite Galaxys that orbit around Andromeda and are also composed of millions of stars.

Those numbers are so big they start to get inconceivable, and that's only a small fraction of what exists out-there. We are not much in the grand scheme of the universe, but when you look at the night sky and the wonders of the universe you can feel at least for a little while that you're part of it.

Photo of the Pleiades (Messier 45) I took to test my new telescope. This is an open cluster of stars situated about 440 light years from earth, the brighter stars of the cluster are visible with the naked eye (around 5 to 10 stars visible depending of the light pollution, weather and eye accommodation do darkness). Unfortunately, the nebulosity, which I composed of dust clouds reflecting the light from the bright stars, is only visible in photos or with (relatively) large telescope. The cluster is about 100 million years old which is young (for an astronomical object), the more visible stars are hot blue giants, but many other, less visible, stars are present in the cluster. This cluster due to its high visibility has taken an important place in many cultures and mythologies.

(as a fun fact the name of M45 in Japanese is Subaru, and yes the car brand dose gets its name for this star cluster (which explains the logo of the brand))

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)

Just got a week of clear weather will I had access to my telescope, managed to get a good amount of data, treatment will have to wait though (I have some exams in 2 weeks). In the meantime, here's a quick test I did with the horse head nebula.

This is a SHH composition (there is nearly no OIII emission in this nebula and I did bother imaging in this wavelength).

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

Photo of the Iris nebula / Caldwell 4 / NGC 7023, I'm very pleased with this one since I finally managed to capture the surrounding dust (barely visible in the 2 previous attempts). This is a reflection nebula, this means that it's a dust cloud reflecting the light from a nearby star. Being one of the brightest reflection nebula visible in the northern hemisphere it's visible in relatively small telescopes (4-6 inch / 100-150mm diameter), unfortunately the outer dust clouds can only be seen on photos. Reflection nebula generally tend to be blue due to a more efficient scattering of blue light compared to red by the dust particles (M45 in my previous post is another good example).