Ecliptic Voyage

NASA made a big announcement today, that they have confirmed the existence of water on the surface of the Moon. This was confirmed using SOFIA , or the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy. SOFIA is literally a telescope that rides in a plane that flies the very upper part of Earth's atmosphere while recording data. Nobody is claiming that there are any lakes or streams of water, but instead that the water is possibly trapped by glass. When micrometeorites end up striking the moon's surface, it is common that the impact turns some of the lunar material into glass. It is being proposed that the water may be trapped under (or in) this glass, which could be why the water has not sublimated (turning from ice to gas) when the sun's rays are cast on the moon. (This is by no means the only explanation and could turn out to be wrong). It may not sound like a huge breakthrough, but this really is an excellent clue that helps to better understand the formation of the Eart

A less popular name for this target is the apple core nebula , which I think fits better. At roughly a distance of 1,227 light years away, the Dumbbell Nebula was the first planetary nebula that Charles Messier discovered in 1764. The term 'planetary' generally means it has a small round planet like shape when viewed in a small telescope. This nebula is the result of a star shedding off in layers, which in this image illuminate in clouds of red and blue. In 1885, the mathematician Johann Balmer came up with a formula to describe the wavelengths (or colors) that the Hydrogen atom emits when the hydrogen's electron drops in orbit. With his discovery, we are able to infer the gasses emitted by these nebulae by measuring the wavelength of light that it is emitting. For the Hydrogen atom, these wavelengths are referred to as "The Balmer Series". In this image, the deep red light indicates high levels of hydrogen gasses illuminating when electrons fall from its 3rd to 2

IC-1396 The Elephant's Trunk Nebula (The Misty Clove Cluster) The very bright star in the upper right is also known as Herschel's Garnet Star, which is one of the largest known stars with a radius of 1,000 times that of the Sun. If the Sun were that size, it would engulf the planet Mars, and just barely engulf Jupiter. See if you can see why they call it the Elephant's Trunk Nebula (it took me a while and is kind of small in this field of view).

Discovered in 1784 by William Herschel, the Veil Nebula occupies a patch of sky six full-moon-lengths long. I couldn’t fit the entire Veil Nebula in the frame so this is only the Western region (the direction of ‘west’ in this photo would be pointing down and east would be pointing up). Common names for this region are: ‘Filamentary’, ‘Witches Broom’, and ‘Finger of God’ nebula. I chose this angle because I think it should also be called the ‘Flying Man’ Nebula. The Veil Nebula is a region of hot gasses that are remnants of a supernova. A supernova is the stellar explosion of a dying massive star. Stars burn massive amounts of fuel, but when they run out of fuel there is no longer enough outward force generated and it is overtaken by it’s own gravity. In this case, the star would have been 20x the mass of the Sun before it met it’s destructive fate. After a star goes supernova, the original object will either collapse to a neutron star, or a black hole or it will be entirely destroyed

This is the eastern region of the supernova remnant known as the Veil Nebula. I first posted about the western region of the Veil Nebula and commented that it is too big to fit the full nebula in the field of view of my telescope. As with the western region, east is up and west is down. Even with this Eastern add-on, there is still one frame missing which would fit in between the two end-regions I captured so far. There might be smaller bits missing from the north/south regions as well. What about the star which was the source of the supernova? It is estimated to be almost evenly positioned between the west and the eastern regions, with its actual position being slightly closer to the western region from Earth’s perspective. After exploding, the star became a neutron star. Neutron stars are basically stars of a very small radius (“typically 18 miles”) that are mostly composed of tightly packed neutrons. A sufficiently massive neutron star will continue to collapse into a black hole. Th

Say hello to other worlds roughly 30 million light-years away. A spiral galaxy classified as 'flocculent' (which I think means 'fluffy'), discovered by French astronomer Pierre Méchain in the 1700s. I'm reading a book that has the original observational notes for the Messier catalog: "...It contains no stars, & the slightest light to illuminate the micrometer wires made it disappear. Close to it there's an 8th magnitude star, which precedes the nebula in right ascension." There were apparently a lot of 'nebulae' in the Messier catalog that today we now know are galaxies due to improvements in optics, image sensors and astronomers. Actually, people were not aware that other galaxies even existed until December 30, 1924, when Edwin Hubble discovered that Andromeda (Messier 31) is really a galaxy. Only then did people begin to grasp that the Milky Way was just one among many: Our world got a lot bigger that day...

Vega is a bright star in the night sky that is only 25 light years from Earth. You can spot it in the summer by looking nearly straight up (slightly east before midnight), it will be the brightest star. Joined by stars Deneb and Altair, Vega is part of a 3-star asterism known as the Summer Triangle, which is a very large right angle triangle which Vega is the point at the 9 0 degree angle. The other two stars are lower in the eastern sky. Vega is only 450 million years old! I suppose to put this into perspective, our Sun is 4.5 billion years old (10 times the age of Vega). Interestingly enough, Vega’s lifespan will also be one tenth the lifespan of the Sun. It is about 2x the mass of the Sun as well. Apparent Brightness Vega is very bright, with an apparent magnitude of 0.03. The Apparent Magnitude scale is a logarithmic measure of brightness as seen from Earth. This scale is dependent on the object’s intrinsic brightness, distance from Earth as well as extinction of light when passing

Sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest in our solar system, Saturn is a gas giant with a remarkable set of rings that extend far out from the planet, making it stand out from other planets when under magnification. Saturn is big; you can fit about 9 Earths end-to-end inside Saturn. However, Saturn has only one-eighth the density of Earth. If you were to put Saturn in a large vat of water, Saturn would float! Galileo was the first to observe Saturn under magnification in 1610. However, Galileo’s telescope at the time was not capable of resolving Saturn’s rings. Instead, Galileo noted his observation that Saturn had ‘handles’ or ‘ears’. In 1659, Dutch astronomer Christaan Huygens used improved optics to confirm that the ‘handles’ were in fact rings around the planet. He also discovered Saturn’s moon Titan. In 1675, French-Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini discovered 4 other major moons of Saturn. He also discovered a narrow gap in between Saturn’s rings. This gap was later co

To the naked eye, Jupiter only appears to be a very bright golden star in the night sky. Unless you have the opportunity to peer just a little deeper at this bright star, you may never know how different it is from the rest of the sky. Let alone, relative to the rest of the universe this object is closer than just in our back yard; it's in our living room... Jupiter has been known by astronomers for thousands of years, but not in the way you and I know it today. Ancient astronomers did not have telescopes but they did have an excellent ability to track the stars in the night sky. It turns out that stars could be mapped and easily tracked and were a predictable swath of point-light-sources that all move together. However, there were some point-light-sources that did not. The ancient Greeks noticed this and named these objects “planets”, which is a word directly derived from the Greek verb ‘planasthai’ which literally means ‘to wander’. So, when ancient astronomers used the term ‘pla

Welcome to Ecliptic Voyage! Here is my rough capture of the wonderful and very iconic emission nebula, NGC 7000, also known as the North America Nebula. I did fudge the opportunity to capture the entire essence of the 'continent' in the frame (sorry Mexico). At the time, I had not realized how much of the continent was to be recognized in this giant cloud of hydrogen gas. This target was first cataloged in the New General Catalog in 1821 by William Herschel's son, John Herschel. In 1890, astrophotographer Max Wolf had coined the name North America Nebula, after recognizing the continental shape that was revealed in long exposure photographs (details that are not recognizable with the naked eye). So why is this image so red? The red hue in this gaseous formation is due to ionized hydrogen gas emitting at the Hα (hydrogen-alpha) emission line. I used a dual band-pass filter which only passes wavelengths of light that are known to be emitted by emission nebulae. This helps cu