Friendly Reminder That CRT TVs Were Basically A Particule Accelerator You Had In Your Living Room. They

Picture of the helix nebula / Caldwell 63, this one was a bit of a pain to take as this nebula stays relatively close to the horizon where I live, plus, due to the position of trees and building I only get 1h per night to take photos (had to use pictures from two different nights to get to about 2h of exposure).

This object is also a planetary nebula, like M27 I previously photographed, but it appears much bigger (about 2.5 times) in parte due to it being closer to earth (about 650 light-years compared to about 1360 light-years for the dumbbell nebula/M27).

This nebula has sometimes been referred to as ''the eye of god'' I think you can guess why.

The soon to be white dwarf star at the center of the nebula is (to me at least) a bit more visible in this picture than in the one of M27.

I was able to see and take pictures of the comet C2023/A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) ! This comet will be visible in the night sky probably for the next week or two, it's currently visible both with a pair of binoculars and with the naked eye. Since it's visible very early after sunset, it's a bit difficult to spot for now, but in the coming days it's will gradually be visible later in the night and thus easier to observe.

This comet is one of the brightest in the last few years so it should be quite easy to observe.

I hope you all get a chance to see it, it's magnificent

Photo a few galaxies, M81 / bode's galaxy (centre), M82/the cigar galaxy (left) and NGC 3077 (right)

In addition to those three galaxies, there are many other (much) smaller ones hidden among the stars (a few examples):

The red-ish filament visible around M82 are ionised hydrogen gas and dust pushed outwards by galactic-superwind

Those are tough to be a combination of solar winds created by young stars and the shockwaves of frequent supernovas. They mostly occur in starburst galaxy a type of galaxies that experience heightened stars formation generally due to recent gravitational interaction with other galaxies, in the case of M82 the trigger is most likely its neighbour M81.

(Image taken using a CarbonStar 150/600 newtonian telescope with a 0.95 coma corrector, ZWO ASI294 monochrome camera ZWO LRGB filters and Baader 6.5nm Ha filter. 12x180s image for each colour filter (RGB), 6x300s for the Ha filter, total imaging time 2h 54min, stacking and processing done in PixInsight.)

Ok, so I was searching for information on some of the objects visible in my photo of the horse head nebula and I found these two posts (Reddit and Astrobin) by DanielZoliro that also used a SII and Ha combination but with a slightly different processing (Notably, the RGB combination being R: SII, G: 0.6xHa + 0.4xSII, B: Ha). I loved his results and I had to try it with my own data. Did turn out great, but there was a reflection of a star on the SII data and this processing amplified it (the big reddish round/donut thing on right of the full image).

(Image taken using a CarbonStar 150/600 newtonian telescope with a 0.95 coma corrector, ZWO ASI294 monochrome camera and Baader 6.5nm SHO filter. 5x120s image for each colour filter (RGB), 22x300s for the Ha filter and 32x300s for the SII filter, total imaging time 5h, stacking and processing done in PixInsight.)

Finale got around to processing the photos of M33 I had taken at the end of august. M33 is a spiral galaxy about half the size of our own galaxy and located about 2.7 million light years from earth. This galaxy has a rather high rate of star formation resulting in numerous ionised hydrogen regions (the red irregular blotches inside the galaxy), some of those being notable enough to have been included in the NGC catalogue or the IC catalogue.

NGC 588 NGC 604 (Example of some of the notable nebula in M33)

On of the first recorded observation of this galaxy was possibly done by Giovanni B. Hodierna before 1654, it was independently rediscovered by Charles Messier in 1764 who added it to his catalog (hence the name Messie 33).

information on the photo - total exposure time : 1h48 min using RGB and Ha filters - camera : ASI294 mm - telescope : Newtonian 150/600 with 0.95x coma corrector - photo edited with pixinsight

For those using PixInsight for treatment/edition, I recently discovered the scrips created by Seti Astro (https://www.setiastro.com/pjsr-scripts), Blemish-Blaster was quite useful to remove the halos from my Ha filter and What's In My Image helped with the identification of nebulas. If you had not heard those scrips, you should check them out.

oh yeah speaking of grass.

i can't think of any epiphytic grasses and I can't understand why they wouldn't exist. it seems like the perfect niche for a grass.

can I read posts on the internet lightning speed ? yes.

can I read a scientific publication quickly ? also yes !!!

now, can I read a normal book at a somewhat regular speed ? no, I have to re-read the previous page, hell the previous chapter because I forgot what the conversation between the character was about !

This is the Crescent nebula it is located in the constellation Cygnus. This nebula is the result of the center star first becoming a red supergiant and ejecting some of its outer layers of gas in space, that gas cloud was then shaped into a bubble by the stellar winds emitted by the central star when it later turned into a Wolf–Rayet star.

The resulting gas bubble is heated and ionised by both the UV rays edited by the start and the stellar winds causing it to glow. Wolf-Rayet stars are the final step of some of the most massive stars before they explode into supernovas. In the case of the crescent nebula, the central star is expected to go supernova within the next few hundred thousand years (We probably still have quite a bit of time left before we observe that).

When a star goes supernova, some of the matter that composed the star is blasted off into space at extremely high velocities (up to 10% of the speed of light). This matter will then slowly (few hundred to a few tens of thousand of years) slow-down and cool-down to for me vast clouds of interstellar dust and gas. This second photo is a part of such a gas cloud, the veil nebula (the center of the western veil, also known as C34). In short, this is the photo of what's left of the corpse of a star that exploded about 10 to 20 thousand years ago.

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.

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))