Messier 53 (M53) is a globular cluster located in the constellation Coma Berenices. Messier 53 reaches its annual culmination at astronomical midnight around April 10th.
Got another 1.5 hours of light last night from nearby(ish) galaxy NGC 3621 which features the recent supernova #SN2024ggi
Have now been grabbing light from this event over a few months and can see its colour/flux temporal evolution.
Caught it with VIVID’s extreme light pollution too! (VIVID is a very popular festival of light here in Sydney in which light pollution increases by several orders of magnitude!)
While I wait for suitable conditions for more imaging, I've been continuing my image processing education. I always love using my Rosette Nebula data--it's such a lovely target. Originally shot this in narrowband (Ha, SII, OIII) a year ago and this is a reprocess in SHO.
A rather blistering 5am start for the second virtual #astrophotography gallery event with the IAU and @futuremeetings! But a good crowd, and really fun to listen to the photographers describe how they took these photos with a smartphone (!).
Tea in an International Astronomical Union Outreach bamboo mug to start the week and celebrate not only sustainable drinkies, but also the super cool #astrophotography event that will be held TODAY and TOMORROW! Tickets are free, and the 3D virtual space (accessible from a browser) is really fun to explore.
NGC5907, also known as the knife-edge galaxy or the splinter galaxy, is an essentially bulgeless Sc galaxy which we can see nearly edge on, thus revealing very prominent dust lanes. Its peculiarity is that only very few giant stars are detectable in NGC5907, most of the light apparently comes from (relatively low metallicity) dwarf stars. The fainter part of the galaxy westward of the dust lanes has the NGC number 5906.
If you are interested in the use of virtual spaces for online events, do check out this event next week!
Organised by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), this #astrophotography gallery is hosted in spatial: a 3D virtual space you can explore via a regular web browser or #VR Meta headset.
I love virtual spaces for feeling I've "gone somewhere", and the audio falloff means you can chat to people you meet... or run off and ignore their babble while you cruise the #astronomy art.
This gallery was created from off-the-shelf assets that are freely available at spatial.io. Come and visit the gallery, and think about how a virtual space could be used for original online meetings and events.
The difference between #landscape photographers and #astrophotography photgraphers is that when something in the scene moves the former get very pissed while the latter get very excited.
Now it’s time to show y’all the complete photograph of the M16 nebula taken last week with my 80 mm refractor telescope. Could manage to get lots of details in a relatively short total exposure time of only 9 hours and 45 minutes.
Photographer Mihail Minkov: ‘The concept behind this shot is to highlight the stark contrast between the vastness of the cosmos and the minuscule nature of humanity. The composition intentionally draws the viewer’s focus to a small figure, underscoring our insignificance in the grand scheme of the universe, while the majestic Milky Way core dominates the background.