Look, the Very Large #Telescope has imaged a cosmic #flower! 🌼 The blue "petals" are actually multiple images of the same object, a distant #galaxy seen when the #universe was only 20% of its current age. Light rays from this faraway galaxy were bent by the gravity of a foreground galaxy (the orange one at the centre) creating separate images of the distant source – a so-called Einstein Cross.
It shows the distribution of hydrogen in M101, a nearby spiral #galaxy. More precisely, we see the radiation emitted by hydrogen atoms during something called hyperfine transition.
The odds of this happening are very rare: on average, you'd have to stare at a hydrogen atom for 10 million years to see this transition. But there are LOTS of hydrogen atoms out there!
100 years ago tonight, Edwin Hubble made the astronomical observation that definitively established the existence of the #universe beyond our own Milky Way galaxy.
His discovery of a Cepheid variable #star in the Andromeda Galaxy — famously labeled "VAR!" with red ink in Hubble's own hand on the plate — demonstrated beyond a doubt that Andromeda was a separate #galaxy from our own.
There are better pictures of NGC4216, a Galaxy you can find in Virgo’s Constellation. My idea, however, to capture it was two-folded: to capture it “as it appears to be” from my rooftop in Mexico City, but mostly to capture and understand the supernova explosion that happened there a few weeks ago and that you can find (WOW!) in my photograph.
1/2 Astronomers have made the furthest detection ever of a #galaxy 's magnetic field using ALMA.
Magnetic fields affect the orientation of dust grains in galaxies, which then emit polarised light. By studying this polarised light we can reconstruct the orientation of the magnetic fields, shown here as lines overlaid on the ALMA image.
The James Webb Space Telescope just dropped this incredible new image of the Whirlpool Galaxy, a.k.a. Messier 51. Made with the Mid-InfraRed Imager (MIRI), it traces clouds of dust in the #galaxy glowing in infrared light. These clouds absorb starlight and re-radiate the energy at wavelengths too long for our eyes to see. To make the light visible to human eyes, a false color map has been applied.
Old pic I took a few years ago at ESO's Paranal Observatory, when the UT4 #telescope was spying on the supermassive #BlackHole at the centre of our #galaxy
Don't worry, the laser was set to "stun", the black hole is ok 😎
It's the time of year when widefield imagers like myself get extra jealous of those long scopes and ponder what to image until the big stuff pops back up. I captured this data in one session last year and never did anything with it. I decided I'd take a swing at processing it, complete with 2x drizzle, heavy crop, and some BlurX tossed at it.
Computer ... enhance.
What's that? A cosmic question mark❓
Many eagle-eyed viewers have spotted a familiar shape in the background of a recent #JWST image of HH 46/47, jets blown out by a pair of forming stars.
It's hard to say with 100% confidence what the question mark is, but it's likey a distant pair of merging galaxies.
The galaxy UGC 10214, the Tadpole Galaxy, was one of the first objects imaged with the #Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys, which was installed in 2002.
The galaxy's distorted shape was caused by an interloper, a blue, compact galaxy seen shining through the upper left corner of the
Tadpole's disk. Strong gravitational forces from the interaction created a tail of of stars and gas that stretch out over 280,000 light-years.
#SciFi#Book#Idea 472… there is a stream of gas going from the Magellanic Clouds (dwarf galaxies of the Milky Way) towards the Milky Way and astronomers have found 13 stars in that stream traversing the chasm heading towards the Milky Way. Wouldn’t it be a cool setting for a Sci Fi novel? Where is my typewriter?! #Astronomy#Galaxy#Novel#MilkyWay#Magellan
I'm satisfied of the images I've been able to capture in 2023 despite multiple extended periods of cloud cover. This is a montage of most of those images, in no particular order.
Measuring acceleration in 26 pulsars, authors report:
Sun experiencing 1mm/s/yr acceleration away from Galactic centre, comparable to the gravitational force of a Jupiter-mass object 400 AU away (not Planet 9).
Mass enclosed within 8kpc of Galactic centre is ~2.3 times larger than accepted models.
I need to read (and understand this a bit better) but I think that the uncertainties in some of the distance and parallax measurements of the pulsars might introduce big enough overall uncertainties that could affect the outcomes reported here. Will be watching how this plays out!
@spsheridan and I gave ourselves a new telescope for Christmas. It’s a Unistellar Equinox 2. I’m flabbergasted at the images we’re able to capture in Los Angeles (think the home of light pollution). The first pic is NGC 2683, another GALAXY. How crazy is that? The second one is the Orion Nebula. I’m blown away by this.
Tesla Adjusts EV and FSD Pricing, Sparks Industry Conversation
HIGHLIGHTS
-Tesla reduces EV and FSD prices, spurring discussions.
-Price cuts aim to boost consumer accessibility and market share.
-Musk highlights strategic adaptation to align with future tech gains.
‘Fossilized’ Bubble 10,000 Times the Size of the Milky Way Could Be a Relic from the Big Bang (www.scientificamerican.com)
Astronomers have spotted a gigantic void they believe to be a baryon acoustic oscillation — a relic from when the universe was a fiery plasma soup
Massive galaxy with no dark matter is a cosmic puzzle (www.space.com)
"This result does not fit in with the currently accepted cosmological models, which include dark matter."