Buying a telescope for my family for a few hundred bucks was one of the best decisions I've ever made.
I'm not super-hardcore into observing every night, but it's wonderful having it ready to go for an impulse observing session, and it scores easy brownie points with the neighbours. 🔭
Discovery of the Amaterasu 240 EeV cosmic ray particle, named after the goddess of the sun in Japanese mythology, by the Telescope Array observatory in Utah. This mysterious event appears to have emerged from the Local Void. Intriguing!
Aaaah, I've missed this so much! Working from a balcony overlooking the Chilean #Atacama desert, with ESO's Very Large #Telescope in the background under clear blue skies.
The Super Pressure Balloon Imaging Telescope SuperBIT launched in April on a high altitude balloon used a set of capsules which were planned to be released at intervals during the mission.
However it came down early so they dropped 2 capsules.
The telescope got destroyed on landing due to the parachute failed to release on landing.
The capsules used Raspberry PI 3B's with 5TB of SSD.
I've had no time to do any astronomy for fun recently. I was working until after 4am this morning so had very little sleep, but I just made myself take 30mins to explore #Jupiter, loads of #StarClusters, #M45 + #M31 with my #SkywatcherHeritage 74mm mini #Dobsonian#telescope. No imaging - just looking. This telescope is so much fun and I love it 🥰
Happy to be back at ESO in #Chile for a couple of weeks, for the first time since I left in 2020! Always nice to reconnect with old friends.
Pictured here is a mock version of one of the 798 hexagonal segments that will make up the 39 m mirror of the Extremely Large #Telescope. And —very appropriately— we can see a pic of its sibling, the Very Large Telescope, reflected on it 🙂
“A Photo 30+ Years in the Making”.
My dad and I once co-owned a 10” #telescope, but as years passed he’d forgotten that it was half mine and traded it for 2 smaller used scopes including a 130mm reflector. I was heartbroken but didn’t remind him and let it go. Recently I asked if he might send me the reflector since he hadn’t used it for 30+ years. I received it last week, cleaned and collimated it, then shot 72x30s on Andromeda. Not bad for a circa 1985 mirror. #astrophotography#Astrodon
After the release of the sublime image of the Horsehead Nebula by Euclid, here is a tribute to earlier endeavors, with this beautiful 1977 cover of Science Magazine, featuring a photographic plate by the National Geographic Society - Palomar Observatory Sky Survey