Found Images: 2022 April

[bystander]

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Have you seen a great image or video somewhere that you think would make a great APOD? Nominate it for APOD! Please post as much information here as you have about the image/video with a link to any source(s) for it you know of here, and the editors will take a look.

When posting the image itself, please do not post anything larger than a thumbnail here; please honor the copyright holder's copyright.

Please keep hotlinked images under 500K.

Thank you!

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[starsurfer]

Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635) and KjPn 8
https://www.astrobin.com/tzpolv/
Copyright: Boris Chausov

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NGC 1955
https://www.chart32.de/index.php/component/k2/item/248
Copyright: CHART32
Processing: Johannes Schedler

[starsurfer]

NGC 1514
https://pbase.com/skybox/image/171963173
Copyright: Kevin Quin

[bystander]

Starry, Starry Night
ESO Picture of the Week | 2022 Apr 04

Image Credit: ESO/M. Zamani

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Beneath this breathtaking splatter of stars, the road to ESO’s La Silla Observatory in the Chilean Atacama Desert is home to a rich variety of telescopes. In the foreground we can see the Danish 1.54-metre telescope, followed by the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope and ESO’s New Technology Telescope (NTT) in the background.

The Danish 1.45-metre telescope is performing its nightly duties, seeking to unveil some of the mysteries of the cosmos. It has provided a plethora of scientific discoveries, such as observing the afterglows of short gamma-ray bursts, likely caused by the catastrophic collision of two neutron stars.

The MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope is also an avid chaser of gamma-ray bursts: its GROND instrument looks for the afterglows of these events, which are then followed up by larger telescopes. The telescope also hosts a spectrograph and a wide field imager that has captured stunning images.

Although it may be just a speck in this image, the NTT is responsible for some key advances in observational astronomy. Large telescope mirrors bend under their own weight, so they have to be adjusted to preserve optimal image quality and detail. The NTT was the first telescope where these adjustments were done on the fly during observations, by monitoring a reference star. This technique, called active optics, is now widely used in large professional telescopes.

[bystander]

Hubble Spies a Serpentine Spiral Galaxy
ESA Hubble Picture of the Week | 2022 Apr 04

Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Walsh

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The lazily winding spiral arms of the galaxy NGC 5921 snake across this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This galaxy lies approximately 80 million light-years from Earth, and much like our own galaxy, the Milky Way, contains a prominent bar. Roughly half of all spiral galaxies are thought to contain bars, and these bars affect their parent galaxies by fuelling star formation and affecting the motion of stars and interstellar gas.

Appropriately, given NGC 5921’s serpentine spiral arms, this galaxy resides in the constellation Serpens in the northern celestial hemisphere. Serpens is the only one of the 88 modern constellations to consist of two unconnected regions — Serpens Caput and Serpens Cauda. These two regions — whose names mean the Serpent’s Head and the Serpent’s Tail, respectively — are separated by Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer.

The scientific study behind this image was also split into two parts — observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and observations from the ground-based Gemini Observatory. These two observatories joined forces to better understand the relationship between galaxies like NGC 5921 and the supermassive black holes they contain. Hubble’s contribution to the study was to determine the masses of stars in the galaxies and also to take measurements that help calibrate the observations from Gemini. Together, the Hubble and Gemini observations provided astronomers with a census of nearby supermassive black holes in a diverse variety of galaxies.

[starsurfer]

PaStDr 9
https://www.astrobin.com/gfa23m/D/
Copyright: Zdenek Vojc

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Hu 5
https://www.imagingdeepspace.com/hu-5.html
Copyright: Peter Goodhew

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RCW 85
http://www.cielaustral.com/galerie/photo117.htm
Copyright: Ciel Austral

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RCW 86
https://www.hansonastronomy.com/rcw86
Data: Martin Pugh
Processing: Mark Hanson

[starsurfer]

vdB13 and vdB16
http://deeplook.astronomie.at/vdb%2016%20-%20mizar.htm
Copyright: Markus Blauensteiner

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NGC 2841
http://www.capella-observatory.com/Imag ... GC2841.htm
Copyright: Josef Pöpsel, Frank Sackenheim and Stefan Binnewies

[starsurfer]

NGC 253
http://www.astro-austral.cl/imagenes/ga ... 3/info.htm
Copyright: José Joaquin Pérez

[Florian Kainz]

Vega and Lyra in the blue sky during the day:

Stars in the Daytime Sky (with annotations) by fksr, on Flickr
Stars in the Daytime Sky (without annotations) by fksr, on Flickr

For reference, here's the same area of the sky at night:

Vega and Lyra at Night (with annotations) by fksr, on Flickr

A coworker recently mentioned that it might be possible to photograph stars during the day, and I just had to try it. To my surprise it turned out to be possible to take a picture of the constellation Lyra, with stars up to magnitude 4.9 showing up in the picture.

Half an hour after sunrise on March 23rd the magnitude 0 star Vega came within less than one degree from the zenith in the perfectly clear morning sky in California.

After attaching a camera a tracking mount, I aimed it at the zenith, checking the direction with a bubble level. Using a polarizer, I darkened the blue sky as much as possible, hoping to increase the contrast of any stars within the field of view. I shot a total of 363 frames to gather as much starlight as possible. Being much brighter than the other stars in the camera's field of view, Vega was visible in the individual frames straight out of the camera, but bringing out the other stars required careful image stacking.

[bystander]

The Outstretched Milky Way
NOIRLab Image of the Week | 2022 Apr 06

Image Credit: CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/B. Tafreshi

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The dust-filled center of our Milky Way galaxy stretches up from the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope and one of the SMARTS Consortium telescopes at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in this Image of the Week. CTIO, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab, is located at 2200 meters (7200 feet) in the mountains of Chile. Far from major cities, the dark landscape provides American, Chilean, and international researchers clear views of the southern sky. The spectacular green colors in the sky are not due to the aurora borealis, but instead are due to a phenomenon known as airglow. Airglow is not an optical illusion, but a genuine light source that results from chemical reactions in Earth’s upper atmosphere. It is far too faint to be visible during the daytime, and in most human-inhabited places it is drowned out by light pollution. However, out in the Chilean desert, it is possible to detect it.

[bystander]

Spiral Snapshot
ESA Hubble Picture of the Week | 2022 Apr 11

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Lee, PHANGS-HST Team

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The spiral galaxy M91 fills the frame of this Wide Field Camera 3 observation from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. M91 lies approximately 55 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices and — as is evident in this image — is a barred spiral galaxy. While M91’s prominent bar makes for a spectacular galactic portrait, it also hides an astronomical monstrosity. Like our own galaxy, M91 contains a supermassive black hole at its centre. A 2009 study using archival Hubble data found that this central black hole weighs somewhere between 9.6 and 38 million times as much as the Sun.

Whilst archival Hubble data allowed astronomers to weigh M91’s central black hole, more recent observations have had other scientific aims. This observation is part of an effort to build a treasure trove of astronomical data exploring the connections between young stars and the clouds of cold gas in which they form. To do this, astronomers used Hubble to obtain ultraviolet and visible observations of galaxies already seen at radio wavelengths by the ground-based Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). ...

[starsurfer]

NGC 6752
https://pbase.com/gregbradley/image/172492399/
Copyright: Greg Bradley

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Hewett 1
https://www.astrobin.com/a5jac5/B/
Copyright: Roman Pearah

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M94
https://www.astrobin.com/zt849p/C/
Copyright: Sebastien Kuenlin

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IC 2574
https://www.astro-fotografie.at/portfolio-view/ic-2574/
Copyright: Daniel Nimmervoll

[bystander]

Galactic Center Above the Tulips Field
The World at Night | 2022 Apr 02

Click to view full size image 1 or image 2

Credit: Dario Giannobile, Astronomers Without Borders

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A photo composite of multiple exposures. From the photographer: “It has been just a year since I discovered this wonderful corner of Sicily. It is a small field close to the sanctuary of the Madonna dell’Olio, near the village of Blufi, where every spring the wonder of the flowering of a wild tulip of the Tulipa Radii variety is repeated. The flower is dedicated to the botanist Giuseppe Raddi, who lived between the 18th and 19th centuries. …

To do justice to such a beautiful place, it was necessary to approach another wonder of nature: the starry sky. Aided by a moonless night, but not devoid of haze, I shot tulips with the Milky Way rising behind the green-cloaked Sicilian hills. In the foreground, however, it is the field of flowers that is the protagonist thanks also to the lighting of the nearby sanctuary which allowed to highlight the many inflorescence with variegated colors. I invite you to look at the shot and close your eyes for a moment. Imagine being there on the spot, in the silence and among the scents of the wet Sicilian countryside. Imagine letting your imagination wander and traveling to other places, perhaps to Holland, making sure that Sicily is transformed into a micro cosmos …

[bystander]

A Dead Star’s Shroud
NOIRLab Image of the Week | 2022 Apr 13

Image Credit: Data: KPNO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA; Processing: T.A. Rector (Univ of Alaska Anchorage/NOIRLab), M. Zamani (NOIRLab) & D. de Martin (NOIRLab)

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This image, which looks a little like an enormous bubble in space, features a planetary nebula known as EGB 6. It was imaged by the Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab. Planetary nebulae, notoriously, have nothing to do with planets. They form during the dying millennia of intermediate-mass stars, stars with masses between one and eight times the mass of the Sun. “Dying millennia” might sound like a very long time, but compared to the overall lifespan of a star, planetary nebulae are extremely short-lived. Towards the end of their life cycle, intermediate-mass stars enter the red giant phase, during which fusion reactions temporarily reignite in a dying star’s core. Layers of gas, shed or ejected during the red giant phase, absorb vast amounts of energy and create the gorgeous phenomena known as planetary nebulae. The dying millenia only last about 20,000 years, a mere blink of an eye when you consider that intermediate-mass stars shine steadily for between 30 million to 10 billion years (depending on their mass) before they die.

[starsurfer]

Kronberger 131
https://www.starscapeimaging.com/Kn131/Kn131.html
Copyright: Jon Talbot

[astronomonogdl]

Monkeyhead nebula
credits: Astronomono Jalisco México

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/518 ... d4a9_k.jpg
https://www.flickr.com/photos/136700672 ... 868945900/

[astronomonogdl]

Lagoon Nebula
Credits: Astronomono
Jalisco México

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/514 ... 5df9_k.jpg
https://www.flickr.com/photos/136700672 ... 415426780/