Submissions: 2023 August

[PierandreaFolle]

2023 Perseids Fireworks

An entire night in one of Pollino National Park's peak. Capturing 2000+ photos catching all the Perseids meteors.

Nikon Z6IIa + Sigma ART 14mm f/1.8 + Sigma ART 28mm f/1.4
Sky: 9x30s f/2.8 ISO 1600
Meteors: 13s f/2.8 ISO 10000
Foreground: 2x300s f/5.6 ISO 5000

Copyright: Pierandrea Folle

Perseids 23 Fireworks by Pierandrea Folle, su Flickr

[WolfHeart]

Waning Crescent Rising during Perseids Meteor Shower

Waning Crescent Rising during Perseids Meteor Shower by Ahmed Waddah, on Flickr

Image is a composite of the waning crescent rising on the night of the 11th into the 12th with Andromeda and Pleiades in view. 300 frames were tracked and one frame was picked as base image with the waning crescent and 6 frames with 7 meteors with one being the brightest and longest captured during the 11th and 12th!


Al Fayoum Desert, Western Desert, Egypt
11th of August

Nikon Z6II
Nikkor Z 14-24mm f/2.8 S
ISO 5000 - f/2.8 - 20" - 14mm
Sky Guider Pro

Social:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/waddah.photography
Astrobin: https://www.astrobin.com/users/WolfHeart/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/waddahphotography/

[Julien Looten]

**Capturing shooting stars: Perseids 2023 in the Constellation Cygnus**

Copyright: Julien Looten



Every year in August, skywatchers are treated to a spellbinding spectacle: the Perseids, a swarm of shooting stars that cross the Earth's atmosphere at the lightning speed of 59 kilometres per second. In 2023, the peak of this shower of shooting stars was scheduled for the night of 12 to 13 August, but the vagaries of the weather in northern France made the task of capturing them arduous and uncertain.

However, perseverance and passion finally paid off. Despite the challenges posed by the clouds, just over 4 hours of exposure were accumulated over the last few days, for a total of 6 - 7 shooting stars, most of them modest in size. One of them, a larger one, passed in front of my lens at around 2am on 17 August. Here is a photograph.

The image obtained shows a portion of our galaxy, the Milky Way, concentrated around the Constellation of the Swan. This constellation is teeming with nebulae, including the North American Nebula, the Butterfly Nebula and the Cygnet's Lace. This constellation is easy to identify with the naked eye thanks to its main star, Deneb. This part of the sky is at its zenith at the moment.

In the upper part, the star Vega shines brightly. This is the second brightest star observable from the northern hemisphere. Due to the phenomenon of the precession of the equinoxes, Vega occupied the role of polar star (i.e. indicating the North) around the 12th millennium BC, and will do so again in some 12,000 years' time...

Although we can never be certain whether the Magdalenians used Vega as a celestial marker, it is indisputable that they were fortunate enough to observe a pure sky... In contrast, our 'modern' reality is marked by urban light pollution that alters the quality of the night sky and hinders (or prevents) our relationship with the stars....

Exif : 500 x 30s - Canon 6d Mark II (unfiltered) - Sigma 28mm (f/2) - Skywatcher Star Adventurer GTI - 16-17-18 August 2023. Arras (Pas de Calais, France).

Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/Julien.Looten.Photographie/

Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/p/CwFszdJMbM2/

[isultan]

Western Veil Nebula

52x300 sec

Equipment:
ZWO ASI533MC Pro
SVBONY SV503 80ED refractor with focal reducer
Optolong L-Ultimate 2" filter
Star Adventurer GTi, ZWO 30mm f/4 guidescope, ASI120MM Mini guidecamera, ASIAIR Pro

Processing:
Astro Pixel Processor, PixInsight, StarNet v2, Adobe Photoshop

Location: Des Plaines, Illinois
Dates: July 31 and August 15, 2023
Copyright: Imran Sultan

[Oliver64]

Here is the risein the queyras mountaibs in france (from left to right) of the Heart Nebula, and the Soul Nebula just below rising above the mountain and to the right a star cluster the Perseus double cluster.
At the base it was to raise the double cluster but in fact to my surprise the two nebulae were visible.

sky stack 22 pics x 60 sec
foreground stack 1 x 60 sec

Canon r6 mod
Sigma art 135mm f1.8 ( here 2.2)
traking eq3-2

Treatment Philippe Bernhard
https://astrob.in/so5w41/B/rawthumb/hd/get.jpg?insecure

[Marion]

Ta voix, cet alizé by Marion Kabac, sur Flickr

Hi everyone !

Creating self-portraits with the Milky Way is my favorite time of the year. Foremost, the creative process is kind of therapeutic, and more importantly, these images witness my skills improvement in nightscape photography.

The scenery I imagined for this one was a minimalistic frame, a very colorful Milky Way where I would appear as tiny as possible. As the colors was the most important part, I edited the photo with a subtle stars reduction.

"This echo was a whisper, a melody heard under the Astralities. I was just your whisper, your voice, a tiny wind through the tempest out."

Canon 6dii + Sigma 35mm f/1.4
Single shot : 6 secondes à f1.6, iso 3200
July 8th, 2023
Queyras natural park, France

Have a nice day,
Marion

[Efrem Frigeni]

Sh2-150 and VDB 154 in Chepeus
https://www.astroefrem.com/gallery/blog ... 355-3.html
Copyright: Efrem Frigeni

Sh2 -150 is an emission nebula and Vdb154 is a reflection nebula.
They are visible in Cepheus, identified in the central part of the constellation, at about one fifth of the angular distance between ι Cephei and μ Cephei; the most suitable period for its observation in the evening sky falls between the months of July and December and it is considerably facilitated for observers located in the regions of the terrestrial boreal hemisphere , where it is circumpolar up to the warm temperate regions. Sh2-150 is a fairly large H II region oriented north-south slightly east of 26 Cephei ; it lies at a distance of about 900 parsecs (over 2900 light-years ) Visually near to Sh2-150 is the reflection nebula VdB 154. Its distance is not yet known, therefore is not possible to claim that there is a physical link between both nebulae. Some dark clouds also can be seen in the image

[conemmil]

Perseus and his Fireflies!

We had great weather on the night of the 14th of August and a magnificent show of Perseid meteors in Halkidiki Greece. For seven hours I recorded more than 15000 images and it was a long process to filter out all the satellites and airplanes from the images as I wanted to capture only the Perseids. For the past many years, I'm trying to capture this meteor shower but either the activity would be too low (ZHR = 25) or the bright moon would reduce any possibility of capturing them.

This year was a magnificent opportunity since we had an almost New Moon and a very dark and clear sky with a ZHR that reached almost 110 at the time of the recording of the images. It was very interesting to see two meteors passing in front of Jupiter and also to visually see the long streaks from the meteors with the unaided eye.

The mountain shown has one of the most profound caves where Homo Sapiens remains are found inside, aged at about 100.000 BC. I wonder what these early humans were thinking when they viewed meteor showers in the past times!

[a.carrozzi]

VdB 141 or Sh2-136, commonly known as the Phantom Nebula because of its shape, is an isolated Bok globule. Bok globules are the areas inside a nebula where gas condenses and new stars begin to form. This nebula is immersed in a large area of interstellar dust that weakly reflects light from nearby stars and emerges, as in this case, in long-exposure photographs.
Technical data: SkyWatcher 200mm f/5 Newton on SkyWatcher NEQ 6 Pro. Atik 4000 LE. 24x600s L, 3x600s RGB.

The Ghost nebula - VdB 141 by Alessandro Carrozzi, su Flickr

[Meiying Lee]

Only 2.4% of Illuminated Venus After Inferior Junction
You can get up early to observe Venus now! Venus, which shines brightly in the western sky at dusk in the first half of the year, has passed between the earth and the sun (inferior junction), appeared in the eastern sky before sunrise! In ancient China, the Venus that appeared in the morning was called "Tai-bai Venus"(太白金星). The apparent diameter of Venus observed yesterday is 56.7 arcseconds, and the illuminated part is only 2.4%, so it looks like an ultra-thin small crescent moon! Because Venus is currently very close to the sun, it was originally worried that the sky would be too bright to observe. Unexpectedly, Venus is so powerful that I caught it breaking through the eastern clouds ten minutes before sunrise! After that, I continued to observe it until half an hour after sunrise, and recorded its moving track and video. Watching this tiny moon slowly rise and disappear in the gray sky is really fascinating. The crescent Venus photographed with a long lens can also see the dispersion phenomenon of red, yellow and green separation of Venus due to atmospheric refraction.
Equipment Details: Canon R7 + SIGMA 60-600mm F4.5-6.3 S DG OS HSM Sports
Location : Taipei, Taiwan
Time: August 20, 2023 at 5:15 am
Photographer : Meiying Lee (李美英)

[WolfHeart]

The Elephant Trunk Nebula in SHO/ LRGB Stars

Elephant Trunk Nebula by Ahmed Waddah, on Flickr

My first complete narrow band image with LRGB for stars. Data was collected over 4 nights between July & August in a bortle 2 location in Al Fayoum Desert in Egypt.

WO Redcat 51
ASI2600MM
ZWO AM5
Antlia SHO 3nm Filters
Antlia RGB V-Pro Filters

Ha 41x300"
OIII 38x300"
SII 40x300"
RGB 20x90" each

Total Integration 11h 25'

https://www.astrobin.com/a2tmx0/

Social:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/waddah.photography
Astrobin: https://www.astrobin.com/users/WolfHeart/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/waddahphotography/

[george_tzel]

The Ghost of Cassiopeia in HaRGB
URL of website, if any: https://www.astrobin.com/05iljx/B/
Copyright: George Tzellos

[the_astronomy_enthusiast]

NGC 40 and CTA 1 - a rarely imaged region by William Ostling, on Flickr

Full post here: https://theastroenthusiast.com/ngc-40-a ... ed-region/

You can find all details at the astrobin post here: https://www.astrobin.com/l89sao/

Credits: Tim Schaeffer, Carl Björk, Felix Schöfbänker, William Ostling

NGC40, also known as the bow tie nebula, is a planetary nebula (PN) in the constellation of Cepheus. It lies at a distance of roughly 3500 light years and spans 1.25 light years in diameter and is only 4500 years old.
At the centre of the PN lies a white dwarf at 0.7 times the mass of the sun. The gases surrounding the white dwarf have a temperature of about 10.000°C and expand at 29 km/s.
While NGC40 spans only some 1.23’x1.23’ the bigger structure that can be seen in this image is the supernova remnant (SNR) G119.5+10.2, also known as CTA 1, being named after the pulsar that can be found in the middle of the SNR. It is suspected to lie at a distance of 4600 light years from earth and be 10.000 years old.
CTA 1 spans about 1°30’, making it a relatively big SNR. The vast abundance of Ha and Oiii make this SNR look somewhat similar to the Cygnus Loop - in contrast to the Cygnus loop though, this SNR is extremely faint and is rarely imaged by amateurs. In fact, even after nearly 14h in both Ha and Oiii at f/3 the signal still was relatively weak. The central source of the SNR is the pulsar named “CTA 1” and as pointed out earlier, it’s also name-giving for the name of the SNR. This Pulsar can also be found in our image, but more on that later.

This image was captured as part of the NHZ project by Felix and Tim using our shared remote setup in Spain. As we still have some problems with stars we need to fix, Carl was so kind and helped us out, shooting a bit over 3h of RGB stars for us to use in this image.
Whereas we were busy gathering data on this unusual target, I was the editor for this image.
Big thanks to everyone involved!

Website: https://theastroenthusiast.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_astronomy_enthusiast/

[Caroline Berger]

NGC7000 the Cygnus wall, in SHO

17h integration with asi183mm pro and RC8
Bortle 6, France

Full resolution on my Astrobin https://www.astrobin.com/full/6h653i/0/?mod=&real=

[Jonathan_lost_in_space]

Hello,

Here is my image of M39 with SH2-124 The "Almost Nothing" Nebula. I was looking for some less imaged objects and noticed
a faint hydrogen patch near M39 / NGC7092. After about 40hrs of
exposures, an interesting nebula came into view. It looks very similar
to NGC6188 the Dragons of Ara in the Southern Hemisphere.

Image link on my Astrobin site: https://www.astrobin.com/2ybrjj/


Photo captured from Tacoma, WA.
Imaging Telescope: William Optics Gran Turismo 81 WIFD
Imaging Camera: ZWO ASI2600MM Pro
Mount: ZWO AM5
Filters: Chroma Blue 36 mm · Chroma Green 36 mm · Chroma H-alpha 3nm
Bandpass 36 mm · Chroma OIII 3nm Bandpass 36 mm · Chroma Red 36 mm
· Chroma SII 3nm Bandpass 36 mm

Dates:July 31, 2023 · Aug. 11, 2023 · Aug. 12, 2023 · Aug. 14, 2023
· Aug. 15, 2023Frames:
Chroma Blue 36 mm: 81×120″(2h 42′)
Chroma Green 36 mm: 60×120″(2h)
Chroma H-alpha 3nm Bandpass 36 mm: 212×300″(17h 40′)
Chroma OIII 3nm Bandpass 36 mm: 70×300″(5h 50′)
Chroma Red 36 mm: 107×120″(3h 34′)
Chroma SII 3nm Bandpass 36 mm: 105×300″(8h 45′)
Integration:40h 31′
Avg. Moon age: 24.18 days
Avg. Moon phase: 27.13%

Thank you for considering,

[deckardbr]

Equipment: TS RC10", ZWO ASI2600mm pro, Paramount MX+
Data: 180s frames, ZWO LHaRGB filters, 27 hours total
Credit: Andrea Bergamini and Sameer Bharadwaj
Location: Own remote observatory e-Eye, Spain, Bortle 3
Date: 15-19 August 2023

Astrobin link: https://www.astrobin.com/wz0wlg/

[peterJaroslav]

The Stellar Funnel in Lacerta SH2-126, Imaged remotely from Spain with the Epsilon 130ED and asi6200mm pro
Exposure times were75x 120x each in RGB and 116x 180s in Ha, processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop.

Thanks for Looking
​​​​​​​Peter Shah

[Bobinius]

The Galactic Connection : Keenan's System

Copyright: Bogdan Borz

This is the Keenan system, a system of interacting galaxies in the Ursa Major constellation located at around 17.3 million light years from earth. The two galaxies are connected by a bridge that seems to be formed by material and stars captured from the outskirts of NGC218 (Gallagher and Parker, The Astrophysical Journal 2010). NGC5218 is a barred spiral galaxy, while NGC 5216 is an elliptical galaxy. The length of the bridge is 38 kiloparsecs.

Telescope: Teleskop Service ONTC Newtonian 250mm @ 3.8
Mount: Skywatcher AZEQ6 Pro
Camera: ZWO ASI 2600MM Baader 36mm LRGB filters
Software: Sequence Generator Pro, Pixinsight, Photoshop
Dates : May 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 20 2023
L 121, R 42, G 45, B 45 x 300s gain 0 @ -10°C
Total exposure: 21h5min
Location: Personal remote observatory at E-Eye, Extremadura, Spain
Full and widefield : https://www.astrobin.com/full/qo78yj/0/

[Bobinius]

The Single Arm Galaxies : A Mysterious Galactic Trio

Copyright: Bogdan Borz

This is an image of a rarely photographed couple of galaxies, NGC 4618 and NGC 4625 in Canes Venatici, collectively known as Arp 23 in the Arp Catalogue of Peculiar Galaxies. The trio is formed with the very small, hardly visible NGC 4625A situated SE from NGC 4625, NGC 4625A being a low surface brightness galaxy (looking like a faint smudge close to NGC 4625).

The two brighter galaxies have an interesting story behind them and I realized that, serendipitously, I have pointed my telescope towards a very interesting couple. NGC 4625 and NGC 4618 both are single arm spirals. Single arm spirals are rare (and it was the reason for the inclusion in the Arp catalogue). Until 2004, it was thought that NGC 4625 was a dwarf galaxy, but UV data from the GALEX (Galaxy Evolution Explorer ) telescope showed that it actually has spiral arms in UV light that are 4 times more extended than the size of the optical disk. These arms were considered absent before this data, since they were not present in the images taken before, in the visible spectrum. So the galaxy was considered to be limited to the smaller bright core.

This UV emission is a sign of recent star formation and offers an opportunity to study the physics of star formation in conditions similar to those present when our own galaxy was appearing (A. Gil de Paz et al., The Astrophysical Journal 2005). The hypothesis was that NGC 4618 interacted gravitationally with NGC 4625 and "stole" one of its arms. This does not explain how come NGC 4618 has one arm too. A possible interaction with NGC 4625A was also advanced. The interaction took place probably in the past since there is a 10 million l.y. distance between the two bright ones, 4618 and 4625.

I could only find one image on the Internet showing the faint, blue arms of NGC 4625 in visible light, by Martin Winder and processed by Dietmar Hager. The other image of these arms is in false color, based on the UV data produced by GALEX.

Telescope: Teleskop Service ONTC Newtonian 250mm @ 3.8
Mount: Skywatcher AZEQ6 Pro
Camera: ZWO ASI 2600MM Baader 36mm LRGB filters
Software: Sequence Generator Pro, Pixinsight, Photoshop
Dates : May 16 - 24 2023
L 211, R 53, G 62, B 64 x 300s gain 0 @ -10°C
Total exposure: 32h30min
Location: Personal remote observatory at E-Eye, Extremadura, Spain

[Ayiomamitis]

Sol at Perihelion and Aphelion (2023)
http://www.perseus.gr
Copyright: Anthony Ayiomamitis

A comparison of Sol at perihelion and aphelion during 2023 showing the slight change in the apparent diameter due to Earth's elliptical orbit around the Sun. Further details at https://www.perseus.gr/Astro-Solar-Scen ... n-2023.htm .

[Ayiomamitis]

Sol at Aphelion (2023)
http://www.perseus.gr
Copyright: Anthony Ayiomamitis

Sol at aphelion during 2023 and in spite of the hot summer in the Northern Hemisphere. Further details at https://www.perseus.gr/Astro-Solar-Suns ... 230706.htm .

[Ayiomamitis]

Torre dell'Orologio (Clock Tower) of Venice
http://www.perseus.gr
Copyright: Anthony Ayiomamitis

The impressive astronomical clock at Piazza di San Marco in Venice Italy. For further details and additional samples, see https://www.perseus.gr/Astro-Astronomic ... -2023.html .

[Ayiomamitis]

Torre dell'Orologio (Clock Tower) of Brescia
http://www.perseus.gr
Copyright: Anthony Ayiomamitis

The impressive astronomical clock at Piazza della Loggia, Brescia, Italy. For further details and additional samples, see https://www.perseus.gr/Astro-Astronomic ... -2023.html .

[Ayiomamitis]

Torre dell'Orologio di Padova (Clock Tower of Padova)
http://www.perseus.gr
Copyright: Anthony Ayiomamitis

The impressive astronomical clock at Piazza Dei Signori, Padova, Italy . For further details and additional samples, see https://www.perseus.gr/Astro-Astronomic ... -2023.html .

[chassaigne]

ngc 6914 HaRGB9 29h10mn by georges chassaigne, sur Flickr

NGC 6914 is a reflection nebula located approximately 6,000 light-years away in the constellation of Cygnus, and was discovered by Édouard Stephan on August 29, 1881.Ultraviolet radiation from stars in the Cygnus OB2 association ionize the nebula's hydrogen.

Full data:

www.georges-chassaigne.fr/433170348/ngc-6914