Starship Asterisk*

At the moment I have an FSQ106 borrowed from a fellow astronomer. I decided to make some imagery now it finally (since 1,5 months) has become good weather here in Holland.

The images was made using the Tak FSQ106 with a SXV-H9 camera.

Exposures:

13x900s Ha (Custom Scientific 4,5nm) = 3,25h
12x900s OIII (Astrodon 3nm) = 3h

NGC 4314 Corpyright and credit: Data, Hubble Legacy Archive; processing, Gilles Chapdelaine

Melotte 15 Open Star Cluster in the Heart Nebula
Full size and details: http://www.bcsatellite.net/bao/Melotte15/Melotte15.html
Copyright: Maxim Usatov

It's finally time for me to post another reply.

There are some really great galaxy pictures here. I've already talked about Adam Block's and Valter Luna's. I love Ryan M. Hannahoe and Robert Gendler's image of the Small Magellanic Cloud. What an image! Robert Gendler has an annotated version naming a lot of all those emission nebulae.

I love Gilles Chapdelaine's processed version of the HST picture of NGC 6782. This galaxy has a fantastic shape, with its mini-bar inside an inner ring, and then an oblong bulge with two strong dust lanes, typical of bars, surrounded by an outer, very oval-shaped ring. The shape is very interesting, because this is what appears to be the inner part of a spiral galaxy that has no arms at all. And note the colors. The inner bar is very yellow, as expected, but the inner ring is yellow-white, which is a lot less expected. Clearly there was an enormous starburst in this ring perhaps a billion years ago or more, because all the blue stars are dead. But the white and yellow stars are still shining brightly in it. Really young stars only exist in the outer, oval ring. (This, of course, assumes that the original Hubble data also show that the inner ring really lacks young blue stars.)

Kent E. Biggs has made a very fine portrait of Stephan's Sextet, including the the true fifth member, the small galaxy with a prominent ring on the far left. The largest-looking, bluest galaxy in the middle is of course a nearby line-of-sight interloper.

I love Günter Kerschhuber's portrait of IC 1613. A blue "ribbon of stars" stretch from the lower left diagonally over the face of this dwarf galaxy. These are of course young stars. In the upper left corner, star formation is still going on. Otherwise, this galaxy is dominated by an intermediate to old population. Note the large cluster of orange-looking "stars" on the lower left. These can't be stars or star clusters, because very orange stars are rare and don't cluster like that. The orange "stars" have to be a distant galaxy cluster.

Stefano Campani has made a fine portrait of NGC 660. But Stefano, didn't you post a picture of this galaxy showing pink HII regions too? I miss that picture!

Bill Snyder, Carsten Reese and Leonardo Orazi have all taken fine pictures of the (to me) ever-fascinating galaxy NGC 891. NGC 891 is one of the very few galaxies I know of that are exactly edge-on. The galaxy has a very thick and very active dust lane with a lot of smoking "chimneys" and ongoing star formation. But in spite of all this activity in the dust lane, NGC 891 has a large yellow probably "red-and-dead" disk.

And I really appreciate Scott Rosen's picture of IC 342. This galaxy would have been one of the best-known and most-photographed galaxies in the sky if it hadn't been sitting behind the curtain of dust in the Milky Way.

There are many other fascinating images too. I must thank Bob Andersson for his ultra wide-field H alpha "landscape with highlights" - and there is an annotated version, too. Thank you so much for that!

Speaking of annotated images, I really appreciated Tamas Abraham's Moonlit mountains in the Alps. Sirius looks very blue here, but rather faint int moonlight.

On the other hand, Sirius really looks brilliant in Philippe TOSI's image of the Seagull Nebula. I guess that's Sirius?

I love Miguel Claro's image of waves lapping (or possibly crashing) on the beach as stars wheel overhead.

A little-photographed but splendid-looking part of the sky - at least when Warren A. Keller phtographed it - is the Fox Face Nebula. How fascinating and beautiful!

Anotehr beauty here is Marco Angelini's Tulip Nebula, which really look s like a splendid cosmic flower.

I find Juan Carlos Casado's image of a truly flaming sky absolutely fascinating. The Milky Way and Orion with all its nebulosity really stand out among the yellow light, whatever it is.

There are many fine Moon images here. I love VegaStar Carpentier's portrait of the Moon, which really makes a long illuminated ridge between two large Mares stand out.

I love the fun Moon images here. The funniest by far is Philippe Collot's delightful picture of a sign of a man with binoculars apparently observing the Moon! But I also like Pawel Cias' image of the Moon apparently sitting on a volcanic slope, and Maximilian Teodorescu's image of the Moon apparently sinking down in reverence beside the holy cross!

There are many fine Sun images here, but my favorite is the lower one of Mike Burns' two Sun pillar images, where the Sun looks "inverted" - anything but round, but instead having four sharp "corners". It reminds me of a science fiction story which I loved when I read it, which took place in a strange world where the Sun was indeed inverted just like it appears to be in Mike Burns' image!

There are two very fine Jupiter images here. I was very glad to see another Jupiter image from the observatory Pic du Midi, but my favorite Jupiter image is the fantastic series of the Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter. Thank you so much for that image, Thomas Hebbeker!

I really love Dave Smith's Phases and Relative Apparent Sizes of Venus, too. Thank you so much for that!

Another stunning image here is Muhammad Rayhan's amazing picture of a fantastic show of lightning behind an observatory.

There are many more great images here, but I simply have no more time. So thank you all so much for posting your fine images here!

Ann

Thanks for doing that. I had to wait until I had 10 posts I think before I could post a 200k image. With any luck that will be sorted now as I have just made 10 posts. Thanks for doing the resize for me.

You're welcome, Paul.

Ann wrote: Stefano Campani has made a fine portrait of NGC 660. But Stefano, didn't you post a picture of this galaxy showing pink HII regions too? I miss that picture!
Ann

Hello Ann, thanks for your comments.
The HII region is visible in this image.
It's in the center of the galaxy, the red, vertical line, on the side of the yellow light of nucleous
On my image it's not pink but red because there was also a lot of "white light" on the nucleous, so it turns to me red
It's not so big, but it's a very bright H-alpha region compared to other parts of the galaxy at this wavelength

Thanks for appreciations
Stefano

owlice wrote:A New Type of Giant Telescope
http://www.obs-hp.fr/~hlecorol/cmsms/

Click to view full size image

The picture is so beautiful.A drop-down green light like a laser pens injection bright light.

Those are great photos, thank you very much. avdhoeven I hope you don't mind, I used yours for the background for my desktop
Just had to enlarge it a bit.