Starship Asterisk*

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Please click on each image for best viewing; please click on the link below the
image title for more information about the image. Thank you!
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<- Previous submissions


Encore: Double Rainbow of Utah
Copyright: Niel Skousen
[attachment=6]IMG_0255.JPG[/attachment][/i]

Iris Nebula and Open Cluster NGC 7023
http://www.starrywonders.com/irisst8300.html
Copyright: Steve Cannistra Perseid over St. Andrew Church, Taliándörögd, Hungary
http://ladanyi.csillagaszat.hu/
Copyright: Tamas Ladanyi
[attachment=5]perseid_100808_ladanyi_v1.jpg[/attachment][/i]

Centaurus A and Omega Centauri
http://www.astrosurf.com/lorenzi/ccd/aw_centauri.htm
Copyright: Marco Lorenzi Perseid Meteor and Ancient Bristlecone Pine
http://www.tonyrowell.com
Copyright: Tony Rowell
[attachment=0]PerseidMeteor_Rowell_big.jpg[/attachment][/i]

Northern Part of Vela Supernova Remnant
http://eder.csillagaszat.hu/deepsky/350 ... er_en.html
Copyright: Iván Éder Double Halo in Hong Kong
Copyright: Wah!
[attachment=4]DoubleHalo1.jpg[/attachment][/i]

Thirsty Desert
Copyright: Ariana Ahangary
[attachment=3]desert.jpg[/attachment][/i]

NGC7129 Nebula Complex
http://www.starkeeper.it/NGC7129.htm
Copyright: Leonardo Orazi Lightning above Trieste
http://www.weather-photos.net/temp/Ligh ... vg2010.jpg
Copyright: Marko Korošec The Bridge to NGC6590
http://www.malagon.webs.com
Copyright: A. Carlos Malagón
[attachment=1]ngc6950_cmalagon.jpg[/attachment][/i]

NGC 7662: The Blue SnowBall Nebula
http://www.pbase.com/dsantiago/image/122731657
Copyright: Derek Santiago Synthetic Image of a Black Hole
Copyright: Jason Dexter While black holes emit no light themselves, they can appear quite bright due to the large amounts of radiation emitted by infalling gas. Recent observations of the supermassive black hole in the center of our Galaxy (Sagittarius A*) combined telescopes in Hawaii, California and Arizona to resolve its orbiting, magnetized plasma on event horizon scales. By shooting light rays through the curved spacetime of new simulations of gas in the vicinity of a black hole, it's possible to create a synthetic image of the black hole for comparison with the observations. The resulting false color image is the best fit model to the recent interferometric radio measurements. The observer is inclined by 50 degrees from the black hole spin axis, and the image is 12 Schwarzschild radii (~50 microarcseconds) across. The strong gravity near the black hole causes some light emitted behind it to be bent towards the observer, appearing to come from above. Doppler beaming causes the orbiting gas to be seen much more brightly on the side where it approaches the observer. The shadow of the black hole occurs in the region where the emitted light is captured rather than being deflected as it escapes to infinity, and is significantly larger than its event horizon. Future measurements using more telescopes may be able to detect the shadow, and find direct evidence for a black hole event horizon.

References: Doeleman et al (2008) for the observations, Dexter et al (2010) for the modeling and image. The Veil Complex
http://www.perseus.gr/Astro-DSO-NGC-6960.htm
http://www.perseus.gr/Astro-DSO-NGC-6992.htm
http://www.perseus.gr/Astro-DSO-Nebulae-Sim-3-188.htm
Copyright: Anthony Ayiomamitis
One of the showpiece constellations of the summer sky is Cygnus and which is incredibly rich with many celestial gems. The Veil Complex is one such masterpiece and which is an imager's dream. Owing to the huge amount of apparent real estate the Veil Complex occupies, I decided to go after each of the three primary segments on an individual basis and dedicated one complete evening to each one. The three images here are of the Western Veil (NGC 6960, aka Witch's Broom), the Eastern Veil (NGC 6992 and NGC 6995) as well as Pickering's Triangle (Simeis 3-188). Each of these results is based on a mixed palette of narrowband (Ha, OIII) and visual band (RGB) comprised of either 150:150:30:30:30 or 140:140:30:30:30 total integrations per channel.
<- Previous submissions

Rho Ophiuchi
Copyright: José Joaquín Pérez
[attachment=0]Rho-Ophiucci_V5.jpg[/attachment][/i]

Aurora and the Milky Way
Copyright: Colin Chatfield
[attachment=0]IMG_0201sm.jpg[/attachment][/i]

Well, wow. For once there is a planetary nebula image that I like. I wonder if it is true color. The star colors appear pretty good, although some stars seem to have a suspiciously saturated blue color.

Ann

The bristelcone pine shot is great, I was just at that very tree.

I've never seen such a thick banded short arc rainbow. And the lightning picture looks like the beginning of the end of the world--NEAT!!

Showers over the ASTROLab du Mont-Megantic
http://www.remiboucherphoto.com
Copyright: Rémi Boucher
[attachment=0]Perseid2009_RemiBoucher.jpg[/attachment][/i]

Two Red Spots of Jupiter with a Side of Europa
Credit & Copyright: Jean-Luc Dauvergne (http://astrophotography.fr/), Ivan Testart (http://i.testart.free.fr/), IMCCE/S2P (http://www.imcce.fr/langues/fr/), Obs. Midi-Pyrénées (http://ezomp.omp.obs-mip.fr/)
[attachment=0]jupiter2010picdumidi.jpg[/attachment][/i]

Catching the Crescent Moon While Planet Watching
http://www.astrosurf.com
Copyright: Miguel Claro

First Stage of a Sunspot's Mitosis
http://www.amun-ra.org
Copyright: Gianluca Valentini

Ann wrote:Well, wow. For once there is a planetary nebula image that I like. I wonder if it is true color. The star colors appear pretty good, although some stars seem to have a suspiciously saturated blue color.

Ann

Thanks Ann. Though I did not balance on a G2V star, the color should be fairly true, though I agree oversaturated. I combined the OIII data in a manner similar to HaLRGB processing, which includes blending the OIII with luminance data for the luminance layer. In so doing, the image desaturates considerably, and I think I overcompensated by boosting the RGB saturation too much before combining. I've lowered the saturation a bit on the original image (and also reduced the core a tad which I think was a bit overexposed). The adjusted image is at the same link here:
http://www.pbase.com/dsantiago/image/122731657

Derek

NGC 663: Open Cluster in Cassiopeia
http://helixgate.net/canon/ngc663F_MSiniscalchi.jpg
Copyright: Mike Siniscalchi

Congrats to Miguel Claro, whose picture above is on Space Weather today!

Waiting for Perseids
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jbury
Copyright: Joshua Bury
[attachment=0]conjunction_d700.jpeg[/attachment][/i]

Venus in False Color
http://www.cyberplocos.com.br
Copyright: Fabio Carvalho This "false colour Venus" consists of the addition of two images: one in the near infrared channel (that shows some deep levels of the atmosphere) and another one in the near ultraviolet channel (that shows some high level clouds). The composite image and the separate channels images are attached.
~ Fabio Carvalho

Conjunction from Mt. Wilson Observatory
http://www.starpeace.org
Copyright: Irene Shivaei
[attachment=0]Planetary Alignment-4.jpg[/attachment][/i]

Crescent Moon, Venus, and Fireworks
Copyright: M.J. Torabi
[attachment=0]Moon and Venus - Nahjolbalagheh Park - Tehran - Iran.jpg[/attachment][/i]

Fantastic and so adorable!

Fireball at Mt. Kilimanjaro
Copyright: O Chul Kwon
[attachment=0]1071401_fireball.jpg[/attachment][/i]

APOD Mandala
Copyright: Zachary Cummings
[attachment=0]Mandala_Zach Cummings_Color.jpg[/attachment][/i]

That's a fascinating image of NGC 663. I don't think I have seen this cluster photographed many times before, if at all, at least not in color. The colors here are very subtle and interesting. Clearly the cluster is strongly reddened. The brightest stars, the ones bright enough to have "spikes", are all B-type supergiants, according to my software. Their B-V index is generally between 0.6 and 0.8, which suggests a fairly high degree of reddening.The colors of the stars of intermediate brightness is fascinating. The brightest of the stars that are not bright enough to have spikes appear to be slightly redder than the brightest stars. But fascinatingly, there is a large population of still fainter stars which are noticably bluer.

Disregarding the color of the brightest stars, the colors of the stars of this cluster seems fairly typical of a metal-poor old globular cluster. In such a cluster the brightest stars are clearly orangish, since they are so-called Asymptotic Giant Branch stars, which have swollen to a gigantic size just before shedding their atmospheres and becoming planetary nebulae and white dwarfs. Then there are somewhat fainter yellow-orange stars which have begun their climb up the Asymptotic Giant Branch ladder, and they are still in the process of swelling and reddening. But there is also a relatively large population of still fainter Horizontal Branch stars, which are blue in a metal-poor cluster. If the brightest stars in NGC 663 were orange instead of off-white, this cluster would have the color distribution of a globular cluster. In an open cluster, by contrast, the brightest stars are usually blue. And if the brightest stars have started evolving off the main sequence, it is usually the second-brightest stars which are the bluest.

NGC 663 looks really rich in this image, and that also makes it slightly similar to a globular cluster. Fascinating!

Ann

Owlice, i assume that the mandala picture is a composit?? Boy! it sure looks good.

I also like the fireworks!!!! i don't get very much of that around here and most of what i do get to see is on the TV by near-sighted camera men.

beyond, yes, the mandala is a composite of, as the artist put it, "archived apod images of various nebulae, the hubble ultra deep field, and the large scale structure." I think it looks good, too! I wish I had an even larger version of it so that I might look more closely at it.

And I love the fireworks picture; it's so happy! The photographer did not expect the fireworks; he was taking conjunction images when the fireworks started.

I like so many of these images! I am glad I am not restricted to posting just one image a day, as the APOD guys are; I'd have such a hard time of it if I were!