I had a decent night of stargazing at the end of August.
I was out on Aug 28/29. It was cold and mostly clear. Each of those things posed challenges but I still got some good shots. In particular, check out the picture of the Whirlpool Galaxy at the end of this post.
The cold is an issue for the telescope. It changes the focus so I need to refocus the telescope after it has had time to adjust to the cold; about 20 minutes. I didn't do that so some objects aren't centered, and you will see that the stars in some of the pictures aren't round and solid. Oh well, I won't make that mistake again.
When you open the pictures, zoom in and out to see more features. I think the pictures look best on a computer screen that is larger than your phone screen.
PS – You will notice that I have included less information about each object. Do you prefer this briefer format or would you like me to include more details like I did in my first two posts?
Nebulae
The Blue Snowball Nebula is one of the best named celestial objects I have seen. It has a blue rim and a white center. It is around 3,000 light years from the Earth.
The Bubble Nebula is over 7,100 light years away and is close to 10 light years wide. The star you see inside the nebula is several hundred thousand times as bright as our sun.
The Helix Nebula is both faint and large in this picture. It takes up much of the bottom half of the picture. It looks so big because it is the closest nebula to us. It is only 650 light years away and is 2.5 light years wide. The Helix Nebula has sometimes been referred to as the "Eye of God" in pop culture, as well as the "Eye of Sauron".
[Update] I think I will have to try to get a better picture of this nebula so we can see why this nebula was given its nicknames.
The Little Dumbbell Nebula is a planetary nebula located in the constellation Perseus. The nebula is 2,500 light years from Earth. It is "only" 1.23 light years wide. (The Large Dumbbell Nebula is in either the June or July post.)
Planet(s)
I took pictures of Jupiter and Saturn again this month, but the pics didn't show anything new so I'm not sending them. Mars and Venus are visible but low in the western sky and my viewing spot has a lousy view of the western horizon so I couldn't see them. Neptune is nearing opposition, but it was hidden by clouds.
The only new picture of a planet I got this month was one of Pluto. Believe it or not, Pluto is the tiny dim little, brown spec in the exact center of the picture. You would never notice it unless someone told you where to look.
BTW – Does anyone know of a good place to go stargazing in the Bellevue, WA area that has a great view of the western horizon?
Clusters
Clusters are - as the name implies - groups of stars whose gravity keep them together.
Messier 52 or M52, also known as NGC 7654, is an open cluster of stars in the northern constellation of Cassiopeia. It was discovered by Charles Messier on September 7, 1774.
The Owl Cluster is in the constellation Cassiopeia. The cluster begins just above the star Ruchbah which is part of the "W" of stars that make up Cassiopeia. Ruchbah is the brightest star in the picture. Someone believed that the other bright stars in the cluster make the outline of an owl hence the name, but I don't see it.
Galaxies
The Pinwheel Galaxy is a face-on spiral galaxy 21 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major. It is in the lower right part of the picture. I have been trying to get a good shot of this galaxy for months but still haven't done it. The galaxy could look much more impressive if I was able to keep the telescope locked onto it for 20 minutes. For some reason, my telescope always loses its lock on the galaxy in much less time. I only got 6 minutes this time.
The Triangulum Galaxy is a spiral galaxy 2.73 million light-years (ly) from Earth in the constellation Triangulum. The Triangulum Galaxy is the third-largest member of our Local Group of galaxies, behind the Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way. I need to try to take a longer exposure of this one too.
I consider this one the picture of the night. The Whirlpool Galaxy is another spiral galaxy. It lies in the constellation Canes Venatici and was the first galaxy to be classified as a spiral galaxy. Its distance is estimated to be 31 million light-years away from Earth.
What makes this picture so cool is the galaxy's companion dwarf galaxy that you can see above the Whirlpool galaxy. You can see a faint connection between the two galaxies that shows that the Whirlpool galaxy is eating the dwarf galaxy. The dwarf won't exist anymore after a few million years. It will be completely consumed by the Whirlpool galaxy.
[UPDATE: The picture above contains the Whirlpool Galaxy apparently eating a dwarf galaxy. It turns out I was wrong about that. What I thought was a dwarf galaxy is really a full sized galaxy that is much farther away than the Whirlpool Galaxy. That’s why it looks so much smaller. The two galaxies passed by each other millions of years ago. That fly by pulled some of the stars in each galaxy towards the other. That explains why it looks like one galaxy is eating the other one.]
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