I just saw the moon

CrazyDiamond

HAL is a StarChild
What does the largest moon in the Solar System look like? Jupiter's moon Ganymede, larger than even Mercury and Pluto, has an icy surface speckled with bright young craters overlying a mixture of older, darker, more cratered terrain laced with grooves and ridges. The cause of the grooved terrain remains a topic of research, with a leading hypothesis relating it to shifting ice plates. Ganymede is thought to have an ocean layer that contains more water than Earth -- and might contain life. Like Earth's Moon, Ganymede keeps the same face towards its central planet, in this case Jupiter. The featured image was captured in 2021 by NASA's robotic Juno spacecraft when it passed by the immense moon. The close pass reduced Juno's orbital period around Jupiter from 53 days to 43 days. Juno continues to study the giant planet's high gravity, unusual magnetic field, and complex cloud structures.


History's second known periodic comet is Comet Encke (2P/Encke). As it swings through the inner Solar System, Encke's orbit takes it from an aphelion, its greatest distance from the Sun, inside the orbit of Jupiter to a perihelion just inside the orbit of Mercury. Returning to its perihelion every 3.3 years, Encke has the shortest period of the Solar System's major comets. Comet Encke is also associated with (at least) two annual meteor showers on planet Earth, the North and South Taurids. Both showers are active in late October and early November. Their two separate radiants lie near bright star Aldebaran in the head-strong constellation Taurus. A faint comet, Encke was captured in this telescopic field of view imaged on the morning of August 24. Then, Encke's pretty greenish coma was close on the sky to the young, embedded star cluster and light-years long, tadpole-shaped star-forming clouds in emission nebula IC 410.


Gamma Cassiopeiae shines high in northern autumn evening skies. It's the brightest spiky star in this telescopic field of view toward the constellation Cassiopeia. Gamma Cas shares the ethereal-looking scene with ghostly interstellar clouds of gas and dust, IC 59 (top left) and IC 63. About 600 light-years distant, the clouds aren't actually ghosts. They are slowly disappearing though, eroding under the influence of energetic radiation from hot and luminous gamma Cas. Gamma Cas is physically located only 3 to 4 light-years from the nebulae. Slightly closer to gamma Cas, IC 63 is dominated by red H-alpha light emitted as hydrogen atoms ionized by the star's ultraviolet radiation recombine with electrons. Farther from the star, IC 59 shows proportionally less H-alpha emission but more of the characteristic blue tint of dust reflected star light. The cosmic stage spans over 1 degree or 10 light-years at the estimated distance of gamma Cas and friends.


Named for the southern constellation toward which most of its galaxies can be found, the Fornax Cluster is one of the closest clusters of galaxies. About 62 million light-years away, it's over 20 times more distant than our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy, but only about 10 percent farther along than the better known and more populated Virgo Galaxy Cluster. Seen across this three degree wide field-of-view, almost every yellowish splotch on the image is an elliptical galaxy in the Fornax cluster. Elliptical galaxies NGC 1399 and NGC 1404 are the dominant, bright cluster members toward the bottom center. A standout, large barred spiral galaxy, NGC 1365, is visible on the upper right as a prominent Fornax cluster member.


Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud by chance has assumed this recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is some 1,500 light-years distant, embedded in the vast Orion cloud complex. About five light-years "tall," the dark cloud is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is visible only because its obscuring dust is silhouetted against the glowing red emission nebula IC 434. Stars are forming within the dark cloud. Contrasting blue reflection nebula NGC 2023, surrounding a hot, young star, is at the lower left of the full image. The featured gorgeous color image combines both narrowband and broadband images recorded using several different telescopes.


Especially for @NYC_Frank
These chaotic and tangled filaments of shocked, glowing gas are spread across planet Earth's sky toward the constellation of Cygnus as part of the Veil Nebula. The Veil Nebula itself is a large supernova remnant, an expanding cloud born of the death explosion of a massive star. Light from the original supernova explosion likely reached Earth over 5,000 years ago. The glowing filaments are really more like long ripples in a sheet seen almost edge on, remarkably well separated into the glow of ionized hydrogen atoms shown in red and oxygen in blue hues. Also known as the Cygnus Loop and cataloged as NGC 6979, the Veil Nebula now spans about 6 times the diameter of the full Moon. The length of the wisp corresponds to about 30 light years, given its estimated distance of 2,400 light years. Often identified as Pickering's Triangle for a director of Harvard College Observatory, it is perhaps better named for its discoverer, astronomer Williamina Fleming, as Fleming's Triangular Wisp.


The cosmic brush of star formation composed this interstellar canvas of emission, dust, and dark nebulae. A 5 degree wide telescopic mosaic, it frames a region found north of bright star Aldebaran on the sky, at an inner wall of the local bubble along the Taurus molecular cloud. At lower left, emission cataloged as Sh2-239 shows signs of embedded young stellar objects. The region's Herbig-Haro objects, nebulosities associated with newly born stars, are marked by tell-tale reddish jets of shocked hydrogen gas. Above and right T Tauri, the prototype of the class of T Tauri variable stars, is next to a yellowish nebula historically known as Hind's Variable Nebula (NGC 1555). T Tauri stars are now generally recognized as young, less than a few million years old, sun-like stars still in the early stages of formation.


This eagle ray glides across a cosmic sea. Officially cataloged as SH2-63 and LBN 86, the dark nebula is composed of gas and dust that just happens to appear shaped like a common ocean fish. The interstellar dust nebula appears light brown as it blocks and reddens visible light emitted behind it. Dark nebulas glow primarily in infrared light, but also reflect visible light from surrounding stars. The dust in dark nebulas is usually sub-millimeter chunks of carbon, silicon, and oxygen, frequently coated with frozen carbon monoxide and nitrogen. Dark nebulas are also known as molecular clouds because they also contain relatively high amounts of molecular hydrogen and larger molecules. Previously unnamed, the here dubbed Eagle Ray Nebula is normally quite dim but has been imaged clearly over 20-hours through dark skies in Chile.


What excites the Heart Nebula? First, the large emission nebula on the left, catalogued as IC 1805, looks somewhat like a human heart. The nebula glows brightly in red light emitted by its most prominent element, hydrogen, but this long-exposure image was also blended with light emitted by silicon (yellow) and oxygen (blue). In the center of the Heart Nebula are young stars from the open star cluster Melotte 15 that are eroding away several picturesque dust pillars with their atom-exciting energetic light and winds. The Heart Nebula is located about 7,500 light years away toward the constellation of Cassiopeia. At the bottom right of the Heart Nebula is the companion Fishhead Nebula. This wide and deep image clearly shows, though, that glowing gas surrounds the Heart Nebula in all directions.
 

NYC_Frank

"A man with no vices is a man with no virtues"
This eagle ray glides across a cosmic sea. Officially cataloged as SH2-63 and LBN 86, the dark nebula is composed of gas and dust that just happens to appear shaped like a common ocean fish. Previously unnamed, the here dubbed Eagle Ray Nebula is normally quite dim but has been imaged clearly over 20-hours through dark skies in Chile.
Never saw a photo of that georgeous Eagle Ray dark nebula before ... imaged over 20 hours ...wow
 

NYC_Frank

"A man with no vices is a man with no virtues"
Screenshot-20231219-071204-NYTimes.jpg
 
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macbill

Oh No! Mr macbill!!
Staff member

"Christmas tree cluster" found glowing green in space

NASA has found a spot in space with its own glowing cosmic tree for the holiday season.

The object in question is named NGC 2264, otherwise known as the "Christmas Tree Cluster," and is a formation of young stars – some of which are larger than the sun – between the ages of 1 and 5 million years old. NASA says the cluster lies in the Milky Way, roughly 2,500 light-years from Earth.
 

Okla68

Well-Known Member
All it takes is One Time ...the theory that the moon was towed there millennials of years ago to observe the advancement of humans.
Ill Never see it again without that thought.
Supposedly Rang like a Bell after being struck by some object according to one of the astronauts, idk !
Whats up with 0 images of the otherside considering todays tech ?
Just a thought....
BEAUTIFUL pics by the way !
 

Bologna

(zombie) Woof.

Cold Moon 2023: The final full moon of the year rises this Christmas​

By Jamie Carter
published about 20 hours ago

The Cold Moon — the 13th and final full moon of 2023 — will rise on Dec. 26 and reach higher in the night sky than any other. It will also appear full on Dec. 25 and 27.

Geese fly in front of 2022’s full Cold Moon.

Geese fly in front of 2022’s full Cold Moon. (Image credit: Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

The final full moon of 2023 — and the first full moon of winter — will rise this Christmas when the Cold Moon ascends.

Officially full at 7:34 p.m. EST on Tuesday (Dec. 26), the full moon will be best seen rising in the east later that day at the time of moonrise where you are. It will be in the constellation Gemini.

The moon will also appear bright and full the day before and after, rising during dusk for three successive evenings from Dec. 25 to the 27th. That's ideal timing for anyone looking to try out a new pair of binoculars or a small beginner telescope this holiday season.

The Cold Moon will be the first full moon since the Northern Hemisphere's winter solstice on Dec. 22. It will be opposite the sun in the sky, but this month, it will also mirror the sun's path through the sky. So while the sun is currently at its lowest in the Northern Hemisphere's daytime sky, the full moon is at its highest.

On the night of the full moon and the night before — Christmas Day — our natural satellite will shine roughly between two bright stars in the east: Capella in the constellation Auriga, above left, and the ever-exciting star Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion, below right.

15 incredible images of Earth's moon
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Winter solstice 2023: How to see Jupiter dance with the moon on the longest night of the year

The December full moon's popular name, the Cold Moon, is a Mohawk name, according to the Old Farmer's Almanac. Other names include the Long Night Moon (a reference to the solstice — the longest night of the year), Drift Clearing Moon, Hoar Frost Moon, Snow Moon and Winter Maker Moon.

The next full moon will occur on Jan. 25; the Wolf Moon will be the first of 12 full moons in 2024.

Source

:peace:
 

cybrguy

Putin is a War Criminal
By the way, as a reminder for those who are watching, the Space Force launch of the Falcon Heavy is scheduled for tonight about 8:00ET. Pretty sure they're gonna waste the core booster, but the side boosters should land together at the cape.
Cloudy rainy weather down there, so it may very well be delayed again.
 

Bologna

(zombie) Woof.
I know most of you cats hate (me and) my moonshot posts... I feel it, I really do. Believe it! 💪💯 So sorry, I do it for me and the few that actually do enjoy 'em or at least appreciates my minimal effort... anyway, here's a few no fuss quick ones from yesterday morning as it set using iPhone 15 pro.... a lil better! It was nice the sun actually was out for a lil while, it LIVES!

From the front porch, Freeport, ME:





 
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CrazyDiamond

HAL is a StarChild
By the way, as a reminder for those who are watching, the Space Force launch of the Falcon Heavy is scheduled for tonight about 8:00ET. Pretty sure they're gonna waste the core booster, but the side boosters should land together at the cape.
Cloudy rainy weather down there, so it may very well be delayed again.
I was away and didn't see the launch. However, it's interesting to me that the X-37 has been launched on Falcon 9's in the past iirc...so why now on Falcon Heavy? Wondering if the added more secret stuff on it.
 
CrazyDiamond,
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CrazyDiamond

HAL is a StarChild
Happy New Year!
Can a rocket make the Moon ripple? No, but it can make a background moon appear wavy. The rocket, in this case, was a SpaceX Falcon Heavy that blasted off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center last week. In the featured launch picture, the rocket's exhaust plume glows beyond its projection onto the distant, rising, and nearly full moon. Oddly, the Moon's lower edge shows unusual drip-like ripples. The Moon itself, far in the distance, was really unchanged. The physical cause of these apparent ripples was pockets of relatively hot or rarefied air deflecting moonlight less strongly than pockets of relatively cool or compressed air: refraction. Although the shot was planned, the timing of the launch had to be just right for the rocket to be transiting the Moon during this single exposure.


Massive stars in our Milky Way Galaxy live spectacular lives. Collapsing from vast cosmic clouds, their nuclear furnaces ignite and create heavy elements in their cores. After only a few million years for the most massive stars, the enriched material is blasted back into interstellar space where star formation can begin anew. The expanding debris cloud known as Cassiopeia A is an example of this final phase of the stellar life cycle. Light from the supernova explosion that created this remnant would have been first seen in planet Earth's sky about 350 years ago, although it took that light 11,000 years to reach us. This sharp NIRCam image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows the still hot filaments and knots in the supernova remnant. The whitish, smoke-like outer shell of the expanding blast wave is about 20 light-years across. Light echoes from the massive star's cataclysmic explosion are also identified in Webb's detailed image of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A.


Could Queen Calafia's mythical island exist in space? Perhaps not, but by chance the outline of this molecular space cloud echoes the outline of the state of California, USA. Our Sun has its home within the Milky Way's Orion Arm, only about 1,000 light-years from the California Nebula. Also known as NGC 1499, the classic emission nebula is around 100 light-years long. On the featured image, the most prominent glow of the California Nebula is the red light characteristic of hydrogen atoms recombining with long lost electrons, stripped away (ionized) by energetic starlight. The star most likely providing the energetic starlight that ionizes much of the nebular gas is the bright, hot, bluish Xi Persei just to the right of the nebula. A regular target for astrophotographers, the California Nebula can be spotted with a wide-field telescope under a dark sky toward the constellation of Perseus, not far from the Pleiades.


Why is this jellyfish swimming in a sea of stars? Drifting near bright star Eta Geminorum, seen at the right, the Jellyfish Nebula extends its tentacles from the bright arcing ridge of emission left of center. In fact, the cosmic jellyfish is part of bubble-shaped supernova remnant IC 443, the expanding debris cloud from a massive star that exploded. Light from the explosion first reached planet Earth over 30,000 years ago. Like its cousin in astronomical waters, the Crab Nebula supernova remnant IC 443 is known to harbor a neutron star -- the remnant of the collapsed stellar core. The Jellyfish Nebula is about 5,000 light-years away. At that distance, the featured image would span about 140 light-years across.


Galaxies are fascinating not only for what is visible, but for what is invisible. Grand spiral galaxy NGC 1232, captured in detail by one of the Very Large Telescopes, is a good example. The visible is dominated by millions of bright stars and dark dust, caught up in a gravitational swirl of spiral arms revolving about the center. Open clusters containing bright blue stars can be seen sprinkled along these spiral arms, while dark lanes of dense interstellar dust can be seen sprinkled between them. Less visible, but detectable, are billions of dim normal stars and vast tracts of interstellar gas, together wielding such high mass that they dominate the dynamics of the inner galaxy. Leading theories indicate that even greater amounts of matter are invisible, in a form we don't yet know. This pervasive dark matter is postulated, in part, to explain the motions of the visible matter in the outer regions of galaxies.


With the combined capabilities of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner, a disc around a young massive star in another galaxy has been observed. Observations from the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) on the VLT, left, show the parent cloud LHA 120-N 180B in which this system, dubbed HH 1177, was first observed. The image at the center shows the jets that accompany it. The top part of the jet is aimed slightly towards us and thus blueshifted; the bottom one is receding from us and thus redshifted. Observations from ALMA, right, then revealed the rotating disc around the star, similarly with sides moving towards and away from us.


The Running Chicken Nebula comprises several clouds, all of which we can see in this vast image from the VLT Survey Telescope (VST), hosted at ESO’s Paranal site. This 1.5-billion pixel image spans an area in the sky of about 25 full Moons. The clouds shown in wispy pink plumes are full of gas and dust, illuminated by the young and hot stars within them.


What’s left over after a massive star reaches the end of its life I hear you ask? Take a look for yourself. This Picture of the Week shows a small but very intricate portion of the Vela supernova remnant, the violent and yet beautiful aftermath of an explosive stellar death.
This dramatic scene played out around 11 000 years ago when a massive star in the constellation Vela went supernova. During this violent event, the star would have shined so brightly that it could be seen during the day.
The detailed and stunning view of both the gaseous filaments in the remnant and the bright blue stars in the foreground were captured using the 286-million-pixel OmegaCAM at the VLT Survey Telescope, hosted at ESO’s Paranal Observatory. OmegaCAM can take images through several filters that each let the telescope observe the light emitted in a distinct color. To capture this image, four filters have been used, represented here by a combination of magenta, blue, green and red.
 

cybrguy

Putin is a War Criminal
Bad news for the Vulcan flight. Apparently they had difficulty orienting the spacecraft so the solar arrays were pointed at the sun, and they have subsequently used too much of their onboard fuel that they will need to land the craft successfully. This is likely to be a serious problem for the mission's success...
 

CrazyDiamond

HAL is a StarChild
ELT has passed the 50% completion point!
Progress :)

ELT atop Cerro Armazones in Chile


The dome will be around 80 meters high and weigh 6100 metric tons when it is finished.


ELT's tertiary mirror, M3, is four meters in diameter and weighs in at a whopping three metric tons. Here, the M3 mirror is in the grinding phase at Safran Reosc in France, which is designed to improve the surface quality to an accuracy of a few micrometers. Following this stage, the mirror will be polished to an accuracy of a few nanometers.


At 4.25 meters across, ELT's secondary mirror, M2, will be the largest optical secondary mirror ever used on a telescope. Here, the Safran Reosc team in France is measuring the accuracy of the M2’s surface; it needs to be accurate to a few nanometers, about 20 000 times thinner than a human hair.


Primary mirror, M1, segments of the ELT awaiting finishing at Safran Reosc facilities in France. 798 hexagonal segments will work together on the ELT, acting as one giant mirror 39 meters across. To meet the challenge of delivering such a large number of polished segments along with 133 spares within seven years, Safran Reosc has to build up to a peak production rate of five mirrors a week.


Once segments of the ELT's primary mirror, M1, have been polished, they’re mounted on a support system just like this one. Final inspection of the support is happening here, at the Safran Reosc facilities in France, prior to delivery to Chile. Together, each mirror segment on ESO’s soon-to-be biggest eye on the sky and their supports will weigh 250 kilograms.


Mirrors


Sunrise at ELT


Moon setting at ELT
 
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