Our Halloween Event Is Wednesday, Oct. 25 From 7:00-8:30pm, Weather Allowing! Check In The Early Afternoon
Our Halloween event is Wednesday, Oct. 25 from 7:00-8:30pm, weather allowing! Check in the early afternoon that day to see if the weather will allow it to go on.
If not, we have a rain date planned for Thursday (and a 2nd rain date for Monday if neither work out).
More Posts from Bsuobservatory and Others
The Black Eye Galaxy. Image Credit: Shane Johnson | Jamie Kern | BSU Observatory.
Imaged in luminance and photometric R, V and B filters. Total exposure time ~25 minutes.
The Black Eye Galaxy (M64) is a relatively nearby spiral with an extraordinary amount of dark dust partially obscuring its nucleus. Red hues peeking out in these dust lanes are caused by reddening when the dust scatters the bluer light from stars embedded within it. The color difference between the center and spiral arms is due to an average age difference between the stars in these locations--blue stars have short lives, so as the star population ages the overall color appears more red.
The Seyfert galaxy NGC 5985 (on the left) contains an Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN).
AGN are so. Amazing.
In the dead center of the galaxy lies a supermassive black hole—and a large amount of other matter spiraling into it, caught in the gravitational well. As matter falls in, it accelerates to relativistic speeds, ripping apart until even atoms are split into plasma, and because plasma is not electrically neutral the metaphorical whirlwind of it generates an extremely strong electromagnetic field.
That field blasts matter away from the black hole in jets. These can be truly enormous. A single jet emanating from the black hole in the monstrous elliptical galaxy M87 is roughly ten times the length of our entire Milky Way Galaxy.
Seyfert galaxies are calmer than that, but the mechanism is the same. Bright, powerful AGN tend to be found in galaxies further from our own, while Seyferts dominate the AGN population in our local universe.
At BSU, we've imaged Markarian 421, a type of AGN called a blazar, so-named because the jet is aimed almost directly toward Earth.: "blazing" bright. We're in the process of studying our data, but the eventual goal is to determine limits for the mass of the black hole powering it. The student who spearheaded that research is now pursuing a Ph.D. at Purdue University!
2023 July 1
Three Galaxies in Draco Image Credit & Copyright: David Vernet , Jean-François Bax , Serge Brunier, OCA/C2PU
Explanation: This tantalizing trio of galaxies sometimes called the Draco Group, is located in the northern constellation of (you guessed it) Draco, the Dragon. From left to right are face-on spiral NGC 5985, elliptical galaxy NGC 5982, and edge-on spiral NGC 5981, all found within this single telescopic field of view that spans a little more than the width of the full moon. While the group is far too small to be a galaxy cluster, and has not been catalogued as a compact galaxy group, the three galaxies all do lie roughly 100 million light-years from planet Earth. Not as well known as other tight groupings of galaxies, the contrast in visual appearance still makes this triplet an attractive subject for astroimagers. On close examination with spectrographs, the bright core of striking spiral NGC 5985 shows prominent emission in specific wavelengths of light, prompting astronomers to classify it as a Seyfert, a type of active galaxy. This impressively deep exposure hints at a faint dim halo along with sharp-edged shells surrounding elliptical NGC 5982, evidence of past galactic mergers. It also reveals many even more distant background galaxies.
∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230701.html
Wed. Apr. 17: Another cloudy night, so we'll be closed. We'll try again next week.
Happy Halloween, everyone!
2024 October 27
LDN 43: The Cosmic Bat Nebula Credit & Copyright: Mark Hanson and Mike Selby; Text: Michelle Thaller (NASA’s GSFC)
Explanation: What is the most spook-tacular nebula in the galaxy? One contender is LDN 43, which bears an astonishing resemblance to a vast cosmic bat flying amongst the stars on a dark Halloween night. Located about 1400 light years away in the constellation Ophiuchus, this molecular cloud is dense enough to block light not only from background stars, but from wisps of gas lit up by the nearby reflection nebula LBN 7. Far from being a harbinger of death, this 12-light year-long filament of gas and dust is actually a stellar nursery. Glowing with eerie light, the bat is lit up from inside by dense gaseous knots that have just formed young stars.
∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap241027.html
Handy direct image addresses:
Wow - was also an APOD!
Did a reverse image search on the 2nd one to find the original original source. I found some book covers, but eventually this esahubble.org press release revealed itself as at least an official source of the original image from Nov. 2005! It's NGC 346 (the star cluster) and a gorgeous backdrop of gas in the Small Magellanic Cloud.
Sources for banner and profile picture
So far, we think the sky will cooperate enough for us to see tomorrow's eclipse! We'll be handing out eclipse glasses around DMF tomorrow, and some other locations on campus from 10:30 am - 2:45 pm. Check back one more time in the morning about the weather.
This striking image captures the interacting galaxy pair known as Arp-Madore 2339-661, so named because they belong to the Arp-Madore catalogue of peculiar galaxies. However, this particular peculiarity might be even odder than first meets the eye, as there are in fact three galaxies interacting here, not just two.
The two clearly defined galaxies are NGC 7733 (smaller, lower right) and NGC 7734 (larger, upper left). The third galaxy is currently referred to as NGC 7733N, and can actually be spotted in this picture if you look carefully at the upper arm of NGC 7733, where there is a visually notable knot-like structure, glowing with a different colour to the arm and obscured by dark dust.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
We had an error on here earlier - fixed now.
Public nights are here!
Did you know that there are 5 known dwarf planets in our solar system? Everyone knows Pluto, but there is also Ceres, Haumea, Makemake and Eris.
Info from: https://www.iau.org/public/themes/pluto/#n6
The Dolphin Head Nebula (Sh2-308, right) and Sh2-303 (left) // Jim Thommes
STEM Education, Astrophysics Research, Astrophotography, and Outreach located at 24 Park Ave., Bridgewater MA. You'll find us on the two outdoor balconies on the 5th floor, and you'll find our official website here: https://www.bridgew.edu/center/case/observatory .
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