Article Of The Day!

Beautiful!

2023 September 26

IC 4592: The Blue Horsehead Reflection Nebula Image Credit & Copyright: Antoine & Dalia Grelin

Explanation: Do you see the horse’s head? What you are seeing is not the famous Horsehead nebula toward Orion, but rather a fainter nebula that only takes on a familiar form with deeper imaging. The main part of the here-imaged molecular cloud complex is reflection nebula IC 4592. Reflection nebulas are made up of very fine dust that normally appears dark but can look quite blue when reflecting the visible light of energetic nearby stars. In this case, the source of much of the reflected light is a star at the eye of the horse. That star is part of Nu Scorpii, one of the brighter star systems toward the constellation of the Scorpion (Scorpius). A second reflection nebula dubbed IC 4601 is visible surrounding two stars above and to the right of the image center.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230926.html

Public nights are here!

M104: The Sombrero Galaxy

Credits: Bray Falls

Video of the Day!

Hubble has discovered that Jupiter’s red spot - a storm larger than Earth - is wobbling!

3/19: Our public night is cancelled. The forecast keeps getting worse. We'll try again next week!

A reminder that our public Spring events start this week!

Public nights are here!

View of Saturn's moon Hyperion as captured by Cassini spacecraft

So far, the forecast this Wednesday doesn't look good, but we'll wait til that day to make the announcement. Stay tuned for August public night announcements, too!

A personal item was found on the observatory decks the day after our public night. If you lost something, check with the Dean's office in the DMF Science and Math Center!

Picture of the Day!

Also referred to as Messier 31, the Andromeda Galaxy is the nearest major neighbor to the Milky Way. It is roughly twice the size of our galaxy and lies approximately 2.5 million light-years away.