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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Latest Posts by bsuobservatory - Page 3
Our supply of eclipse glasses is running very low.
We'll be open April 8th for the eclipse, too, with solar filters and projections of the Sun. Find us at Bridgewater State University's Science and Mathematics Center.
Solar Eclipse Event, Monday April 8th!
Next Monday, a solar eclipse will be visible from Bridgewater! Looking at an eclipse without proper eye protection can permanently damage your eyesight, but the observatory has prepared various ways to observe the eclipse safely. Our event and resources will be open to the public.
On Friday, April 5th, we'll have safe eclipse glasses/viewers available for pickup from 10:00 am - 7:30 pm while supplies last. They'll be located at the counter in the central lobby on the 1st floor of the Dana Mohler-Faria (DMF) Science and Mathematics Center. Each person may take up to 3 glasses/viewers. Be careful with these. If they're scratched or punctured, they are not safe.
On Monday, April 8th, weather allowing:
Starting at 9:00 am, we'll have safe eclipse glasses/viewers available for pickup while supplies last. These will be located at the counter in the central lobby on the 1st floor of the DMF Science and Mathematics Center, at several tables surrounding that building, and up on the 5th floor. (There will be additional locations meant for BSU Students only).
From 2:00 pm - 4:45 pm, we'll have projections of the Sun at several tables surrounding the DMF Science and Mathematics Center.
From 2:00 pm - 4:45 pm, we'll have solar telescopes on the 5th floor observing patios also in the DMF Science and Mathematics Center.
On Monday, April 8th, rain or shine:
From 2:00 pm - 4:45 pm, we'll stream video of the eclipse from the path of totality in the auditorium and central lobby on the 1st floor of the DMF Science and Math Center.
Parking will be available in the West Campus Lot behind the DMF Science and Mathematics Center. If that lot fills, you can park at the parking garage on East Campus.
Wow - the visible star at the center of the planetary nebula is an A-type giant star. It's the companion of the white dwarf which spawned the nebula itself. (Loved the pic so much I had to read about the object a little).
NGC 1514 // Marc Fischer
Every February 2, we wonder if Punxsutawney Phil will see his shadow.
In Saturn’s case, astronomers know some of Saturn’s moons will cast shadows across the planet’s iconic rings every 15 years. This effect only occurs when the planet’s rings are perpendicular to the Sun. The next time this will happen is in May 2025.
Watch as four of Saturn’s moons orbit the planet, based on images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope over a 9.5-hour span in 1995. Enceladus is first and Mimas is close behind. Both of these moons cast small shadows on Saturn, but among the two, only Enceladus’ shadow cuts across the rings. Dione follows next and casts a long shadow across the planet’s rings. About 12 seconds in, the moon Tethys moves swiftly behind the planet toward the right.
Credit: NASA/ESA/STScI.
Sharpening Our View of Climate Change with the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem Satellite
As our planet warms, Earth’s ocean and atmosphere are changing.
Climate change has a lot of impact on the ocean, from sea level rise to marine heat waves to a loss of biodiversity. Meanwhile, greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide continue to warm our atmosphere.
NASA’s upcoming satellite, PACE, is soon to be on the case!
Set to launch on Feb. 6, 2024, the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission will help us better understand the complex systems driving the global changes that come with a warming climate.
Earth’s ocean is becoming greener due to climate change. PACE will see the ocean in more hues than ever before.
While a single phytoplankton typically can’t be seen with the naked eye, communities of trillions of phytoplankton, called blooms, can be seen from space. Blooms often take on a greenish tinge due to the pigments that phytoplankton (similar to plants on land) use to make energy through photosynthesis.
In a 2023 study, scientists found that portions of the ocean had turned greener because there were more chlorophyll-carrying phytoplankton. PACE has a hyperspectral sensor, the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI), that will be able to discern subtle shifts in hue. This will allow scientists to monitor changes in phytoplankton communities and ocean health overall due to climate change.
Phytoplankton play a key role in helping the ocean absorb carbon from the atmosphere. PACE will identify different phytoplankton species from space.
With PACE, scientists will be able to tell what phytoplankton communities are present – from space! Before, this could only be done by analyzing a sample of seawater.
Telling “who’s who” in a phytoplankton bloom is key because different phytoplankton play vastly different roles in aquatic ecosystems. They can fuel the food chain and draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to photosynthesize. Some phytoplankton populations capture carbon as they die and sink to the deep ocean; others release the gas back into the atmosphere as they decay near the surface.
Studying these teeny tiny critters from space will help scientists learn how and where phytoplankton are affected by climate change, and how changes in these communities may affect other creatures and ocean ecosystems.
Climate models are one of our most powerful tools to understand how Earth is changing. PACE data will improve the data these models rely on.
The PACE mission will offer important insights on airborne particles of sea salt, smoke, human-made pollutants, and dust – collectively called aerosols – by observing how they interact with light.
With two instruments called polarimeters, SPEXone and HARP2, PACE will allow scientists to measure the size, composition, and abundance of these microscopic particles in our atmosphere. This information is crucial to figuring out how climate and air quality are changing.
PACE data will help scientists answer key climate questions, like how aerosols affect cloud formation or how ice clouds and liquid clouds differ.
It will also enable scientists to examine one of the trickiest components of climate change to model: how clouds and aerosols interact. Once PACE is operational, scientists can replace the estimates currently used to fill data gaps in climate models with measurements from the new satellite.
With a view of the whole planet every two days, PACE will track both microscopic organisms in the ocean and microscopic particles in the atmosphere. PACE’s unique view will help us learn more about the ways climate change is impacting our planet’s ocean and atmosphere.
Stay up to date on the NASA PACE blog, and make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of sPACE!
2024 February 4
The Cone Nebula from Hubble Image Credit: Hubble Legacy Archive, NASA, ESA - Processing & Licence: Judy Schmidt
Explanation: Stars are forming in the gigantic dust pillar called the Cone Nebula. Cones, pillars, and majestic flowing shapes abound in stellar nurseries where natal clouds of gas and dust are buffeted by energetic winds from newborn stars. The Cone Nebula, a well-known example, lies within the bright galactic star-forming region NGC 2264. The Cone was captured in unprecedented detail in this close-up composite of several observations from the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. While the Cone Nebula, about 2,500 light-years away in Monoceros, is around 7 light-years long, the region pictured here surrounding the cone’s blunted head is a mere 2.5 light-years across. In our neck of the galaxy that distance is just over half way from our Sun to its nearest stellar neighbors in the Alpha Centauri star system. The massive star NGC 2264 IRS, seen by Hubble’s infrared camera in 1997, is the likely source of the wind sculpting the Cone Nebula and lies off the top of the image. The Cone Nebula’s reddish veil is produced by dust and glowing hydrogen gas.
∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240204.html
WOW!
Original Post on X
Zoozve, my beloved
Wonderous strange! This unusual arrangement in the sky was one of only 100 known polar-ring galaxies when it was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1999. Officially known to astronomers as NGC 4650A, the polar-rings may be the result of two galaxies colliding. Gas from the smaller galaxy would have been stripped off and captured by the larger galaxy, forming a new ring of dust, gas, and stars, which orbit the inner galaxy almost at right angles to the old disk. In addition to learning about galaxy interaction, astronomers use polar-ring galaxies like this to study dark matter, which does not emit light or interact with normal matter (except through gravity), making it difficult to understand. Both the old, rotating disk and the dark matter surrounding this galaxy pull on its polar ring. The alignment of the ring along the pole of the inner disk's rotation allows scientists to probe this combination of tugs and thus the distribution of dark matter. Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI. ALT TEXT: Two galaxies appear to intersect at right angles. Vertically there is a bright column of dust and stars, and horizontally there is a smaller hazy yellow band, brighter at its center, with no discernable stars. In the space around and behind the intersecting forms are smaller stars and distant galaxies colored yellow and red.
Cosmic fireworks ahead! This dramatically colorful image shows MACS J0717, one of the most complex and distorted galaxy clusters known. It was formed by the collision of four smaller galaxy clusters. A visible-light image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows hundreds of galaxies, both within the cluster and throughout the background, and myriad foreground stars. A pink overlay represents radio data from the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, which traces enormous shock waves and turbulence. The diffuse emission in blue, from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, highlights gas with temperatures of millions of degrees. Credit: NASA, ESA, CXC, NRAO/AUI/NSF, STScI, and R. van Weeren (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics); NASA, ESA, J. Lotz (STScI), and the Hubble Frontier Fields team. ALT TEXT: Hundreds of small galaxies of various shapes on the black background of space. They are concentrated near the center of the image. Dramatic pink ribbons form a curving L shape near the center. Below them, a linear pink feature with a blue blob in the middle extends from upper left to lower right. Diffuse blue light fills much of the field of view and is brightest just to the right of the pink ribbons.
We sure have been experiencing this around here. Not only has it affected temperatures, but the percentage of time the sky is cloudy. Our observatory takes images and hosts events less often in part because of the conditions of our sky.
So many people do not understand the relationship between climate change and cold weather.
Rosette Nebula by space.by.jase
Dusty regions like these are often the places where stars form. In fact, there are two notable stars—V633 (top left of center) and V376 Cassiopeiae (bottom left)—in this image from the Hubble Space Telescope.
These stars have yet to start fusing hydrogen in their cores, and continue to accumulate mass. As they do this, much of the material they ingest gets shot back out as energetic jets. For these young stars, these jets can contain as much mass as Earth has.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA; Gilles Chapdelaine.
ALT TEXT: A protostar in the process of forming. Above the center, at 11 o’clock, is a bright, white star. To the bottom right of this star is a large cavity, surrounded by dark brown gas and dust. This surrounding dust fills the image with the exception of another small cavity toward the bottom left. At about 4 o’clock in this cavity, there is another bright, white star. Smaller white stars are spread throughout the image.
Reblog Vs. Repost
In short: reblogging is awesome. Reposting isn't.
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
Wow, it really does look like a hummingbird!
2023 September 25
Arp 142: The Hummingbird Galaxy Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble, HLA; Processing & Copyright: Basudeb Chakrabarti
Explanation: What’s happening to this spiral galaxy? Just a few hundred million years ago, NGC 2936, the upper of the two large galaxies shown at the bottom, was likely a normal spiral galaxy – spinning, creating stars – and minding its own business. But then it got too close to the massive elliptical galaxy NGC 2937, just below, and took a turn. Sometimes dubbed the Hummingbird Galaxy for its iconic shape, NGC 2936 is not only being deflected but also being distorted by the close gravitational interaction. Behind filaments of dark interstellar dust, bright blue stars form the nose of the hummingbird, while the center of the spiral appears as an eye. Alternatively, the galaxy pair, together known as Arp 142, look to some like Porpoise or a penguin protecting an egg. The featured re-processed image showing Arp 142 in great detail was taken recently by the Hubble Space Telescope. Arp 142 lies about 300 million light years away toward the constellation of the Water Snake (Hydra). In a billion years or so the two galaxies will likely merge into one larger galaxy.
∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230925.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
2023 December 29
Shakespeare in Space Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
Explanation: In 1986, Voyager 2 became the only spacecraft to explore ice giant planet Uranus close up. Still, this newly released image from the NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) on the James Webb Space Telescope offers a detailed look at the distant world. The tilted outer planet rotates on its axis once in about 17 hours. Its north pole is presently pointed near our line of sight, offering direct views of its northern hemisphere and a faint but extensive system of rings. Of the giant planet’s 27 known moons, 14 are annotated in the image. The brighter ones show hints of Webb’s characteristic diffraction spikes. And though these worlds of the outer Solar System were unknown in Shakespearean times, all but two of the 27 Uranian moons are named for characters in the English Bard’s plays.
∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap231229.html
“What in the world is that?” That’s a natural reaction when you first see this Hubble Space Telescope image of LL Pegasi. The extremely dim spiral pattern is real, and its regularity suggests a periodic origin for the nebula’s shape.
The spiral is thought to arise because LL Pegasi is a binary system, with a star that is losing material and a companion star orbiting it. The companion’s gravitational influence helps sculpt the nebula. The spacing between layers in the spiral reflects the 800-year orbital period of the binary.
Credit: ESA/NASA & R. Sahai.
ALT TEXT: At center left, a faint spiral structure with wide bands has a dark, dusty center. To its right, a bright white star displays four prominent diffraction spikes. A handful of smaller, more distant background galaxies are also scatted throughout the image.
The Dolphin Head Nebula (Sh2-308, right) and Sh2-303 (left) // Jim Thommes
The Spaghetti Nebula, Sh2-240 // Wolfgang Bernhardt
Is it me or does Jupiter in this also look like calcifer from howls moving castle
I see an angry fox about to breathe fire.
Hind's Variable Nebula, NGC 1555 // Rocco Sung
The brown dwarf W1935 is a bit of a mystery. Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope picked up glowing methane—a sign that the object’s upper atmosphere is being heated. But the brown dwarf has no host star, so where could the heat be coming from?
In our solar system, Jupiter and Saturn show methane emission due to the presence of auroras—what we call the Northern Lights on Earth. W1935 might also have auroras, which could be powered by energetic particles from a nearby, active moon, like Jupiter’s Io: https://webbtelescope.pub/4aKMkBF
This animation portrays the creation of the cat’s tail in the southwest portion of Beta Pic’s secondary debris disk, estimated to span 10 billion miles. Read today's #AAS243 release to learn more: http://webbtelescope.pub/3RXt9Nx
The Bearclaw Nebula, Sh2-200 // Dionysus
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