Our Beautiful Universe - Photos and Videos

[Andy Resnick]

M51 is directly overhead now- getting some great viewing. This is the central 1:1 crop from a 3X dithered stack, using images with a star FWHM < 3.6 pixels using the 400/2.8 wide open, 13 second exposures, ISO 800. Total time = 34 min. It's still noisy, but that's ok given the small number of frames.

 

[Andy Resnick]

This part of the sky borders Virgo and Coma Berenices, in this image there are 7 Messier objects and approximately 100 NGC and IC objects visible:

This is the central 60% of the frame (400mm field of view), 2h 15m total acquisition time. I also have two neighboring fields of view that, when stitched, provide an 8 x 11 degree field of view, comprising 13 Messier objects and hundreds of NGC/IC objects.

This part of the sky is moving out of my viewing area, next up is the great cluster in Hercules...

 

[DennisN]

GRAIL's Gravity Map of the Moon
"This image shows the variations in the lunar gravity field as measured by NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) during the primary mapping mission from March to May 2012. Very precise microwave measurements between two spacecraft , named Ebb and Flow, were used to map gravity with high precision and high spatial resolution. The field shown resolves blocks on the surface of about 12 miles (20 kilometers) and measurements are three to five orders of magnitude improved over previous data. Red corresponds to mass excesses and blue corresponds to mass deficiencies. The map shows more small-scale detail on the far side of the moon compared to the nearside because the far side has many more small craters."
Source: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/galleries/grails-gravity-map-of-the-moon

 

[berkeman]

Source: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/galleries/grails-gravity-map-of-the-moon

Red corresponds to mass excesses and blue corresponds to mass deficiencies. The map shows more small-scale detail on the far side of the moon compared to the nearside because the far side has many more small craters.

How does this compare to a visual image? Do the spots correspond to different kinds of crater impacts (heavy object left behind versus no object left in the hole)?

 

[DennisN]

How does this compare to a visual image? Do the spots correspond to different kinds of crater impacts (heavy object left behind versus no object left in the hole)?

Good question... sadly I don't know. I don't even know how the far side of the Moon looks like, so I'll go check on the net now...

 

[DennisN]

According to the this wiki image page, this is a picture of the far side of the Moon:

NASA source: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/frame/?AS16-M-3021
A higher resolution image is here.

 

[DennisN]

I was googling around for nice astrophotos to use as desktop backgrounds, and stumbled upon this nice one of the Andromeda galaxy by Lorenzo Comolli:
(Source: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130626.html)

 

[1oldman2]

A nice view of NZ

 

[davenn]

A nice view of NZ
View attachment 204941

my homeland

 

[1oldman2]

my homeland

Yup, It's a great shot of the South Island. I believe your old neighborhood is in this one if I'm not mistaken.

 

[davenn]

Yup, It's a great shot of the South Island. I believe your old neighborhood is in this one if I'm not mistaken.

just off the frame a bit beyond the head of the arrow

 

[DennisN]

Mimas over Saturn:
(Source: http://phys.org/news/2017-06-image-mimas-saturn-north-pole.html)

http://3c1703fe8d.site.internapcdn.net/newman/csz/news/800/2017/2-imagesaturns.jpgTo @Andy Resnick and others:

'Focus stacking' is a little different than 'astrophotography stacking'. For focus stacking, I use CombineZP (also free) It's a little tricky and I generally don't get 'awesome' results, but it's better than nothing. Let me know if you find something better...

Andy, I've stumbled upon two links I'd like to share:

Focus stacking (with Photoshop):
Photoshop Playbook: How to Blend Multiple Images with Different Depths of Field (youtube)

Noise reduction stacking
(a method with Photoshop and some other software, I doubt it's better than DeepSkyStacker, but anyway):
A Look at Reducing Noise in Photographs Using Median Blending

We have very cloudy skies over here at the moment, and no noise reduction method will fix that... I am waiting for clear skies...

 

[DennisN]

(downloadable pdf:s from NASA)

"Hubble 25: A Quarter-Century of Discovery with the Hubble Space Telescope"
http://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/hubble_25_detail.html

"Earth As Art"
http://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/earth_art_detail.html

and more NASA e-Books here:
http://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/index.html

 

[1oldman2]

I figure this thread has room for one more awesome shot of a familiar planet.

 

[1oldman2]

From, https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap170615.html

 

[davenn]

wonderful photo of red sprites
I have yet to photo these, still on my bucket list

I have a stormchaser friend that photo's them quite often ... here's an example ...

Marko Korošec shared Weather-Photos.NET's photo.
What more to ask after a great chase day? Red sprites, of course! Been chasing all day this past Sunday and when returning back I stopped at some elevated spot to shoot some TLE over quite distant MCS cluster in N Serbia. Got this family of pretty bright red sprites above it. June 25th, 2017, SW Slovenia.

cheers
Dave

 

[1oldman2]

I agree, those things are amazing to look at. I wonder, without video, would anyone ever get lucky enough to photo them? seems like even on "burst" setting a still camera shot would be extremely long odds of recording them. I notice there seems to be many more Sprite images out there than the Blue Jets, are the Sprites more common ?.

 

[OmCheeto]

I figure this thread has room for one more awesome shot of a familiar planet.
View attachment 206234

I devoted an entire thread to that image about 6 years ago. I think I looked at it too closely.
Of course, that was before Marcus got me hooked on Ceres, so some of the things I said appear to be incorrect.
It is a composite, just not what I would have called "composite" back then.

 

[mfb]

An actual photo from Saturn's rings, taken by Cassini (only cleaned to remove cosmic rays and detector noise). Source

 

[Andy Resnick]

Ring Nebula (M57): first image is full frame (800/5.6), 1h 46m exposure, second is a 1:1 crop.

Lots of objects are in view now (for me): Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto are all favorably positioned and Cygnus is coming into view. One more clear night to see if I can capture Pluto...

 

[davenn]

I agree, those things are amazing to look at. I wonder, without video, would anyone ever get lucky enough to photo them?

yeah, all the time as with that photo I posted above

the usual way is just to do a string of timed exposures, as Marko did

 

[johnsherdy10]

According to the this wiki image page, this is a picture of the far side of the Moon:
View attachment 204027

NASA source: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/frame/?AS16-M-3021
A higher resolution image is here.

I guess this is Earth more hunred years because trash of people in the Earth

 

[Andy Resnick]

Back from vacation, busy doing class prep. It was cloudy every night, so I ended up making timelapse 'videos', here's two of them: one frame was acquired every minute, starting around 6pm and going until I passed out around 2am

A good one, managed to hold a constant exposure during an illumination change of 24 stops:


The best one- see the (near) full moonrise, a thunderstorm, lots of activity.


Enjoy!

 

[DennisN]

Very nice, @Andy Resnick!

 

[Andy Resnick]

5 hours of viewing (400/2.8 ISO 640) over the past 2 weeks:

not bad!

 

[DennisN]

Stunning, @Andy Resnick!

 

[Andy Resnick]

A few images of the starfield in Cygnus: the first one is about 3 fields of view at 400mm (full frame) covering most of the North American nebula and the second is the veil nebula, nearly filling a single field of view (at 400mm). The density of stars is really striking.

 

[davenn]

A few images of the starfield in Cygnus: the first one is about 3 fields of view at 400mm (full frame) covering most of the North American nebula and the second is the veil nebula, nearly filling a single field of view (at 400mm). The density of stars is really striking.

very cool images mate, well done

 

[1oldman2]

A cool shot of Jupiter on NASA's image of the day.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Great ISS flyover this evening: