*** The Official Astronomy & Universe Thread ***

NickK said:

@sityeuropa - when you get eye pieces they can cost anything from peanuts to obscene amounts. I found that the Plossl ones really good (and you can get televue ones quite cheaply). They're good because they have less glass and deliver a lot of light.

I have a few Baader Hyperion and they are better than the William Optics in my view (through the Pentax which is no slouch). When I tried them all with a shoot out with a Televue Nagler then the differences were marked on Saturn on the pentax:
WO - no separation between ring and planet body
Baader - separation between rings and body with some hint at 3D
Nagler - full separation of rings and bod with a lovely 3D appearance.

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This visualization of the Bubble Nebula begins with a ground-based view that encompasses the glowing cloud. The high-energy light from the massive Wolf-Rayet star, BD +60°2522, is responsible for ionizing the entire region. The virtual camera flies through the foreground stars and approaches the central bubble imaged by Hubble. The massive star continuously sheds some of its outer layers in a mass-loss wind, which has blown a bubble of gas seven light-years across. The video's three-dimensional perspective emphasizes the extended nature of the structure and the fact that BD +60°2522 is not located at the center. The pressure inside the bubble is able to expand more rapidly in the directions away from the surrounding nebula. The computer model incorporates both scientific and artistic interpretation of the data. In particular, distances are significantly compressed.

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The video was compiled by stitching together several hundred hours of Herschel observations obtained as part of the Herschel infrared Galactic Plane Survey. It spans a vast portion – almost 40% – of the plane of the Milky Way, where most of the stars in the Galaxy form and reside.

Shaped as a disc, our Galaxy has a diameter of about 100 000 light-years and the Solar System is embedded in it, about half way between centre and periphery. From our vantage point, this huge disc of stars, gas and dust appears as a circular strip wound around the sky, familiar as the Milky Way in the night sky.

The view is a composite of the wavelengths of 70 microns (blue), 160 microns (green) and 350 microns (red).

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sityeuropa said:

Thanks, just trying to work out eyepieces, bought some cheap ones of eBay to get an idea of what magnification I will need.

Didn't spend money for Goto trackers, phone apps help a lot to find the objects.

I researched the scope a bit and price per performance I think it's one of the best.

Looks cool too, and doesn't take up much space stored verically.

This was done with the same model.

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Nearly 10 billion years ago, the black hole at the center of a distant galaxy produced a powerful outburst, and light from this blast began arriving at Earth in 2012. Astronomers using data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and other space- and ground-based observatories have shown that a record-breaking neutrino seen around the same time likely was born in the same event.

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Cosimo said:

A look at two technologies that block starlight to give telescopes a better view:

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On May the 9th, we will, if clear in the UK, be able to witness the complete passage of Mercury's disc across the face of the Sun. The transit begins soon after 11 hours UT, the midpoint of the transit is at 14:58 UT and Mercury leaves the Sun's disk at 18:42 UT - a total time of 7 and a half hours. This is Mercury' first transit since 2006 and the next will occur on November 11th 2019 but will not be so easily visible from the UK. These are three of the 13 or 14 Mercury transits that occur each century.

Mercury's black disk will appear only 10 arcseonds across so binoculars or a telescope will be needed to observe the transit. If direct viewing is to be made a suitable solar filter must be placed in front of the objective(s). Filters made using Baader Solar Film are probably best. Alternatively, an image of the Sun can be projected onto white card using a small telescope or half binocular. An all metal eyepiece is needed to prevent heat damage and its probably best to limit the aperture to ~1 inch across using a cardboardmask. Always take very great care when viewing the Sun - it is the only astronomical object that can harm us!

At first glance Mercury's disk might, at just 1/200th of the Suns width, appear as a sunspot, but it will be precisely round, be even darker, will lack a grey penumbra and - of course - it will be moving across the Sun' disk. It will be interesting to watch the ingress and exit of Mercury's disk taking 3 minutes and 12 seconds to do so. Let's hope for clear skies!

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Hubble's infrared vision pierced the dusty heart of our Milky Way galaxy to reveal more than half a million stars at its core. Except for a few blue, foreground stars, the stars are part of the Milky Way's nuclear star cluster, the most massive and densest stellar cluster in our galaxy. Located 27,000 light-years away, this region is so packed with stars, it is equivalent to having a million suns crammed into the volume of space between us and our closest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri, 4.3 light-years away. At the very hub of our galaxy, this star cluster surrounds the Milky Way's central supermassive black hole, which is about 4 million times the mass of our sun.

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