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- Camera Model: andscape | ForestWander Nature Photography: :08:01 20:40:41 | ForestWander: ure Photography |
NATURE PICTURES & THE UNIVERSE
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Autumn Foliage Collage |
The Great Globular Star Cluster in Hercules
Messier 13 ( M13, NGC 6205) is a globular cluster of approximately 300,000 stars in the Hercules Constellation. It is also recalled as the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules or the Hercules Globular Cluster.
Having a magnitude of 5.8 and a diameter of about 23 arc minutes, Messier 13 can be easily seen with small telescopes and even with the naked eye when the sky is very clear. The brightest star of the globular cluster is the variable star V11, that has an apparent magnitude of 11.95. Close to Messier 13 is NGC 6207, a twice as big edge-on galaxy. Midway between them lies IC 4617, a small galaxy situated north-northeast of the globular cluster’s center.
In 1974 Messier 13 was the subject of a research. Scientists believed that due to a very high number of stars, the Hercules Globular Cluster could have an environment that sustains intelligent life forms. The Arecibo message was sent towards the globular cluster in order to establish communication with these hypothetical life forms. This experiment was meant to demonstrate more the evolution of technology than to establish communication with other life forms, because at the time of the message’s arrival M13 would have changed it’s location. Could there be life on Messier 13? Still remains an open question.
Distance from Earth: ~ 25000 light years.
Click below for full resolution picture of M13′s Nucleus
“I used the astrometry.net software to solve each of the 100 photos, then the Swarp program to reproject and co-add the 100 red images, 100 green images, and 100 blue images in “SUM” mode.
The resulting three 32-bit FITS files (one per channel) were converted to a single 16-bit RGB TIFF file using ImageMagick convert, and then loaded into qtpfsgui to tone map as an HDR, using the Mantiuk algorithm with contrast 0.01, saturation 1.5, detail 4.0, and gamma 0.8. Some minor post-processing with The Gimp.”
“That photo was (taken) in the Atacama desert near San Pedro de Atacama, Chile on 2009.09.18. I used a Canon 5D Mark II at ISO1600 and a Sigma 50mm lens at f/4. A Takahashi EM-200 mount I rented time on from SPACE (spaceobs.com) provided the tracking. This is a stack of three 1.5-min and three 2-min exposures. Processed with Lightroom and Photoshop.”
“The light on the trees is just the light out the windows of my cabin. The auroral arc was pretty much directly overhead so I was looking up into it, where you can see more structure than when you’re looking from the side.”
“It was not created on a single frame. The camera was locked down on its tripod and the original background photo was taken with Venus in the upper left. Then at exactly 5 minute intervals exposures were taken at ISO 80 for 5 seconds. Twenty seven exposures were made in all and then compiled in Photoshop. The trick then was to
find where Venus was on each successive layer and “punch a hole” very accurately in the main image layer.”
“I obtained this image last winter (Dec & Jan) here in Arizona using my telescope (Takahashi 130) and CCD camera (SBIG ST-10XME). It was a time exposure: Luminosity 3 hours, Red, Green, and Blue components 1 hour each. So this photo required 6 hours of exposure time. The scope focal length is 1000 mm, objective lens diameter is 130 mm, for a focal ratio of f/7.69. All of the foreground stars are approximately 10th magnitude.”
“I wasn’t really expecting to see this eclipse because of poor weather and it was predicted to be visible 5 degrees above the horizon. Without losing hope, I tried my luck and went to one of the highest buildings in Mandaluyong City that has a good view of the east.”
The image was taken using Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi camera with Canon EFS 55-250mm telephoto lens at f/6.3, ISO 400, 1/10 sec.
Check out Erika’s website for more photos.
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Autumn Colors Mountain Sunset |
This post was written for My Big Fat Planet, a blog hosted by Amber Jenkins on NASA’s Global Climate Change site.
They say a picture says a thousand words. This week we published our 100th image in State of Flux, our gallery showing images of change around our planet. So hopefully by now you’re in awe of our home planet and the ways in which it is constantly changing, and aware of the impact us humans can have.
Each week for the past couple of years, we’ve published new images of different locations on planet Earth, showing change over time periods ranging from centuries to days. The pictures have been taken from space, by NASA’s Eyes on the Earth (its fleet of satellites whizzing above our heads), and from the ground, by real-life people. Some of the changes seen are related to, or exacerbated by, climate change, and some are not. Some document the effects of urbanization and man’s impact on the land, while others the ravage of disasters such as fires and floods.
Seeing our planet from space gives us a global view that we can’t get elsewhere. Through those eyes, we’ve witnessed damage caused by the recent tsunami in Japan, glacier melt in the Himalayas, the greening of China, the growth of Las Vegas and a century of global warming. We’ve looked at the march of deforestation in Bolivia, the rumblings of the (unpronounceable) Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull, and the damming of the River Nile. Take a look below at some of our favorites. Sign up to our monthly newsletter or subscribe to our Facebook page if you want to keep up to date with our latest images. We’ll be launching a brand spanking new version of the gallery soon!
See more of some of the most stunning images from State of Flux on My Big Fat Planet.
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A Supermassive Black Hole Disguised by Sagittarius A
The Galactic Center is the rotational center of our home galaxy. It is located in the direction of the Sagittarius, Ophiuchus, and Scorpius Constellations where the Milky Way shines the most. It has been theorized that the Galactic Center is also home for a supermassive black hole.
Because interstellar dust conceal the Galactic Center, studies at visible, ultraviolet or soft X-ray wavelengths are impossible to conduct. However, observations at gamma ray, hard X-ray, infrared, sub-millimetre and radio wavelengths provide a substantial amount of information. The existence of the supermassive black hole has been confirmed using a VLT (Very Large Telescope) facility. Also accretion of gas onto a black hole would release enough energy to power up the intense compact radio source (Sagittarius A*), which is part of a larger astronomical radio source (Sagittarius A), and is located at the same location as the supermassive black hole.
Scientists were surprised to find out that the Galactic Center contains not only old red main-sequence stars, but also high amounts of massive stars. The birth of those stars was triggered a few millions years ago. This creates a “youth paradox” because the black hole tidal forces would prevent such a star formation event to take place. One explanation for this enigma is that the stars migrated near the Galactic Center after they formed in a remote location like a star cluster or a massive gas cloud near the black hole.
The Galactic Center is a quiet place for the next 200 million years when a star birth event will commence. Many stars will rush to supernovae states at higher rates (100x) than the current rate. The starburst may also be accompanied by the formation of galactic jets as matter falls into the central black hole. The Galactic Center of the Milky Way undergoes a starburst of this sort every 500 million years.
Distance from Earth: ~ 27000 light years.
Click below for full resolution picture of The Galactic Center