Grains of cosmic dust streaked through night skies in early May. Swept up as planet Earth plowed through the debris streams left behind by periodic Comet Halley, the annual meteor shower is known as the Eta Aquarids. This year, the Eta Aquarids peak was visually hampered by May's bright Full Moon, though. But early morning hours surrounding last May's shower of Halley dust were free of moonlight interference. In exposures recorded between April 28 and May 8 in 2022, this composited image shows nearly 90 Eta Aquarid meteors streaking from the shower's radiant in Aquarius over San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. The central Milky Way arcs above in the southern hemisphere's predawn skies. The faint band of light rising from the horizon is Zodiacal light, caused by dust scattering sunlight near our Solar System's ecliptic plane. Along the ecliptic and entrained in the Zodiacal glow are the bright planets Venus, Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn. Of course Mars itself has recently been found to be a likely source of the dust along the ecliptic responsible for creating Zodiacal light.

Source: NASA

Charon is 1,214 kilometers (754 miles) across. That's about 1/10th the size of planet Earth but a whopping 1/2 the diameter of Pluto itself, and makes it the largest satellite relative to its parent body in the Solar System. Still, the moon appears as a small bump at about the 1 o'clock position on Pluto's disk in the grainy, negative,telescopic picture inset at upper left. That view was used by James Christy and Robert Harrington at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Flagstaff to discover Charon in June of 1978.

A darkened and mysterious north polar region known to some as Mordor Macula caps this premier high-resolution view. The portrait of Charon, Pluto's largest moon, was captured by New Horizons near the spacecraft's closest approach on July 14, 2015. The combined blue, red, and infrared data was processed to enhance colors and follow variations in Charon's surface properties with a resolution of about 2.9 kilometers (1.8 miles).

Source: NASA

The growth of this community continues to amaze me. We've made this the place for the most premier Space-related-beauty on Lemmy and continue to bring in new user's at a huge pace. There's a continued increase in user contribution as well and it's great seeing the different celestial objects or image types that different users prefer.

Please continue to post and comment so we can continue to make this an exciting and welcoming community.

Also, if you're new here, know that this is a friendly place that you should feel comfortable joining. Please remember to share your suggestions, we want this community to be active and reflect what the user's want it to be.

If you have any suggestions for things that you would like to see, or just want to stop by and say what your favorite type of celestial object is, let us know.

Thanks and continue being awesome.

his tantalizing trio of galaxies sometimes called the Draco Group, is located in the northern constellation of Draco, the Dragon all found within this single telescopic field of view that spans a little more than the width of the full moon.

A mere 390 light-years away, Sun-like stars and future planetary systems are forming in the Rho Ophiuchi molecular cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to our fair planet. The James Webb Space Telescope's NIRCam peered into the nearby natal chaos to capture this infrared image at an inspiring scale.

An increase in surface activity is expected because our Sun is approaching solar maximum in 2025. However, last month our Sun sprouted more sunspots than in any month during the entire previous 11-year solar cycle -- and even dating back to 2002. The featured picture is a composite of images taken every day from January to June by NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory. Showing a high abundance of sunspots, large individual spots can be tracked across the Sun's disk, left to right, over about two weeks. As a solar cycle continues, sunspots typically appear closer to the equator. Sunspots are just one way that our Sun displays surface activity -- another is flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that expel particles out into the Solar System. Since these particles can affect astronauts and electronics, tracking surface disturbances is of more than aesthetic value. Conversely, solar activity can have very high aesthetic value -- in the Earth's atmosphere when they trigger aurora.

If our Sun were part of this star cluster, the night sky would glow like a jewel box of bright stars. This cluster, known as M53 and cataloged as NGC 5024, is one of about 250 globular clusters that survive in our Galaxy. Most of the stars in M53 are older and redder than our Sun, but some enigmatic stars appear to be bluer and younger. These young stars might contradict the hypothesis that all the stars in M53 formed at nearly the same time. These unusual stars are known as blue stragglers and are unusually common in M53. After much debate, blue stragglers are now thought to be stars rejuvenated by fresh matter falling in from a binary star companion. By analyzing pictures of globular clusters like the featured image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers use the abundance of stars like blue stragglers to help determine the age of the globular cluster and hence a limit on the age of the universe. M53, visible with a binoculars towards the constellation of Bernice's Hair (Coma Berenices), contains over 250,000 stars and is one of the furthest globulars from the center of our Galaxy.

Source: NASA

This shows the Messier 16 Eagle Nebula region of the sky in true color, without the use of any filter. This region is most often captured in narrowband. You can see the wings of the eagle spanning in rich hydrogen alpha gas, and the bright stars lighting up the famous Pillars of Creation.

Source: Antoine Grelin

Deep in the South constellation Apus lies a truly spectacular field of nebulosity. Not far from the South Celestial Pole (at declination -80º), this nebula is very rarely captured, especially in full colour. This image shows a region catalogued by Steve Mandel and Michael Wilson in early 2000s as the 9th and last entry to their "Catalogue of Unexplored Nebulae" [1]. This pioneering project identified the interstellar clouds in optical light, before only known to professional astronomers through infrared surveys. Mandel named the nebulae Integrated Flux Nebula, or IFN, a name that is frequently quoted in amateur astrophotography, but seldomly used in professional astronomy, where "galactic cirrus" is preferred.

The Galactic Cirri are veils that surround our galaxy – made of dust and gas in the interstellar space. It was first noticed on optical glass plates recorded at Palomar Observatory and subsequently cataloged by B. T. Lynds, in 1965. In the 2000s, Steve Mandel noticed faint cirrus in deep, wide field photographs near the North Celestial Pole, and labelled the nebulosity as the IFN, or the Integrated Flux Nebula. [2] It has incredibly low surface brightness, at ~22-28 mag/arcsec² (fainter than the darkest sky background on Earth), thus it is not easy to capture!

Source: Gabriel Santos

A spiral galaxy with a small central bar, M66 is a member of the Leo Galaxy Triplet, a group of three galaxies about 30 million light years from us. The Leo Triplet is a popular target for relatively small telescopes, in part because M66 and its galactic companions M65 and NGC 3628 all appear separated by about the angular width of a full moon. The featured image of M66 was taken by Hubble to help investigate the connection between star formation and molecular gas clouds. Clearly visible are bright blue stars, pink ionized hydrogen clouds -- sprinkled all along the outer spiral arms, and dark dust lanes in which more star formation could be hiding.

Source: NASA

The growth of this community continues to amaze me. We've made this the premier Space-related sub on Lemmy and continue to bring in new user's at a huge pace. There's a continued increase in user contribution as well and it's great seeing the different celestial objects or image types that different users prefer.

Please continue to post and comment so we can continue to make this an exciting and welcoming community.

Also, if you're new here, know that this is a friendly place that you should feel comfortable joining. Please remember to share your suggestions, I want this community to be active and reflect what the user's want it to be.

Thanks and continue being awesome.

The Pelican Nebula is changing. The entire nebula, officially designated IC 5070, is divided from the larger North America Nebula by a molecular cloud filled with dark dust. The Pelican, however, is particularly interesting because it is an unusually active mix of star formation and evolving gas clouds. The featured picture was processed to bring out two main colors, red and blue, with the red dominated by light emitted by interstellar hydrogen. Ultraviolet light emitted by young energetic stars is slowly transforming cold gas in the nebula to hot gas, with the advancing boundary between the two, known as an ionization front, visible in bright red across the image center. Particularly dense tentacles of cold gas remain. Millions of years from now this nebula might no longer be known as the Pelican, as the balance and placement of stars and gas will surely leave something that appears completely different.

These three bright nebulae are often featured on telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius and the crowded starfields of the central Milky Way. In fact, 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged two of them; M8, the large nebula below and right of center, and colorful M20 near the top of the frame. The third emission region includes NGC 6559, left of M8 and separated from the larger nebula by a dark dust lane. All three are stellar nurseries about five thousand light-years or so distant. Over a hundred light-years across the expansive M8 is also known as the Lagoon Nebula. M20's popular moniker is the Trifid. Glowing hydrogen gas creates the dominant red color of the emission nebulae. But for striking contrast, blue hues in the Trifid are due to dust reflected starlight. The broad interstellarscape spans almost 4 degrees or 8 full moons on the sky.

Why would the sky glow like a giant repeating rainbow? Airglow. The air glows all of the time, but it is usually hard to see. A disturbance however -- like an approaching storm -- may cause noticeable rippling in the Earth's atmosphere. These gravity waves are oscillations in air analogous to those created when a rock is thrown in calm water. The long-duration exposure nearly along the vertical walls of airglow likely made the undulating structure particularly visible. OK, but where do the colors originate? The deep red glow likely originates from OH molecules about 87-kilometers high, excited by ultraviolet light from the Sun. The orange and green airglow is likely caused by sodium and oxygen atoms slightly higher up. The featured image was captured during a climb up Mount Pico in the Azores of Portugal. Ground lights originate from the island of Faial in the Atlantic Ocean. A spectacular sky is visible through this banded airglow, with the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy running up the image center, and M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, visible near the top left.

The remarkably blue comet C/2016 R2 PanSTARRS cruised through the solar system in 2018 and was captured juxtaposed against the stars of the Hyades cluster scattered through this mosaic spanning over 5 degrees on the sky toward the constellation Taurus.

Credit to Rogelio Bernal Andreo

The Rosette Nebula and other star forming regions are often shown in astronomical images with a predominately red hue, in part because the dominant emission in the nebula is from hydrogen atoms. Hydrogen's strongest optical emission line, known as H-alpha, is in the red region of the spectrum, but the beauty of an emission nebula need not be appreciated in red light alone. Other atoms in the nebula are also excited by energetic starlight and produce narrow emission lines as well. In this gorgeous view of the Rosette Nebula, narrowband images are combined to show emission from sulfur atoms in red, hydrogen in blue, and oxygen in green. Check this link to see the Rosette Nebula in a hydrogen predominant image for the red hue.

I'm going to kick off a monthly series highlighting some of the astronomical events that will be easily visible each month. Please feel free to make suggestions of anything that I missed, or if you have a particular celestial object that is visible now that you think is worth checking out, please let it below.

This month is host to a number of celestial events. A quick reference guide to help locate objects in the night sky, as well as a list of objects easily seen with the naked eye, binoculars, and telescope, can be found at SkyMaps.com. For an interactive map of the night sky, I recommend an app such as Stellarium, SkyMaps, though there are others that are also very good.

A few of this months events are:

Friday, July 7: Venus will appear at it's brightest for this cycle. Venus can be found after dusk in the lower western sky and will appear as a bright star.

Tuesday, July 11: Crescent Moon near Jupiter.

After the waning crescent moon clears the treetops in the east during the wee hours of Tuesday morning, July 11, it will be joined by the extremely bright planet Jupiter shining to its lower left (or celestial east).

Thursday, July 13: Crescent Moon near the Pleiades.

The eastern sky for several hours before dawn on Thursday, July 13 will host a pretty sight and photo opportunity when the slim crescent of the waning moon shines just 2 finger widths below (or celestial south of) the bright blue-white stars of the Pleiades Star Cluster. This will be a nice naked eye pairing with darker skies allowing for more of the seven sisters to be visible (how many can you see?)

Monday, July 17: New Moon.

These are the best times for observing the night sky, as the skies will be darkest during new moons.

Thursday, July 20: Earthshine Moon near Mars.

The crescent moon will shine several finger-widths to the upper right of the small, reddish dot of Mars. Look for the Earthshine moon, where sunlight reflected off of the Earth and back to the moon and slightly brightening the dark portion of the moon.

Sunday, July 30: Southern Delta-Aquariids meteors peak.

The annual Southern Delta-Aquariids meteor shower lasts from July 18 to August 21 in 2023. It will peak on Sunday afternoon, July 30 in the Americas, but it is quite active for a week surrounding the peak night. Expect 15-20 meteors per hour at peak.

Tuesday, August 1: Supermoon. This will be the second supermoon of 2023.

All summer: The Milky Way is visible from dark sky locations. This is the perfect time of the year to take a crack at photographing the milky way. Here is a link to getting started with your phone, or with a DSLR

Photo Credit

I can't believe how quickly this group is growing, it's only been a little over 2 weeks since this community was created so we could share awe-inspiring photos of the cosmos and we are already well over one thousand subscribers.

To continue to attract new people so that this community will really take off, we need to continue to have user engagement. So, if there are any ideas that you would like to see implemented here, or new ideas for the community, please let me know. Perhaps you would like to see more general space discussions, instead of solely sharing of images (there are not many space communities, so that could be a possibility)? Or maybe you hate the name and want to see it changed to something different from it's Reddit counterpart and have a great suggestion?

Don't be afraid to share your suggestions, I want this community to be active and reflect what the user's want it to be.

The Trifid Nebula is easily found with a small telescope in the Sagittarius constellation. It is around 5,000 light-years away and is one of the most strikingly colorful nebula in the Messier catalog. The Sagittarius constellation is very nebula dense and is a great region for beginner astronomer's and astrophotagraphers alike.