Daily Archives: August 1, 2014

Tetons and Snake River, Planet Earth 

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Image Credit & Copyright: Babak Tafreshi (TWAN)

 An alluring night skyscape, this scene looks west across the Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, USA, Planet Earth. The Snake River glides through the foreground, while above the Tetons’ rugged mountain peaks the starry sky is laced with exceptionally strong red and green airglow. That night, the luminous atmospheric glow was just faintly visible to the eye, its color and wavey structure captured only by a sensitive digital camera. In fact, this contemporary digital photograph matches the location and perspective of a well-known photograph from 1942 – The Tetons and The Snake River , by Ansel Adams, renown photographer of the American West. Adams’ image is one of 115 images stored on the Voyager Golden Record. Humanity’s message in a bottle, golden records were on board both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft, launched in 1977 and now headed toward interstellar space.

APOD NASA 01-Aug-2014

Sombrero galaxy

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The Sombrero Galaxy (also known as Messier Object 104M104 or NGC 4594) is an unbarred spiral galaxy in theconstellation Virgo located 28 million light-years (8.6 Mpc) from Earth. It has a bright nucleus, an unusually large central bulge, and a prominent dust lane in its inclined disk. The dark dust lane and the bulge give this galaxy the appearance of a sombrero. Astronomers initially thought that the halo was small and light, indicative of a spiral galaxy, but Spitzer found that the halo around the Sombrero Galaxy is larger and more massive than previously thought, indicative of a giant elliptical galaxy. The galaxy has an apparent magnitude of +9.0, making it easily visible with amateur telescopes, and it’s considered by some authors to be the brightest galaxy within a radius of 10 megaparsecs of the Milky Way.[6] The large bulge, the central supermassive black hole, and the dust lane all attract the attention of professional astronomers.

Imaging telescopes or lenses: Geoptik “Formula25″ Newton 10″ 1250mm
Imaging cameras: Home made 450D Cmos Cooled – Baader
Guiding telescopes or lenses: Geoptik 50/200 mm finderscope
Guiding cameras: Shoestring Astronomy USB Guide Port Interface, Xbox LiveWebcam
Software: photoshop, Pleiades Astrophoto, S.L. PixInsinght 1.8 RC7
Filters: HUTECH IDAS LPS P2
Accessories: Giosi Made Fasce anticondensa, Home made Arduino Focuser (project sir Jolo – ascom-jolo-focuser), Baader MPCC mpcc coma correcteur
Dates: March 1, 2014
Frames: 13×600”
Integration: 2.2 hours

Author:  Giosi Amante
AstroPhotography of the day by SPONLI 1 Aug 2014