This image of Comet C/2021 A1 (Leonard) was taken recently by Dan Bartlett from a dark sky site above the Eastern Sierras Mountains in California. The coma’s greenish glow should be apparent in a telescope. The dust tail may be a challenge. The image was featured as NASA’s APOD for November 21, 2021 Hello, Stargazers!…
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This colour-composite image of the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) was created from images obtained using the Wide Field Imager camera on the 2.2-metre ESO telescope at the La Silla observatory in Chile. The colours arise from a shell of gases energized by the radiation of the tiny central star. This image spans the same diameter…
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This gorgeous image of the North America Nebula, and the Pelican Nebula to its right, was captured by Roman Kulesza. The pink colour arises from glowing hydrogen gas. Opaque dust in the foreground is separating the single large gas cloud into two nebulas, and producing the unique shapes. It was the SkyNews Photo of the…
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This terrific image by Amir H. Abolfath was featured in NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) for October 14, 2020. The bright star inside the orange zone at lower left is Antares in Scorpius. The big and bright globular cluster Messier 4 sits to its lower right. The pink region is glowing hydrogen gas…
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A fine example of an annular solar eclipse during totality (annularity)! Much of Eastern North America will see a typical partial eclipse (with a bite out of the sun) already in progress at sunrise on Thursday, June 10. It will end at 6:39 am EDT. Use proper solar filters to view any of this eclipse…
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The prominent galaxies Messier 81 or Bode’s Nebula (left) and Messier 82 or the Cigar Galaxy (right) are located near the Big Dipper’s bowl in the northern sky. This image by AstroDoc Ron Brecher of Guelph, Ontario from February, 2017 spans about 1.5 degrees, or three full moon diameters. Messier 81 is large and bright…
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This amazing composite photo by my friend Bill Longo has it all! The arc of the International Space Station crossing the sky, the green glow of the Aurora Borealis, the northern Summer Milky Way, and numerous Perseids meteors! Hello, Spring Stargazers! Here are your Astronomy Skylights for the week of April 11th, 2021 by Chris…
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This image of the Whale Galaxy (top left) and the Hockey Stick Galaxy (lower right) was captured by AstroDoc Ron Brecher of Guelph on March 16, 2019. The image spans about 1 degree of sky. Ron’s galleries of images are at www.astrodoc.ca Hello, Galaxy-season Stargazers! Here are your Astronomy Skylights for the week of April…
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This spectacular image by Petr Horalek od Institute of Physics in Opava shows reddish Mars (bottom centre) just below the blue Pleiades star cluster on March 3, 2021, and Mars’ “twin”, the reddish star Aldebaran above the “V” of Taurus at lower left. The red streak at the upper right is the California Nebula in…
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This gorgeous patch of sky spans 6 by 11 degrees, or about a palm’s width by a fist’s diameter, held at arm’s length. The red nebulas at right are the Heart and Soul (IC 1805 and IC 1848) in Cassiopeia, 2500 light-years distant. The two bright star groups at left, in next-door Perseus, is collectively…
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