This image of the North American Nebula was captured in 2018 near Thornbury, Ontario by my friend Sailu Nemana. Several of the surrounding bright stars and star clusters within it are highlighted. The Pelican Nebula (at right) is formed by the dark dust of LDN 935. The re/pink colour is produced by ionized hydrogen gas.…
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This simulated 3D model of the solar system shows the position of Earth on July 30 while it is crossing through the debris field dropped along the orbit of comet P/2008 Y12 (SOHO), producing the peak of the Southern Delta-Aquariids Meteor Shower. You can manipulate the model at the website https://www.meteorshowers.org/ Hello, Summer Stargazers! Here…
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A Close-up view of Mare Crisium when the terminator will be directly to its west on Wednesday, June 21, 2023 at 10 pm EDT. (Starry Night Pro) Hello, Summer Stargazers! Here are your Astronomy Skylights for the week of June 18th, 2023 by Chris Vaughan. Feel free to pass this along to your friends and…
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This image of Messier 13 in Hercules, the father of all globular star clusters visible from the Northern Hemisphere, was captured by Martin Pugh. Hundreds of thousands of stars, 25,000 light-years away from the sun, are arranged in a sphere by their mutual gravitational attraction. M13 is visible as a faint fuzzy patch to the…
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This gorgeous spiral galaxy named NGC 5248 and Caldwell 45 in Boötes is visible in medium-sized and larger telescopes on moonless evenings. Image by Adam Block of Mount Lemmon Observatory (Wikipedia) Hello, Moonless May Stargazers! Here are your Astronomy Skylights for the week of May 14th, 2023 by Chris Vaughan. Feel free to pass this…
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This terrific Wikipedia image by Hunter Wilson from March 28, 2008 shows the Leo Triplet of Galaxies, which is located south-southeast of the bright star Chertan in Leo. The photograph, with celestial north up and East toward left, covers a pinky-finger-width (or 0.6 degrees) of the sky left-to-right. The Hamburger Galaxy is at the top…
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This colour image of the moon during the penumbral lunar eclipse of September 16, 2016 was taken by Robin Lee in Hong Kong. It was the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day for Oct 12, 2016. Welcome to mid-Spring, Stargazers! Here are your Astronomy Skylights for the week of April 30th, 2023 by Chris Vaughan.…
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This beautiful natural image of the Hyades and the Pleiades clusters in Taurus, was captured and processed by Alan Dyer while he was travelling to Arizona in December, 2017. He used a Canon 5D MkII camera on a tracking mount and a total of eight minutes of exposure. The bright star Aldebaran at left is…
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A sampling of galaxy forms. Clockwise from upper left: Messier 87 “Virgo A” (elliptical), Messier 102 “Spindle” (lenticular), NGC 1365 (barred spiral), NGC 4656 “the Crowbar” (irregular), and Messier 81 “Bode’s Nebula” (spiral). All except NGC 1365 are visible on spring evenings from mid-northern latitudes. Hello, Meteor and Galaxy lovers! Here are your Astronomy Skylights…
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This spectacular photograph by Alan Dyer of Alberta, Canada captured Venus’ swing past the Pleiades Star Cluster, or the Seven Sisters, on Tuesday, April 3, 2012. The image, spanning about two fingers widths of the sky, nicely shows the mini-dipper shape of the stars that you would see through binoculars. Alan’s original blog post is…
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