Notices tagged with astronomy

"Since the [Cepheid] variables are probably at nearly the same distance from the Earth, their periods are apparently associated with their actual emission of light, as determined by their mass, density, and surface brightness."

Periods of 25 Variable Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud (1912)

~Henrietta Swan Leavitt (July 4, 1868 – December 12, 1921)

#science #astronomy #womeninStem

Are the colours in astronomical images real? What do these colours mean? And what about images that aren't taken in visible light?

We get these questions all the time, so in the latest episode of Chasing Starlight we show you how these colourful images are made:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BodtjPYFaP8

#astrodon #astronomy #space #science

Euclid’s 208-Gigapixel glimpse into the Universe | European Space Agency, ESA

https://youtu.be/86ZCsUfgLRQ

#ESA #Euclid #astronomy

Stellar bubbles captured by ALMA | ESO News - European Southern Observatory (ESO)

https://youtu.be/jaxyu4RP9-I

#astronomy #ESO #EuropeanSouthernObservatory

ALMA's extreme makeover: the Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade | European Southern Observatory (ESO)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYDD9b252BU

#astronomy #radioastronomy #ALMA #ESO

These two images of the Whirlpool Galaxy were produced 160 years apart. The first is an 1845 sketch of the galaxy by Irish astronomer William Parsons. The second was taken by Hubble in 2005. But the resemblance is easy to see.

Credit: William Parsons; NASA/ESA. #astronomy

First ever drawings of the moon made by Galileo Galilei after observing it through his telescope in 1609.

Galileo produced this extremely famous set of six watercolours of the Moon in its various phases "from life", as he observed the Earth's satellite through a telescope in the autumn of 1609. They represent the first realistic depiction of the Moon in history.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
Drawings of the Moon, November-December 1609
Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale

#science #astronomy

#OTD in 1609, Galileo Galilei aimed his telescope at the Moon.

While not being the first person to observe the Moon through a telescope (English mathematician Thomas Harriot had done it four months before but only saw a "strange spottednesse"), Galileo was the first to deduce the cause of the uneven waning as light occlusion from lunar mountains and craters. In his study, he also made topographical charts, estimating the heights of the mountains. via @wikipedia

#science #astronomy

Working in tandem, NASA's Parker Solar Probe and ESA's Solar Orbiter are making big discoveries about how the Sun works.
One particularly intriguing observation: a strange plasma "snake" slithering all the way across the solar surface.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03301-1 #astronomy #astrodon #science

#Euclid has hardware, software, data, and functional contributions by more than 100 institutions across #ESA member states, the USA, Canada, and Japan.

With the fully assembled #satellite currently undergoing final tests, and with the science computing ground segment on it's home stretch, we're seeing Euclid rapidly turning from hard- and software into a soon flying #astronomy data-producing #space mission!

How can can one plausibly connect Easter, Lisbon, tsunamis and clusters of galaxies? Let me tell you in this #AstroPhysicsFactlet #astronomy #astrodon 

A new #AstrophysicsFactlet prompted by a smart question posed by a student of my Astroparticle course for astronomers.

In a nutshell: why the maximum energy of the #CosmicRays we can capture as they collide with the atmosphere of our planet is so much bigger than the maximum energy of the cosmic rays we can accelerate with human made accelerators, like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) ?

#astrodon #astronomy

#Astronomy #Astrodon #astrophotograph

This photo of a supernova appearing in spiral galaxy M101 is a gem for at least two reasons:
- it is beautiful and it won a section of the Wikimedia Science Photo Contest
and
- it was taken by Serhiy Khomenko and it shows how there are people in #Ukraine, who despite the war and alarms and power cuts were able to even care so deeply about the universe in May 2023, and they still do now 💪

Kindly pointed to me by a colleague in 🇺🇦
credits and details ⬇️

Like in real life, also in extragalactic astronomy there are VIPs*. If you are into clusters of galaxies, the top of the VIP probably is the
Coma clusters of galaxies, aka Abel 1656.

Let's do a small #AstroPhysicsFactlet to see why

#astrodon
#astronomy

*=Very Important Potential (wells)

For this year's gingerbread I made... the VLA!

#gingerbread #astronomy #radioastronomy #space

Given its latitude, from ESO's Paranal Observatory in #Chile you can see the core of the #MilkyWay passing directly overhead. In this pic I took a few years ago you can see its faint glow reflected off the dome of one of our 8 m telescopes.

My neck wasn't happy when framing this shot, though, as my camera doesn't have a flip screen! 😅

#astrodon #astronomy #astrophotography

I love a science mystery, and this is a good one:
About once a year, a mysterious blue flash appears from a different part of the sky, then fades in a matter of days. Nobody knows what these things are. And the latest one, nicknamed "the Finch," may be the strangest one yet.
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/nasas-hubble-finds-bizarre-explosion-in-unexpected-place #science #astronomy #astrodon

“Never heard of Cecilia Payne?
Now you have”

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin's 1925 thesis that the sun was composed mostly of hydrogen and helium was rejected by a professor who called it "impossible". Years later, the man who rejected it realized she was in fact right, but he was credited with the discovery for decades. A prominent astronomer called her discovery "the most brilliant PhD thesis
ever written in #astronomy".
#WomenInScience

Woohoo, we have a new 360º #webcam inside the dome of the Extremely Large #Telescope !

➡️ https://elt.eso.org/about/webcams/

#astrodon #astronomy #chile

A new #JWST view of the remnant of Supernova 1987A. 

SN 1987A has been a target of intense observations at wavelengths ranging from gamma rays to radio for nearly 40 years, since its discovery in February of 1987. Located 168,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, it was the nearest supernova to explode in the era of modern telescopes.

More: https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2023/news-2023-136

1/4
#Astronomy #Supernova