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Death of a massive star
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Caption: A multi-wavelength image taken with telescopes on the Earth and in space of a neutron star within our neighbouring Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy. A neutron star (seen here as the blue spot surrounded by a red ring) is the final product of gravitational collapse, compression and explosion of a massive star, left embedded in its supernova remnant (in green).
Credit: ESO/NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)/F. Vogt et al.
Credit Link
Glossary Terms:
Neutron Star , Stellar Remnants , Supernova
Categories:
Stars
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) icons
File
( image
758.18 kB)
Witnessing the birth of a star
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Caption: A combination of radio and visible light imaged with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and European Southern Observatory's New Technology Telescope (NTT) revealing birth of a star forming the Herbig-Haro object HH 46/47. ALMA observations shown in orange and green unveil the energetic jet from the central protostar otherwise hidden at visible wavelength due to dust obscuration and dense gas. NTT observations in pink and purple highlight the visible light from the jet emitted towards the observer.
Credit: ESO/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/H. Arce. Acknowledgements: Bo Reipurth
Credit Link
Glossary Terms:
Protostar , Star Formation
Categories:
Milky Way and Interstellar Medium
, Stars
License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported icons
File
( image
1.34 MB)
Gemini meteor shower, by Hao Yin, China
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Created for the OAE
Caption: Third place in the 2021 IAU OAE Astrophotography Contest, category Meteor showers.
As the Earth travels around the Sun, it may cross the path of debris left behind by a comet or, more rarely, by an asteroid. These debris enter the atmosphere at high speed, producing beautiful tracks as they burn in the sky due to friction with the atmosphere. The image captures the Geminid meteor shower, named because the radiant point is located on the sky in the constellation Gemini. The particles composing the meteor shower travel at similar speed and in parallel trajectories, which causes a perspective effect like if the stream radiates from one single point in the sky, which is known as the radiant point. This image, taken in December 2020 in China, clearly shows this perspective. This is a very prolific shower, in such a way that over one hundred meteorites could be seen per hour in recent appearances. This meteor shower is one of the few associated not with a comet, but with an asteroid – 3200 Phaeton, which might be a comet that lost all its volatile material. This image shows the large number of meteors that can be observed in this shower, which always happens in December every year. The image also shows one of the most prominent constellations in the night sky, Orion, easily seen by the three stars in a diagonal making up Orion’s Belt, and the red-orange star Betelgeuse. Right above the dish is a bright point and that is the Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky and part of the constellation Canis Major. The fuzzy bluish smudge at around 2 ‘o’ clock is the Pleiades star cluster.
Credit: Hao Yin/IAU OAE
Glossary Terms:
Shooting Star
Categories:
Naked Eye Astronomy
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) icons
This file on Zenodo ( image 9.78 MB)
Star Trails of the Forbidden City
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Created for the OAE
Caption: Honorable mention in the 2023 IAU OAE Astrophotography Contest, category of Still images taken exclusively with smartphones/mobile devices.
Beneath the celestial ballet of star trails that weave their way across the night sky, the Beijing Forbidden City stands as a testament to ancient celestial connections in this image captured in March 2022. Designed with a cosmic alignment in mind, the palace echoes the orientation of the North Star, also known as Polaris, a celestial anchor that has long guided navigators and symbolised steadiness in the sky. It was believed that the Emperor embodied the earthly representation of this pole star, bridging the realms between heaven and earth. In this harmonious one-hour exposure captured with a smartphone, the streaks of stars trace their nightly journey across the firmament, converging toward the North Star, reflecting the precision of both architectural design and celestial paths.
Credit: Stephanie Ziyi Ye/IAU OAE (CC BY 4.0)
Glossary Terms:
Celestial Pole , Celestial Sphere , Circumpolar Stars , Navigation , North Celestial Pole (NCP) , Polaris
Tags:
astrophotography
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) icons
This file on Zenodo ( image 4.12 MB)
Lyrid of the Lake
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Created for the OAE
Caption: Winner in the 2022 IAU OAE Astrophotography Contest, category Still images of celestial patterns.
Taken in the early hours of 24 April 2022, this image captures the sky of Yunnan Province, China, with a reflection on Lake Nian. The Milky Way is visible on the left side, while whitish Earth clouds are visible on the right. A Lyrid meteor crosses the sky along the Milky Way, its tail pointing back toward the shower's radiant in the constellation Lyra, which lies outside the image above the upper edge. The natural colours of the meteor are impressively clear.
A few constellations are also visible. In the top left corner we can recognise the small constellation of the Dolphin, in which five brightest stars comprise the asterism. This asterism forms the head-part of the larger Greek constellation of the Dolphin and was considered the Dolphin since Roman times, when Ptolemy formed the new constellation of Equuleus in the southern part of the original figure. In mediaeval China, this asterism was considered the Good and the Rotten Gourd, the good one being formed by the brighter rhombus on the top and the rotten one made of faint stars in the tail of the Roman dolphin.
The bright star to the right of the Dolphin and at the top of the image is Altair, the brightest star in the constellation Aquila. In Chinese uranology, Altair, together with some adjacent areas, forms the constellation of the Drum at the River. However, in Chinese folklore, the bright star stands for a boy in love with a girl, who is represented by the bright star Vega (in Lyra) on the other side of a huge celestial stream, the Milky Way. Vega is not visible in this image but the Lyrid meteor is like a teardrop of the unlucky girl who cannot reach her lover.
In the upper right of the image, the constellation Scorpius shines with its bright reddish star Antares. With some of its neighbouring stars, it was regarded in China as the asterism of The Heart, which was also one of the Lunar Mansions. It was considered the heart of the Azure Dragon, the super-constellation of spring, in ancient China.
Scorpius and Sagittarius, in the middle of the image, contain the brightest clouds of the Milky Way, the Galactic Centre, which also has clearly visible dark clouds in front of the bright ones.
There is no classical Greco-Roman constellation between Aquila and Scorpius, but in the 17th century, two Polish astronomers, the couple Jan and Elizabeta Hevelius, named this area of bright clouds in the Milky Way Scutum, the Shield, in memory of a Polish king. In China, however, this area directly outside the super-constellation (or heavenly enclosure) of the Celestial Market Place was seen as depicting Market Officers.
Credit: Jianfeng Dai/IAU OAE
Glossary Terms:
Milky Way , Scorpius , Shooting Star , Sagittarius
Categories:
Milky Way and Interstellar Medium
, Naked Eye Astronomy
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) icons
This file on Zenodo ( image 7.19 MB)
