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The Lagoon Nebula and the Trifid Nebula
Credit: Acquisition-JD Maddy, Processing-Gerald Madero
Explanation: The Lagoon Nebula
(lower left) also known as M8 and NGC6523, is the brightest star forming
region in the night sky. It is composed of a giant cloud of interstellar
matter that is forming stars. M20 (upper right) is both an emission
nebula and a reflection nebula. It also has a dark nebula component
identified as Barnard 85. It can be seen better in the below photo.
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You can learn more about the night sky at APOD, NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html
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Up coming events
08/07/2010: Two Trees Dark Sky Weekend
08/09/2010: Bike & Build Star Party
08/12/2010: Two Trees Perseid Meteor
Shower
08/14/2010: Two Trees Dark Sky Weekend
08/21/2010: Monthly Meeting
09/11/2010: Mingus Mountain Methodist
Camp Star Gaze
09/11/2010: Kartchner Caverns Star
Party
09/18/2010: Monthly Meeting
09/25/2010: Verde River Days & Dead
Horse Ranch State Park Star Gaze
10/09/2010: Two Trees Dark Sky Weekend
See the
Club Calendar for complete
2010 schedule
This is Comet C/2009 McNaught R1 as it
passes nearby a small galaxy NGC891. It was
visible in the early mornings throughout June and reached naked eye
magnitude.
Illustration Credit & Copyright:
J D Maddy
and Gerald Madero.
Explanation: The Great
Spiral Galaxy
in Andromeda (aka M31), a mere 2.5 million light-years
distant, is the
closest large spiral to our own Milky Way. Andromeda is visible to the
unaided eye as a small, faint, fuzzy patch, but because its surface
brightness is so low, casual
skygazers
can't appreciate the galaxy's impressive extent in planet Earth's sky.
This entertaining composite image compares the
angular size
of the nearby galaxy to a brighter, more familiar celestial sight. In
it, a deep exposure, tracing beautiful blue star clusters in
spiral arms far beyond the bright yellow core, is combined with a
typical view of a nearly full Moon. Shown at the same angular scale, the
Moon covers about 1/2 degree on the sky, while
the galaxy is
clearly several times that size. The deep Andromeda exposure also
includes two bright satellite galaxies,
M32 and
M110
(bottom). This composite image is made from a stack of M31 images taken
with a Celestron GPS11, Hyperstar 3 with a Canon 450D (XSI) and a single
image of the Moon taken with the same setup.
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