Jason Nishiyama

I love love love love (in a sarcastic, dark humour sort of way) the title of the article Dr. Laura Revell, Dr. @astrokiwi.bsky.social and I wrote last week https://theconversation.com/a-new-space-race-could-turn-our-atmosphere-into-a-crematorium-for-satellites-276366.

But one thing got cut in […]

M87 is an elliptical galaxy located about 53 Mly away in the constellation of Virgo.

One of the largest galaxies reasonably local to our own, it contains at its centre a supermassive black hole. A jet from that SMBH is just visible in this image.

M97 is a planetary nebula located between 2000 and 2800 ly away in the constellation of Ursa Major.

It has been difficult to determine the distance to PN so we often have great variation in the published distances to them. #astronomy

NGC 7217 is a spiral galaxy located about 50 Mly away in the constellation of Pegasus.

NGC is the New General Catalogue, released in 1888. The catalogue contains galaxies, nebula and clusters listed in a systemic order. #astronomy

M25 is an open cluster located about 2000 ly away in the constellation of Sagittarius.

Open clusters are groups of stars that formed together and have recently left the nebula in which they were formed. M25 is a relatively young cluster at about 68 million years old. #astronomy

Duck!

M31, The Andromeda Galaxy, is a large spiral galaxy located about 2.5 Mly away in the constellation of Andromeda.

M31 is the closest large spiral galaxy to our own Milky Way Galaxy. From a dark site it is visible to the unaided eye (though not as spectacular as images like this show). #astronomy

M56 is a globular cluster located about 33 kly away in the constellation of Lyra.

It is roughly 84ly in diameter. #astronomy

New article on too many satellites and ways that we SHOULD be allocating orbits (by Gregory Radisic with me as second author) https://theconversation.com/too-many-satellites-earths-orbit-is-on-track-for-a-catastrophe-but-we-can-stop-it-275430

Been up for about 30 minutes and I already got a […]

NGC 5492 is a spiral galaxy located about 124 Mly away in the constellation of Boötes.

It was discovered by William Herschel in 1792. #astronomy

From my observation much of what the separatists put out reads like a scam email. I suspect this is for the same reason scam emails read the way they do, to filter out critical thinkers.

Reading the comments of that post seems to provide evidence for this.

Much of the stuff being put out by the separatists reads like scam email.

I suspect for the same reason, to filter out the critical thinkers so they don't show up for events.

And back into the freezer...

IC 4593 is a planetary nebula located about 7900 ly away in the constellation of Hercules.

It has a diameter of just under 1 ly. This is typical of PN. That makes them a pretty good vacuum if you imagine the mass of a star like the Sun spread out to fill that volume. #astronomy

All part of the women and children are chattel mindset that seems to permeate Evangelical Christian nationalism.

Normal cats learn the sound of the can opener. Mine know the sound of me unwrapping kamaboko...

M72 is a globular cluster located about 55 kly away in the constellation of Aquarius.

Globular clusters orbit our (and other) Galaxy. Basically a large ball of hundreds of thousands of stars, we don't have a clear idea of how they were formed. #astronomy

M70 is a globular cluster located about 29 kly away in the constellation of Sagittarius.

M70 is a fairly compact globular cluster, suggesting that it has undergone core collapse, a process in GC where stars have moved to the core of the cluster, increasing the stellar density there. #astronomy

M8, the Lagoon Nebula, is an emission nebula located about 4100 ly away in the constellation of Sagittarius.

It contains many Bok Globules, small dark nebula which are dense and are likely locations of star formation. #astronomy

The image was taken from a northern latitude where M7 was only a couple of degrees above the horizon, so looking through lots of air.

M7 is an open cluster located about 980 ly away in the constellation of Scorpius.

It is the southernmost of the Messier objects, which explains the fuzziness of the image. #astronomy

This higher metallicity makes sense given an age of about 250 million years compared to 5 billion for the Sun.

M34 is an open cluster located about 1500 ly away in the constellation of Perseus.

It has a higher average metallicity than the Sun, meaning it has slightly more elements heavier than helium than the Sun does. #astronomy

M103 is an open cluster located about 9400ly away in the constellation of Cassiopeia.

At between 12 million to 25 million years old, this is a very young cluster of stars. #astronomy

NGC 40 is a planetary nebula located about 1600 ly away in the constellation of Cepheus.

It was discovered by William Herschel in 1788. Hershel also gave this class of objects their name of planetary nebula because they looked a bit like the planet Uranus which he had discovered earlier. #astronomy

M23 is an open cluster located about 2000 ly away in the constellation of Sagitarius.

The bright star to the upper right is a 6th magnitude star (about as dim as a star can get and still visible to the unaided eye) and is only 330ly away. #astronomy

A little retro computing at work.

Grade 9 open house at ye olde school….