Hourly Cosmos

MARS PHOENIX MISSION

MARS PHOENIX MISSION - From Jacint Roger (landru79.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/2iMXita

CASSINI SATURN NASA/JPL/j. Roger

CASSINI SATURN (1) - From Jacint Roger (landru79.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/2iKZuWn

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Brian Swift

CP18_29_19_1 - From Brian Swift (bswift.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/2dMkLyA

JunoCam hasn't been feeling well for it's last two perijove passes. So, here is a rewind back to Perijove 1, August 2016 (2016-08-27T11:57) Spherical projection at 45 pixels per degree. Images (processed with Juno3D Mathematica/Blender pipeline available on Github.) Size: 165 Megapixel (13227-by-12503 JPEG) File: zP00_202507192148collage_flickr.jpg Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Brian Swift Click download icon link (below and right of image) for access to full resolution. More JunoCam images at: www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing?perpage=7

J01 Jupiter Image Collage, Exaggerated Color/Contrast - From Brian Swift (bswift.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/2rhFF7t

From the NASA Social for the EFT-1 launch on Dec. 3-5, 2014.

Orion Launch - From Jason Major (jpmajor.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/q4jror

This HiRISE image shows a mixture of bright and dark terrain along the plains just west of Ganges Chasma. The concentration of these bright patches adjacent to an old impact crater suggests that the bright patches could represent ejecta from when the crater formed. This would be an interesting discovery because it would mean that a different unit underlies the surface we now see. Alternatively, much of the plains in this region appear to have a dark surface cover, probably wind-blown debris. Where this darker debris has been removed by the wind, the underlying brighter substrate would be exposed. Image is less than 5 km (3 mi) across and is 261 km (162 mi) above the surface. For full image including scale bars, visit the source link. www.uahirise.org/ESP_020061_1720 NASA/JPL/UArizona

Bright and Dark Plains near Ganges Chasma - From UAHiRISE (NASA) (uahirise.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/2mJYKVZ

NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill

MSL Sol 2813 - MastCam - From Kevin M. Gill (kevinmgill.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/2jj6jGf

Layered rocky outcrops on Sol 969. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

MSL Curiosity MastCam - Sol 969 - From Kevin M. Gill (kevinmgill.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/srjNG3

ESP_014074_1445 - From UAHiRISE (NASA) (uahirise.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/dZNWHb

Opportunity MARS NASA / JPL-Caltech / Cornell / j. Roger

Opportunity (50) - From Jacint Roger (landru79.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/2iKTP4N

Colorized version of AS08-13-2329, the first ever photo of Earth rising from behind another celestial body. AS08-14-2383 was used for the color data.

Earthrise - Apollo 8 - From Aster Cowart (terrasabaea.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/HVwTUe

From Hubble in narrowband red, mediumband green and blue filters. I did not enhance the saturation for this image; the filter choices manage to separate the colors on their own with little processing effort required. It is important to note that no one has seen a clear image of Neptune directly without the aid of a camera and various processing techniques. With that in mind, I have tried to modify my Hubble processing to match more closely with the Voyager 2 data. I have noted that the blue channel must be more emphasized, and the green channel less emphasized to approach what others have reported seeing regarding the human-perceived color of the planet. I have relied on the advice of H. B. Hammel and Björn Jónsson from short Twitter exchanges. Here and here. I would guess that this is more saturated than Neptune may appear to a human eye, but it's hard for me to say. Based on this and the Voyager 2 data, I am intrigued by the possibility that the pinkish limb may be visible to a human eye, if a human was ever to travel there and bear intimate witness to such an elusive majesty. The high clouds in the northern hemisphere have been evolving for the past few years. Previously, bright cloud formations have been noted nearer to the equator. They are large enough and bright enough that amateur astronomers have also been recording them and collaborating with pros. (Hat tip Björn Jónsson) The easiest way to see the changes documented that I know if is via the OPAL website, by...

Visible Neptune 2017-10-07 - From Judy Schmidt (geckzilla.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/Es6BDy

Imaged with C9.25 SCT, 2x PowerMate, and asi224mc.

Saturn, July 2020 - From Ryan Kinnett (rkinnett.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/2m8zhU1

Visible here is a small portion of the large Rosette Nebula (NGC 2237), centered on its central cluster of stars; NGC 2244. This large round nebula lies some 5000 light years away and can be found in the constellation Monoceros near Orion. In optical wide field images the entire nebula appears strikingly similar to the petals of a red rose, hence the name. The image is constructed from exposures in three very narrow (3nm) wavelength bands corresponding to the emission profiles of ionised Hydrogen, Oxygen and Sulphur to form the resulting detailed and brightly coloured scene. The combined images in each filter were assigned to their natural colour channels using a PixelMath expression in PixInsight. This enables a synthetic 'natural' colour image to be created from the narrowband data. Several striking shapes can be seen here, many of which resemble animals of various kinds. In particular the figure of a leaping Cheetah is very obvious near the centre. These dark shapes are denser clouds of dust and gas, slowly being eroded away by the intense ultraviolet radiation from the young stars in the central cluster. These stars have themselves condensed out of the nebula relatively recently. The brightest cluster members, HD 46223 and HD 46150, are massive O-type stars with stellar winds and radiation powerful enough to have cleared the nebula's central cavity around the cluster. Image details: Date: 15th, 16th, 18th and 19th March 2017 Exposure: Ha OIII SII: 290:130:110 mins, t...

Close-up with the Rosette Nebula (RGB Colour) - From Rolf Wahl Olsen - https://flic.kr/p/UYaQwE

Processed using calibrated red, green, and blue filtered images of Saturn's rings taken by Cassini on February 5 2014. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/Kevin M. Gill

Saturn's Rings - February 5 2014 - From Kevin M. Gill (kevinmgill.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/256E3wx

This is the second of six galaxies from Proposal 10550 I plan to process. They are all low surface brightness galaxies. I don't know much about them and that's why they interest me. There are very few Milky Way stars in this picture and many background galaxies for comparison to the foreground one. I tried to include as many as possible. Because these are remarkable for their lack of brightness, I have decided that it would be best to not try to brighten them a lot with processing, especially not relative to the other objects in the field. It is not very noticeable but the chip gap is running vertically down the left side of the galaxy. It should be easy to see the faked filler zoomed 100%. It's just a thin line that would otherwise be blank that I've matched the brightness of the galaxy to and added some noise on top of. I used to think I shouldn't do this but if I always note that I did so then I think it is permissible. There are so many pictures in the archive that almost nobody will ever see otherwise. Red: HST_10550_01_ACS_WFC_F775W_sci Green: Pseudo Blue: HST_10550_01_ACS_WFC_F475W_sci North is NOT up. It is 16.7° counter-clockwise from up.

UGC 477 - From Judy Schmidt (geckzilla.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/oohYfC

Deep H-alpha image of the Cat’s Paw Nebula (NGC 6334) in Scorpius obtained from my backyard, 15 km from Sydney’s city centre. This image combines 40 frames I got during some few nights during September and early October 2020 (15, 16, 26, 28 Sep, 2, 3 Oct) using the ZWO ASI1600MM Pro and the H-alpha Baader 3.5nm ultra-narrow filter. All frames had an exposition time of 900s (15 minutes), hence this image combines a total of 10 hours of telescope time! Telescope: Skywatcher Black Diamond 80, f=600mm (f/7.5) Equipment: I used the ZWO ASIAir to control the camera, the mount (Skywatcher AZ-EQ6) and the guiding system (ASI120MM + Orion 50mm finderscope). The H-alpha filter was in the ZWO filter drawer. Processing: Data processed with Siril software. FITS converted on TIFF using NASA’s Fits Liberator considering a logarithmic function. Color / saturation / levels / contrast / smart sharpen with Photoshop. For this image I decided to give some false colour instead of just the greyscale image, I used Photoshop to get the kind of “fire” aspect to the gas in the nebulae. I would love to get some data in broad-band filters to get the colours, but I’m afraid this will have to wait till next year, as Scorpius is already a bit too low over the western horizon, and some palm tress block the view from my backyard. Credit: Ángel R. López-Sánchez (AAO-MQ).

Fire in the Cat's Paw Nebula - From Ángel López-Sánchez - https://flic.kr/p/2jVxPGC

ESP_021725_0930 - From UAHiRISE (NASA) (uahirise.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/eeQSRK

Presented here is an animation of the supernova remnant SNR J0509.5-6731 expanding over time. It appears to be moving at close to 2% of the speed of light. It is around 163000 light years distant, so it has to move quite speedily for us to be able to witness its movement on a human timescale. The first frame is from 2006, and the second is from 2016. The video shows the two frames blinking back and forth to make the motion easy to see. Note that only the narrowband (seen here as the red, smooth outline of the nebula) was available to show the nebula's expansion. The star field is essentially a static image, though the narrowband data did also capture some star movement, particularly the bright star to the left of the frame. The Chandra data was simply scaled up to match with the expansion of the shell in the Hubble data. A still image is available here: flic.kr/p/2heTvq9 Flickr shrank this video down, so you may prefer a larger version at Youtube: youtu.be/YZUJysgK6Us Hubble proposals used: The Proper Motion of Supernova Remnant E0509-67.5 Single-Degenerate or Double-Degenerate? The Case for a Third Epoch Observation of the Confirmed Ia Supernova Remnant 0509-67.5 A Search for Surviving Companions of Type Ia Supernovae in the Large Magellanic Cloud Hubble Heritage 2.0 Chandra data: Red: .10-.70 keV Green: .70-1.0 keV Blue: 1.00-5.00 keV (Obs IDs 776, 7635, 8554) Hubble data: Red screen: ACS/WFC F658N Red: WFC3/UVIS F814W Green: WFC3/UVIS F555W Blue: WFC3/UVIS F475W ...

Expansion of SNR0509 Over 10 Years - From Judy Schmidt (geckzilla.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/2heWSpn

Two frame MDIS Wide-Angle Camera mosaic of Mercury taken on August 16, 2011. At the time this photo was taken, MESSENGER was high over the southern hemisphere, looking nearly directly down on the south pole from an altitude of 15,000 km. This mosaic captures the hemisphere centered on 180 W. A ring surrounding the crater Chao Meng-Fu, which sits nearly on top of the south pole, is visible along the terminator just left of center. Image Credit: NASA / JHUAPL / Carnegie Institution of Washington / Justin Cowart

Mercury - MESSENGER - From Aster Cowart (terrasabaea.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/MCL55k

Saturn Cassini mosaic by Ian Regan

Rhea in Colour - From Ian Regan - https://flic.kr/p/5T2SY9

Selfie image of the Curiosity Mars rover standing on the surface of Mars at an active sand dune called Namib Dune. In the background to the right rises the prominent slope of Mount Sharp. The MAHLI source images were color processed to approximately match what the human eye would see. The sky was extended in Photoshop. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Simeon Schmauß

Curiosity rover selfie at Namib Dune Sol 1228 - From Simeon Schmauß (stim3on.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/2pMmk6R

Combination of 8 images taken during January and March 2019 showing different phases of the Moon. These images, with many more not shown here, are part of a educational exercise conducted with my son, Luke, who was 6 years old then (Year 1), and who actually took all the photos. Each image combines ~150 frames, all taken with my Skywatcher Black Diamond 80mm, f/7.5, using my CANON EOS 5D Mark III at primary focus, from Freshwater, Sydney. The data were stacked using the free Lynkeos software, and then processed with Photoshop to increase the shadows/highlights, correct colour, smart sharpen for getting a better contrast of the craters, and luminosity. Credit: Luke López Planells (Year 1, Manly West Primary School) & Ángel R. López-Sánchez (Australian Astronomical Optics, Macquarie University)

The phases of the Moon - From Ángel López-Sánchez - https://flic.kr/p/2jZGaow

"Once I got into space, I was feeling very comfortable in the universe. I felt like I had a right to be anywhere in this universe, that I belonged here as much as any speck of stardust, any comet, any planet." —Astronaut Mae Jemison Saturnshine & Jupitershine on Strawberry Reservoir, Utah

Saturnshine & Jupitershine - From Bill (ridingrobots.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/2jaUcwu

This image combines 50 x 1" exposures, ISO 800, obtained with my CANON 5D Mark III attached at primary focus of my Skywatcher Black Diamond 80mm f600mm (F/7.5) during the Total Lunar Eclipse on Wednesday 26 May 2021, between 9:00pm and 9:04pm, Sydney local time. The frames were manually aligned with Photoshop, then extracted as new frames to Lynkeos, that did the fine alignment. Drizzling x2 was also used. Then the combined image was taken to Photoshop, where the colour, highlights/shadows, and contrast were tuned. This got only the image of the eclipsed moon. Additionally, I combined the full 266 x 1" images I took during totality using Siril to get the stellar background. They two combined frames (eclipsed moon + stars) were combined with Photoshop with a bit of extra tuning to get a nice background. The image taken at 9:03pm was used as reference for the alignment. All the data were taken during the 4 hours ONLINE event "Conversaciones astronómicas bajo la luna eclipsada" that I organised with the "Red Andaluza de Astronomía" (RAdA), "Agrupación Astronómica de Córdoba" (AAC), "Asociación de Lengua y Cultura Española" (ALCE) de Australia and the "Spanish Researchers in Australia-Pacific" (SRAP-IEAP), that was followed by many schools in Spain. I also want to thank Alicia Lozano (RAdA), Héctor Socas-Navarro (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias), María Ribes (Universidad de Alicante) and Alberto Aparici (In...

Total Lunar Eclipse - 26 May 2021 - From Ángel López-Sánchez - https://flic.kr/p/2m1PLyZ

Eroded ejecta deposits associated with the 18 km wide Dulovo Crater. This crater is located near the southern rim of the 1500 km wide Isidis impact basin. The impact site is near the Martian dichotomy boundary, which separates the ancient terrain of Mars' southern hemisphere from the much younger lowlands of the northern hemisphere. The northern lowlands are thought to have once hosted an ocean, evidence of which might be recorded in Dulovo's ejecta. The crater's ejecta is a type called fluidized ejecta, which contains flow-like structures. This type of ejecta is thought to have formed in rocks rich in low-melting point materials, such as dry ice or water ice. Erosional remnats of the fluidized ejecta are visible has high-standing lobes of material running through image center. The more rugged rock, which is likely older rock buried and preserved by the ejecta sheet, appear to contain clay minerals. This image was created using the CRISM imaging spectrometer. Each pixel of a CRISM image contains a 500 point spectrum, from which a color can be reconstructed. This reconstructed color was overlaid on a higher-resolution image taken with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Context Camera (CTX), which simultaneously took a photo while CRISM was collecting data. This image was taken on January 2, 2007. It uses CRISM observation FRT00003B63 and CTX observation P03_002044_1836_XI_03N275W. Image Credit: NASA / JPL / JHUAPL / MSSS / Justin Cowart

Dulovo Crater - Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter - From Aster Cowart (terrasabaea.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/2kfsBAq

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Simeon Schmauß

Ingenuity - on the ground after Flight 71 - Sol 1025 - From Simeon Schmauß (stim3on.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/2puLgtE

NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/Kevin M. Gill

MSL - Sol 3483 - ChemCam RMI - From Kevin M. Gill (kevinmgill.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/2nnSPRT

Opportunity MARS NASA / JPL-Caltech / Cornell / j. Roger

Opportunity (48) - From Jacint Roger (landru79.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/2iKWqtE

"Observation 004" panorama from the Chang'e 3 Lander Terrain Camera. Mosaic uses 41 frames acquired on December 17, 2013. Image Credit: Chinese Academy of Sciences / China National Space Administration / The Science and Application Center for Moon and Deepspace Exploration / Justin Cowart

Chang'e 3 - December 17, 2013 - From Aster Cowart (terrasabaea.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/DMd8Lh