John Champion

The buff-tip moth (Phalera bucephala) has mastered a very particular kind of camouflage.

When they close their wings up, they resemble a broken twig.

Native to large parts of Europe, there's regional pattern variation that reflects the local tree species. This one best resembles birch twigs?

The light from those galaxies appear here as warped arcs.

📸: ESA/NASA/CSA; H. Atek, M. Zamani

Field of galaxies with a bright white center. Around this are curved glowing red streaks, which are distant background galaxies warped by gravitational lensing

JWST’s newest deep-field image, collected by staring at a single area of the sky for 120 hours shows a strong gravitational lens. At the center is Abell S1063, a galaxy cluster so massive it functions like a giant cosmic magnifying glass allowing us to “zoom in” to reveal faint and distant galaxies.

This remarkable image shows an early dawn scene on Mars. The local time is 4:27 AM, the outermost Martian moon Deimos shines in the dusty sky. Simeon Schmauß did the initial highly involved processing of this originally very grainy and low contrast image. Obtaining this photo stretched the capabilities of the rovers wide angle color Navigation camera. I worked to even out the color balance across the image, then tonally adjusted the view of the actually quite dark scene to more closely resemble to what the camera was seeing. To do this I took Simeon's result and in Photoshop made two versions of color corrections. One was done by adjusting the channels separately while looking at the color image so they didn't lean toward red etc. in wide areas of the frame, using feathered selections of wide areas of the color scene and adjusting them in 'curves' to remove red, green etc bias in different portions of the sky. Then on a second pristine version I extracted all three color channels as grayscale files and treated them separately. When doing this I applied feathered selections that were tonally adjusted as well as delicately dodged and burned obvious splotchiness etc across the sky that obviously arose from the initial processing of such marginal data. I then recombined the reworked color channels into a new color image. This ended up with two similar but subtly different results. I then combined the two to ‘average out’ the methods and ended up with a tonally and color 'smoothed' result. The final step was to adjust the luminance and contrast to bring out the presumed actual dim dramatic lighting.

This image of the early dawn on Mars was obtained March 1, 2025 on the 1,433rd Martian day, or Sol, of the Perseverance Rover. Simeon Schmauß did the initial highly involved processing of this dim light image, I then evened out the color response across that image and made overall tonal adjustments.

DON’T PANIC…it’s Towel Day. In honour of Douglas Adams. #TowelDay #DouglasAdams

💍 The Ring Nebula (M57), is a famous planetary one located about 2300 light-years away from us 🌍 in the constellation Lyra. It represents the glowing shell of ionized gas ejected by a dying star similar to our Sun, forming a beautiful ring-like structure.

#Messier57 #Astrophotography #Vespera2 ✨🔭🤖

The Moon at waxing gibbous phase on a dark background.

Waxing Gibbous Moon. 2002UT 7 May 2025. 🔭 🧪 🎨 #astrophotography #SciArt #photography #StormHour #ThePhotoHour

The sun is behind the tree, 22° above it is an upper tangent arc balanced like a wobbly hat on a solar halo, and above that is a huge suprateral arc, like a wide and colour-inverted rainbow (but not opposite the sun as a true rainbow would be)

Fantastic #atmosphericoptics in the Lincolnshire sky at the moment: dazzling upper tangent arc on a faint solar halo, surrounded by a massive colourful supralateral arc (details in ALT) #stormhour

Bright orange planet mars above right of centre. The Beehive star cluster at left of centre. Many star dots on a dark background.

I've just submitted my image from last week of "Mars and the Beehive" to Astronomy Now magazine. 🔭 🧪 🎨 #astrophotography #SciArt #photography #StormHour #ThePhotoHour

✨🔭🙂 Mars and the Beehive Cluster are easy to spot, especially with binoculars, and even small ones will perfectly work tonight.

Wanna more?

Check out my binoculars review “Stars in Your Hands: Unlocking the Wonders of the Night Sky” at com.xipteras.org/Engineering/... #stargazing

Black Kite showing very well soaring over Wood Lane landfill

Black Kite (centre) soaring over Wood Lane landfill with a Red Kite and a Crow

Black Kite being chased by a Red Kite over Wood Lane landfill. The Black always looked smaller and more compact than the range Reds

Black Kite soaring over Wood Lane landfill with constantly attendant Crows

Wow. Went out hoping the damp easterlies might produce a Black Tern, and found a BLACK KITE 💥 The first for #shropshirebirding hanging over Wood Lane landfill with 5 Red Kites, on view constantly for 2hrs! Absolutely awesome

Unusual #CrepuscularRays over the #SwaleEstuary created by an #AltocumulusUndulatus veil seen from Tankerton @whitstablelive.bsky.social
@cloudappsoc.bsky.social @stormhour.bsky.social @thephotohour.bsky.social
@metoffice.bsky.social #StormHour #loveukweather

✨ Bootes is a prominent #constellations in the northern hemisphere's spring sky, often referred to as Shepherd. It's one of the larger constellations and is easily identified by its kite shaped pattern and its brightest star, Arcturus, see my photo below. #stars

Read: x.com/xipteras/sta...

In #Okinawa, coastal fishermen now farm #coral, restoring #reefs like planting trees in a forest. With #ocean temperatures rising, half the world’s coral reefs have already vanished. These farmers are fighting back, one fragment at a time.

[Heppoko Taylor]

Image by @xipteras.org

#Moon 🌓 Waxing Gibbous  (9.59 days old) in Leo ♌️ on April, 07 2025.

A brightly coloured circumzenithal arc high in the sky above the trees. Formed by light refracting through ice crystals in the high cirrus clouds

Nice bright #circumzenithalarc on this evening's walk around the fields 😍 #atmospericoptics

Adult male Goshawk with a full crop powering back to the wood

Day-flying bat whipping back and forth over our heads as it hunted for insects

The first singing Blackcap of the year at #salopobs was eclipsed by this superb male Gos returning from a breakfast meeting with a Woodpigeon, and this afternoon we had a close encounter with a day-flying bat (ID suggestions welcomed)

Holly Blue on, er, holly

Peacock butterfly on flint

Small Tortoiseshell on the path

Dark-edged Bee-fly on the side of the road

In a butterfly bad news week, it was nice to see a lot of butterflies! (spot the odd one out) @savebutterflies.bsky.social 🦋

Faint pink beams of aurora emerging from the glow of a Saturday night in Shrewsbury, taken from the back garden at 2138

Slightest pink beams of #aurora battling the moonlight and light pollution from the back garden 20 minutes ago. Always nice to see 🧐 #Shropshire

🔭 New comet in the sky
Discovered in SOHO satellite images in late March, comet SWAN25F was reported by Michael Mattiazzo on April 1. It's moving rapidly through the constellation Pegasus and has already been confirmed by observers worldwide.
Image Kumagya Kimura 🧵

Image of an open star cluster, featuring many bright stars, mostly bluish, some orangish in color, each with four small diffraction spikes. One group in the center is shaped somewhat like a tall beehive hairdo. Many more smaller stars without spikes are seen as well, all against a black background

Messier 44, the Beehive Cluster, ~600 light years away.
Can be seen unaided as a faint fuzzy patch of light in the heart of Cancer.
#astrophotography #stars #soace

#ClairObscur visible on the #Moon this weekend: Sat 5th Apr 1pm UK time: #LunarX & V, 8:55pm: #FaceInAlbategnius, 10:40pm #NessieInPtolemaeus. Sun 6th April 3am #StarsOfAristillus, 11:40pm #PlatosHook. Mon 7th Apr 2am #EyesOfClavius

A monochrome photo of a seemingly lost and misplaced pair of acorn cupules resting softly along a sandy shore. The inside of one cap is lightly filled with sand as the setting sun casts a long shadow of them and some nearby dune grass eastward. They rest in a small indent of sand that has been blown away around them as they gradually get buried.

A monochrome shot of some acorn tops oddly out of place but ending up settled on a sandy shore. One of the caps is lightly filled with sand as the setting sun casts their elongated shadow
_ _ _
#photography #monochrome #bnw #acorns #art #sand #beach #shadow #blackandwhite #artyear #nature #outdoors

Bright orange Mars above left of bottom edge. Star dot Pollux above. Star Castor dot below middle of top edge. Many other fainter star dots.

Mars, Pollux, and Castor from last night. 3 April 2025. 🔭 🧪 🎨 #astrophotography #SciArt #photography #StormHour #ThePhotoHour

A spiral galaxy stretches diagonally across the image, from upper-left to lower-right. At its center is a bright-white, glowing orb surrounded by an inner disk of golden light that is wrapped by a broad outer disk that glows more dimly. The disk holds patchy, broken spiral arms swirling around the galaxy’s core and filled with small blue and pink star clusters. Dark, reddish threads of dust also spiral through the disk, with some strands reaching into the core.

TODAY’S NEW HUBBLE IMAGE SHOWING
GALAXY NGC 4941 WHICH IS 67 MILLION LIGHT-YEARS AWAY!! 🌌

M3 Globular Cluster -21 mins Seestar S50. Straight from the phone.
#astrophotography #astronomy

The M106 speak galaxy stands out just above the center of the image. It's inclined to us, and low surface brightness light continues out from the central over density, looking a little warped. There are a few other galaxies in the image, one just above M106, another distant edge on disk towards the top right, and another towards the bottom

A sky full of galaxies! M106 and its environs with my Seestar 🔭✨

This is a non-political space. I am online to appreciate nature—land, sky, and the places we call home—seen through my calm, photographic lens. No noise, fear, or pressure. Just quiet perspective. If that resonates with you, you're in the right place.

I follow real people. Welcome, and thank you. 🙏

The waxing crescent on 3 April is 32% illuminated. #moon