Did stars form differently 12 billion years ago compared to how they form today? The cosmic environment of the early Universe was metal-poor – that is, it was depleted in heavy elements that astronomers call ‘metals’ and that are formed inside stars. These metals were sparse because not enough time had passed for sufficient generations…
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Image: KPNO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Massey/T. A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NOIRLab)/M. Zamani and D. de Martin (NOIRLab). This cavernous nebula is home to a bundle of young stars, specifically a triple system of T-Tauri stars. These are stars that are young, less than 100 million years old, and which haven’t yet ignited nuclear fusion reactions within their…
Image: ESO/VPHAS+ Team. Splashes of colour illustrate the clear difference between the two most populous type of bright nebulae in our Milky Way Galaxy. This image, taken by the wide-field OmegaCAM on the VLT Survey Telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, is dominated by the wine-red hue of an emission nebula called IC…
Mars and Jupiter lay within a degree on the morning of 19 March 2020. Image: David Blanchflower. Mars and Jupiter presently lie within a binocular field-of-view, though you’ll need to rise early to catch them lying around 20° high at about 3am BST. Both planets are hosted by the bright stars of the constellation of…
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On 9 August Saturn’s rings are tilted by 2.6°, a shallow enough angle to allow Titan to move behind Saturn at about 4.45am BST. Presently, there are a number of events taking place involving Saturn’s moons. Saturn’s moons revolve in the plane of Saturn’s equator, so the outline of their orbits matches that of the…
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A Perseid meteor from 2015. Image: Alan Tough. The annual Perseid meteor shower has been underway since last month and it predicted to reach its usual eagerly-anticipated maximum early next week, on 12 August between 13h and 16h UT. The Perseids is the year’s most popular meteor shower and one of the major highlights on…
Read More “the return of summer’s shooting star spectacular! – Astronomy Now” »
Saturn is occulted by a near full Moon on the pre-dawn of 21 August in an event visible across the UK. From London, Saturn disappears behind the Moon’s bright limb at 4.27am BST, only to reappear at 5.20am. Titan is occulted too. AN graphics by Greg Smye-Rumsby. Let’s hope for some clear skies on the…
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Processing images in wavelengths outside the visible range of the spectrum can lead to spectacular results — like this iconic James Webb Space Telescope view of the so-called Cosmic Cliffs. The gas and dust in the field of view surrounds NGC 3324 near the Carina Nebula. The filters used in this image range from 0.9…
Read More “JWST sees light invisible to the eye. These scientists decide how to color it” »
This 1874 lithograph was created by Étienne Léopold Trouvelot with the 15-inch refractor at the Harvard College Observatory, for the purpose of measuring the nebula’s extent. A glass plate with dark black lines was placed on the focus of the telescope for marking placement. No wonder it shows no central star. Credit: Annals of the…
In living color | Astronomy Magazine false product in-living-color https://www.astronomy.com/picture-of-the-day/photo/in-living-color/ In living color | Astronomy Magazine Daniel Phillips from Oceanside, California The open cluster NGC 6823 in Vulpecular is ensconced within the emission nebula Sharpless 2–83, bursting with color in this Hubble-palette rendition. Reaching inward toward the cluster are pillarlike tendrils of star-forming cold, dense…
