"The Universe Tree" In Frutillar, Chile // Tomás Andonie (a 19-year-old!)

Spent the last week diving head first into Solar imaging

by Curt Morgan

NGC 7023, Iris Nebula

2025 January 24

Comet G3 ATLAS: a Tail and a Telescope Image Credit & Copyright: Yuri Beletsky (Carnegie Las Campanas Observatory, TWAN)

Explanation: Comet C/2024 G3 ATLAS has made a dramatic appearance in planet Earth’s skies. A visitor from the distant Oort Cloud, the comet reached its perihelion on January 13. On January 19, the bright comet was captured here from ESO Paranal Observatory in the Atacama desert in Chile. Sporting spectacular sweeping dust tails, this comet ATLAS is setting in the southern hemisphere twilight and was clearly visible to the unaided eye. In the foreground is the closed shell of one of the observatory’s famous auxiliary telescopes. Still wowing southern hemisphere observers, the comet’s bright coma has become diffuse, its icy nucleus apparently disintegrating following its close approach to the Sun.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250124.html

“If you cannot find peace within yourself, you will never find it anywhere else.”

-Marvin Gaye

High definition Newly taken shots by NASA Mountain Olympus Mons on Mars, its twice as tall as Mount Everest

Horsehead and Orion Nebulae

Credits: Dale J. Martin, Massapoag Pond Obs.

Milky Way at Quairading, Western Australia

Nikon d5500 - 50mm - ISO 4000 - f/2.8 - Foreground: 21 x 20 seconds - Sky: 34 x 30 seconds - iOptron SkyTracker - Hoya Red Intensifier filter

Mineral Moon by Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy

2022 May 29

Simulation TNG50: A Galaxy Cluster Forms Video Credit: IllustrisTNG Project; Visualization: Dylan Nelson (Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics) et al. Music: Symphony No. 5 (Ludwig van Beethoven), via YouTube Audio Library

Explanation: How do clusters of galaxies form? Since our universe moves too slowly to watch, faster-moving computer simulations are created to help find out. A recent effort is TNG50 from IllustrisTNG, an upgrade of the famous Illustris Simulation. The first part of the featured video tracks cosmic gas (mostly hydrogen) as it evolves into galaxies and galaxy clusters from the early universe to today, with brighter colors marking faster moving gas. As the universe matures, gas falls into gravitational wells, galaxies forms, galaxies spin, galaxies collide and merge, all while black holes form in galaxy centers and expel surrounding gas at high speeds. The second half of the video switches to tracking stars, showing a galaxy cluster coming together complete with tidal tails and stellar streams. The outflow from black holes in TNG50 is surprisingly complex and details are being compared with our real universe. Studying how gas coalesced in the early universe helps humanity better understand how our Earth, Sun, and Solar System originally formed.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap220529.html

The glaciers of Switzerland during sunset

Switzerland by Max Rive