Check out these Astronomy data processing images:

Jupiter!


Image by Joshua Bury
After imaging the other night (more data for the Dumbbell) I decided to turn the scope towards Jupiter. Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it so good! Seeing was excellent (in my uncalibrated opinion). The Great Red Spot was obvious as was this conspicuous dark spot near the center of Jupiter’s disk. Anyway, it was a no-brainer to get out the webcam and take some frames.

The dark spot on Jupiter sure does look like a shadow from one of it’s moons but according to all the calculators I consulted the only thing crossing Jupiter while I was recording was Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon. Europa can be seen in the upper left corner of the frame. Jupiter’s current apparent diameter is 48 arcminutes.

Date: 07/23/2009
Time of shot: ~11:00 UTC
Scope: C9.25 with 2x barlow (approx. 4700mm EFL)
Mount: CGEM
Cam: Philips SPC900NC
Other info: ~1000 frames registered and stacked in Registax v5, additional processing in Photoshop CS4. Shutter speed was 1/50s and gain was set to ~40%.

Milky Way Has a ‘Heart of Darkness’ (NASA, Chandra, 01/05/10)


Image by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center
Astronomers have long known that the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, known as Sagittarius A* (or Sgr A* for short), is a particularly poor eater. The fuel for this black hole comes from powerful winds blown off dozens of massive young stars that are concentrated nearby. These stars are located a relatively large distance away from Sgr A*, where the gravity of the black hole is weak, and so their high-velocity winds are difficult for the black hole to capture and swallow. Scientists have previously calculated that Sgr A* should consume only about 1 percent of the fuel carried in the winds.

However, it now appears that Sgr A* consumes even less than expected — ingesting only about one percent of that one percent. Why does it consume so little? The answer may be found in a new theoretical model developed using data from a very deep exposure made by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. This model considers the flow of energy between two regions around the black hole: an inner region that is close to the so-called event horizon (the boundary beyond which even light cannot escape), and an outer region that includes the black hole’s fuel source — the young stars — extending up to a million times farther out. Collisions between particles in the hot inner region transfer energy to particles in the cooler outer region via a process called conduction. This, in turn, provides additional outward pressure that makes nearly all of the gas in the outer region flow away from the black hole. The model appears to explain well the extended shape of hot gas detected around Sgr A* in X-rays as well as features seen in other wavelengths.

This Chandra image of Sgr A* and the surrounding region is based on data from a series of observations lasting a total of about one million seconds, or almost two weeks. Such a deep observation has given scientists an unprecedented view of the supernova remnant near Sgr A* (known as Sgr A East) and the lobes of hot gas extending for a dozen light years on either side of the black hole. These lobes provide evidence for powerful eruptions occurring several times over the last ten thousand years.

Read entire caption/view more images: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2010/sgra/

Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/MIT/F. Baganoff, R. Shcherbakov et al.

Caption credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Read more about Chandra:
www.nasa.gov/chandra

p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We’d love to have you as a member!

M45 and California Nebula (without stars)


Image by yuriy.toropin
QSI-583ws + Voigtlander APO Lanthar 90mm f/3.5 (@3.5) + Astrotrac TT320X

2 frames mosaic
M45 frame:
RGB = (19, 19, 12) x 5 min = 250 min
California frame:
RGB = (5,5,5) x 5 min = 75 min

Processing is in PI 1.6.1.
Stars completely removed for better visibility of dark nebulae complex (some Clone’ing was done to clean-up the mosaic from remaining "ghosts" of the brightest stars).

Data obtained on Aug 10 – 15, 2010 under dark sky near to Mezmay, Krasnodar region, south of Russia.

Tags: astronomy, Data, Nice, photos, processing  |  Posted under Software  |    52 Comments