The Sun as might be observed from Mars ;-)

Photo 1: Single exposure

Two days before the opposition of Mars, the Sun floats in space showing few spots towards the Earth and of course the Mars.

Photo 2: Seven stacked exposures

A hypothetical observer on Mars would see exactly the same side of the Sun like we do on Earth! That means he would see our neighbor star exactly as shown above, only a bit smaller.

Photo 3: Seven stacked exposures with false colors

The Sun has a diameter of 109 times that of Earth. [Source:wikipedia]

All photos are also available for download here.

Venus, Moon and Jupiter 2012

Venus, Moon and Jupiter one hour after the sunset. This photo is taken on Feb. 26th, 2012 near Stuttgart, Germany. A high resolution photo is available here.

M35 and NGC2158 in Gemini

"Oh, my God! It's full of stars!"

[Keir Dullea as Dave Bowman, 2001, A Space Odyssey]

Two apparent neighbor star clusters belong to the most attractive objects of the Gemini constellation. The small open cluster (NGC2158) is far behind the large one. The light of the 97 variable stars in NGC2158 needs almost 13000 years to reach the large open cluster (Messier 35) in the foreground.

Equipment: FSQ-106ED(f/5), Nikon d3100, Aperture(Mac), MaximDL. This photo is the result of three stacked, unguided exposures with 184+145+114 seconds.

The dying star in the Pinwheel galaxy

Good evening ladies and gentlemen! Do you remember the star exploded in the Pinwheel galaxy last year? I blogged my observation five months ago at http://xipteras.blogspot.com and since many people found that thread interesting I decided to revisit that galaxy again to find out how the supernova SN2011fe now looks like. From the beginning, it was clear for me, I had to use a bigger instrument than last year and a sensitive astrocamera exposing for a long time since the supernova remnant should be remarkably fainter now than last year. This time, I had to go really deep, so I made 7 sub exposures with 15 minutes each at 704mm focal length (f/5.4). I stacked and processed the sub exposures with special software to make it happen. Here is the galaxy M101 and the area around it. There is only one question now: "Can we still see the supernova remnant five months later?"

The answer is "Yes, we can!" See below:

"The Pinwheel Galaxy (also known as Messier 101 or NGC 5457) is a face-on spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major." [Source: Wikipedia]
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Find more information at: http://messier.seds.org or http://en.wikipedia.org
A high resolution photo is also available at: http://dark.astrodigital.net

A rose in the sky

This is the Rosette Nebula in the Monoceros constellation.
A high resolution photo is available at: http://dark.astrodigital.net

A man is running next to the Orion nebula

This is one of the best known celestial objects. Messier 42 is a combination of a bright emission and a reflection nebula. Do you see the running man next to it?
See also: http://dark.astrodigital.net

Look, there is a horse head in the sky!

The B33 and IC434 nebulas in Orion are among the most prominent regions of the northern winter sky. See also: http://dark.astrodigital.net/p465714843/ef0d2994

The Whirlpool galaxy

This is crop of the following photo. It has been shot at 750mm (f/5.5) FL and a color camera having 7.8x7.8mu pixels.

This is the wide view 1,8° x 1,2°.

A hires photo is available under: http://dark.astrodigital.net
Find more info at http://messier.seds.org or http://en.wikipedia.org

The Jupiter Zoo

What an amazing year! 2011 was a very productive one, offering our astronomy community numerous chances to capture the planets and especially the biggest one; Jupiter! Often, the atmospheric conditions were good enough to make high resolution planetary photography possible even from the backyard!

This is a short video clip of Jupiter on Sept. 26th, 2011 at 20:54 GMT, one month before its opposition. All photos have been taken at 3860mm focal length using a TIS DBK21 color camera on an old Dall Kirkham cassegrain telescope.

This RGB composite has been developed with the software Giotto by following certain processing steps described here. You can easily detect Jupiter's Great Red Spot, a storm having almost the same diameter as Earth. [Wikipedia]

Although Jupiter would need to be about 75 times as massive to fuse hydrogen and become a star, the smallest red dwarf is only about 30 percent larger in radius than Jupiter. [Wikipedia]

The shadow of Jupiter's icy moon Europa can be detected  as a dark spot on some of the images, an evidence of a Sun eclipse on Jupiter. However, this is something occuring frequently.

NGC 2232 in Monoceros

Here we are again! I wish you a happy new earth year 2012. Let's look at the stars again! Towards the galactic disk, in the Monoceros constellation, an impressive open star cluster called NGC2232 is visible even in small instruments. This group of stars has a brightness of 4.2 mag and an apparent size of 53 arcmin in our sky. It has a diameter of approx. 18 light years and its light travels 1200 years to reach our planet [Wikipedia]. A high resolution image is available at: http://dark.astrodigital.net.