https://parimahspace.blogspot.com/Astrophotography, also known as astronomical imaging, is photography of astronomical objects, celestial events, and areas of the night sky. Astrophotography on a Phone, Camera, Telescope and....Anyone with a camera can take astro-photos; even if you have a just smartphone, you can do astrophotography. Seriously!

ATCA Radio Telescope

 The Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), at the Paul Wild Observatory, is an array of six 22-m antennas used for radio astronomy
Made up of six identical antennas, the Telescope Compact Array is used by astronomers to study the structure and evolution of our Universe

Cygnus Nebula 
The Cygnus Loop - radio Source (W 78 , or .Sharpless103) is a large supernova remnant . SNR . in the constellation Cygnus , an emission  nebula measuring nearly 3 across . N1. Some arcs of the loop , known collectively as the Veil Nebula or Cirrus Nebula emit in visible light . N2 . Radio , infrared and X - ray images reveal the complete loop.
Source : Spitzer
+NASA 

The center of our Milky Way Galaxy is hidden from the prying eyes of optical telescopes by clouds of obscuring dust and gas. But in this stunning vista, the Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared cameras, penetrate much of the dust revealing the stars of the crowded galactic center region. A mosaic of many smaller snapshots, the detailed, false-color image shows older, cool stars in bluish hues. Reddish glowing dust clouds are associated with young, hot stars in stellar nurseries. The galactic center lies some 26,000 light-years away, toward the constellation Sagittarius. At that distance, this picture spans about 900 light - years.
+NASA 

A Powerful Eye into Deep Space.
The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) - which has been spearheaded by UC and the California Institute of Technology since 2003 - will be built and run by a consortium of universities and scientific organizations from around the world.
Special adaptive optics will correct for the blurring of Earth’s atmosphere, enabling the TMT to study the universe as clearly as if the telescope were in space (In fact, it has 12 times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope).
Once finished, the new telescope will allow astronomers to see faint objects clearer than ever before:
It will be able to focus on and identify extremely distant structures that currently appear as blurry smudges in the Hubble Deep Field. As yet, no one knows what these objects are.
This new resolution will provide insights into the both dark matter and dark energy. And it will widen the search for planets orbiting stars outside our solar system. For the first time, we will be able to routinely image direct light from these exoplanets, garnering information on their atmospheric chemistry and dynamics.
The new TMT will also be able to see further back in time than any previous telescope, all the way back to the formation of the first stars and galaxies that followed the universe’s “ Dark Ages.”

The Pelican Nebula is an region associated with the North America Nebula in the constellation Cygnus. The gaseous contortions of this emission nebula bear a resemblance to a pelican, giving rise to its name. The Pelican Nebula is located nearby first magnitude star Deneb, and is divided from its more prominent neighbour, the North America Nebula, by a molecular cloud filled with dark dust.
The Pelican is much studied because it has a particularly active mix of star formation and evolving gas clouds. The light from young energetic stars is slowly transforming cold gas to hot and causing an ionization front gradually to advance outward. Particularly dense filaments of cold gas are seen to still remain, and among these are found two jets emitted from the Herbig – Haro object 555. Millions of years from now this nebula might no longer be known as the Pelican, as the balance and placement of stars and gas will leave something that appears completely different.

+NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory     +NASA 

+Hubble Space Telescope 

The Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) is a radio telescope array located at the Murchison Radio - Astronomy Observatory (MRO) in the Australian Mid West. ASKAP consists of 36 identical parabolic antennas, each 12 meters in diameter, working together as a single instrument with a total collecting area of ​​approximately 4,000 square meters.It is operated by the government research agency CSIRO and forms part of the Australia Telescope National Facility.The ASKAP's combination of high-speed survey and high sensitivity will allow for activities such as research on the creation and early evolution of the Universe, analyzing cosmic magnetism, testing predictions of the general relativity theory, mapping black holes and exploring galaxy origins.ASKAP is also a technology demonstration for the International Square Kilometre Array (SKA), a planned radio telescope that is planned to be the world's largest and most sensitive. The ASKAP's home, the MRO, has also been selected as one of the SKA's two central locations.Construction on ASKAP began in late 2009, and it was opened in October 2012, ready to become the world's fastest radio clarifying needle radio telescope

Real NASA Projects. Mars Mission

Hubble Space Telescope

  Aug. 4, 2017  -  Pacman Nebula  
High - mass stars are important because they are responsible for much of the energy pumped into our galaxy over its lifetime. Unfortunately, these stars are poorly understood because they are often found relatively far away and can be obscured by gas and dust. The star cluster NGC 281 is an exception to this rule. It is located about 9,200 light years from Earth and, remarkably, almost 1,000 light years above the plane of the Galaxy, giving astronomers a nearly unfettered view of the star formation within it. This composite image of NGC 281 contains X - ray data from Chandra (purple) with infrared observations from Spitzer (red, green, blue). The high - mass stars in NGC 281 drive many aspects of their galactic environment through powerful winds flowing from their surfaces and intense radiation that heats surrounding gas, "boiling it away" into interstellar space. This process results in the formation of large columns of gas and dust, as seen on the left side of the image. These structures likely contain newly forming stars.

The eventual deaths of massive stars as supernovas will also seed the galaxy with material and energy. NGC 281 is known informally as the "Pacman Nebula" because of its appearance in optical images. In optical images the "mouth" of the Pacman character appears dark because of obscuration by dust and gas, but in the infrared Spitzer image the dust in this region glows brightly. 
Chandra X-ray Observatory

Revolutionary Telescope Gets Green Light

An 82-foot telescope boasting ten times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope has successfully passed design reviews and is ready to be constructed. The Giant Magellan Telescope will use a light-collecting mirror surface more than six times the area of current instruments to hunt for distant, potentially habitable planets and let astronomers time travel back to a billion years after the Big Bang. Huge improvements in resolution are expected from the telescope’s adaptive optics system, which will flex secondary mirrors to compensate for atmospheric turbulence that normally distorts starlight.An international consortium managing the project has chosen a remote Andean mountaintop in Chile to build the telescope. Technicians have already begun fabricating three of the device’s seven primary mirrors at a lab in Arizona. “I am delighted with the very positive results of the design and the cost reviews,” said Wendy Freedman, director of the Carnegie Institution for Science observatories and chair of the board overseeing the project, in a statement. “Along with the successful casting of the first three 8.4-meter primary mirrors and the leveling of the mountaintop in Chile, each step brings us closer to construction.”Backers of the telescope, which is expected to begin operating in a decade, say it will usher in a revolution in human knowledge about the universe.

Gifs made from video courtesy of the Giant Magellan Telescope.

Parimah Salehi 

 More About the Mission :  1997 - 2017  Cassini
After two decades in space, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has ended its remarkable journey of exploration. Having expended almost every bit of the rocket propellant it carried to Saturn, operators deliberately plunged Cassini into the planet to ensure Saturn's moons remain pristine for future exploration — in particular, the ice-covered, ocean - bearing moon Enceladus, but also Titan, with its intriguing pre - biotic chemistry.
Beginning in 2010, Cassini began a seven-year mission extension in which it completed many moon flybys while observing seasonal changes on Saturn and Titan. The plan for this phase of the mission was to expend all of the spacecraft's propellant while exploring Saturn, ending with a plunge into the planet's atmosphere. In April 2017, Cassini was placed on an impact course that unfolded over five months of daring dives — a series of 22 orbits that each passed between the planet and its rings. Called the Grand Finale, this final phase of the mission brought unparalleled observations of the planet and its rings from closer than ever before.
On Sept. 15, 2017, the spacecraft made its final approach to the giant planet Saturn. But this encounter was like no other. This time, Cassini dived into the planet's atmosphere, sending science data for as long as its small thrusters could keep the spacecraft's antenna pointed at Earth. Soon after, Cassini burned up and disintegrated like a meteor.
To its very end, Cassini was a mission of thrilling exploration. Launched on Oct. 15, 1997, the mission entered orbit around Saturn on June 30, 2004 (PDT), carrying the European Huygens probe. After its four-year prime mission, Cassini's tour was extended twice. Its key discoveries included the global ocean with indications of hydrothermal activity within Enceladus, and liquid methane seas on Titan.
And although the spacecraft may be gone, its enormous collection of data about Saturn— the giant planet itself, its magnetosphere, rings and moons — will continue to yield new discoveries for decades.
The Grand Finale
In April 2017, NASA's Cassini spacecraft began writing the final, thrilling chapter of its remarkable 20 - year-long story of exploration: its Grand Finale.
Every week, Cassini dived through the approximately 1,200 - mile - wide (2,000 - kilometer - wide) gap between Saturn and its rings. No other spacecraft had ever explored this unique region.
A final close flyby of the moon Titan on April 22 used the moon's gravity to reshape Cassini's trajectory so that the spacecraft leapt over the planet's icy rings to pass between the rings and Saturn. During 22 such passes over about five months, the spacecraft's altitude above Saturn's clouds varied from about 1,000 to 2,500 miles (1,600 to 4,000 kilometers), thanks to occasional distant passes by Titan that shifted the closest approach distance. At times, Cassini skirted the very inner edge of the rings; at other times, it skimmed the outer edges of the atmosphere. During its final five orbits, its orbit passed through Saturn's uppermost atmosphere, before finally plunging directly into the planet on Sept. 15. 

Discovery

Mission of the moon

 Spacewalk  

Andromeda galaxy - GIF

Spiral galaxies form a class of galaxy originally described by Edwin Hubble in his 1936 work The Realm of the Nebulae and, as such, form part of the Hubble sequence. Most spiral galaxies consist of a flat, rotating disk containing stars, gas and dust, and a central concentration of stars known as the bulge. These are often surrounded by a much fainter halo of stars, many of which reside in globular clusters.
Spiral galaxies are named by their spiral structures that extend from the center into the galactic disc. The spiral arms are sites of ongoing star formation and are brighter than the surrounding disc because of the young, hot OB stars that inhabit them.
Together with irregular galaxies, spiral galaxies make up approximately 60% of galaxies in today's universe. They are mostly found in low-density regions and are rare in the centers of galaxy clusters.
is a stunning example of a grand-design spiral galaxy that is viewed by Earth observers nearly face-on. Its perfectly symmetrical spiral arms emanate from the central nucleus and are dotted with clusters of young blue stars and glowing pink regions of ionized hydrogen (hydrogen atoms that have lost their electrons). These regions of star formation show an excess of light at ultraviolet wavelengths.Tracing along the spiral arms are winding dust lanes that also begin very near the galaxy's nucleus and follow along the length of the spiral arms.
Image Credit: +European Space Agency, ESA and +NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory Collaboration.

M81 is a spiral galaxy about 12 million light years away that is both relatively large in the sky and bright, making it a frequent target for both amateur and professional astronomers. this image is part of a "quartet of galaxies" collaboration of professional and amateur astronomers that combines optical data from amateur telescopes with data from the archives of NASA missions. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., controls Chandra's science and flight operations
 Last Updated: Aug. 4, 2017

March 28, 2017 / Source: +European Southern Observatory (ESO) +NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory
ESO’s VLT Views Stars Born in Winds from Supermassive Black Holes
Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope, astronomers have revealed stars forming within powerful outflows of material blasted out from supermassive black holes at the cores of galaxies. These are the first confirmed observations of stars forming in this kind of extreme environment. The discovery has many consequences for understanding galaxy properties and evolution.
A UK - led group of European astronomers used the MUSE and X - shooter instruments on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile to study an ongoing collision between two galaxies, known collectively as IRAS F23128 - 5919, that lie around 600 million light - years from Earth. The group observed the colossal winds of material - or outflows - that originate near the supermassive black hole at the heart of the pair’s southern galaxy, and have found the first clear evidence that stars are being born within them.
Such galactic outflows are driven by the huge energy output from the active and turbulent centers of galaxies. Supermassive black holes lurk in the cores of most galaxies, and when they gobble up matter they also heat the surrounding gas and expel it from the host galaxy in powerful, dense winds.
Astronomers have thought for a while that conditions within these outflows could be right for star formation, but no one has seen it actually happening as it’s a very difficult observation, comments team leader Roberto Maiolino from the University of Cambridge. Our results are exciting because they show unambiguously that stars are being created inside these outflows.
Co - author Helen Russell (Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, UK) expands: The stars that form in the wind close to the galaxy center might slow down and even start heading back inwards, but the stars that form further out in the flow experience less deceleration and can even fly off out of the galaxy altogether.

The Pleiades (star cluster)  NGC1432

The Pleiades (star cluster) (NGC1432) : One of the best known, and most photographed of all open star clusters, the Pleiades is often called the Seven Sisters and is often wrongly identified as the “little dipper” by beginners. This very near cluster is estimated at 115 million years old, is located only 440 light years away and contains over 3000 young stars. It also contains some very faint blue reflection nebulas, which show up only in long photographic exposures. As the cluster passes through a large dust cloud in the Milky Way, the reflected light of the hot blue stars of the cluster illuminates the dust and gas. The cloud and the stars are not connected, and both are moving at different speeds

Neutron Stars

A very small dense star that is composed mostly of tightly-packed neutrons (Neutronium). 

This hard-to-see body, the remnant of a star after it has exploded as a supernova, has a thin atmosphere of superhot hydrogen plasma and a crust made up mainly of iron and other heavy nuclei. It has a diameter of about 5-16 km and a density of roughly 1015 gm/cm3. Beneath the crust lies a mantle of superfluid Neutronium, which can become mixed with quark matter at the core. Most neutron stars rotate rapidly, with periods ranging from a few seconds down to milliseconds.

Neutron star in the Einstein's Revenge Cluster, home to Hildemar's knots.

Magnetar - Neuron Star

Neutron -  Uncharged atomic nuclear particle. It has a mass slightly greater than a proton. In beta decay, a neutron decays into a proton, an electron, and an anti-neutrino. - Pulsar

Neutron stars additionally have effective attractive fields which can quicken nuclear particles around its attractive posts creating intense light emissions. Those bars clear around like monstrous searchlight pillars as the star turns. On the off chance that such a bar is arranged so that it intermittently indicates the Earth, we watch it as normal beats of radiation that happen at whatever point the attractive post clears past the observable pathway. For this situation, the neutron star is known as a pulsar.

By : Parimah Salehi

Solar System.

The Solar System is the gravitationally bound system comprising the Sun and the objects that orbit it, either directly or indirectly. Of those objects that orbit the Sun directly, the largest eight are the planets, with the remainder being significantly smaller objects, such as dwarf planets and small Solar System bodies. Of the objects that orbit the Sun indirectly, the moons, two are larger than the smallest planet, Mercury.

The Solar System formed 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of a giant interstellar molecular cloud. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun, with most of the remaining mass contained in Jupiter. The four smaller inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, are terrestrial planets, being primarily composed of rock and metal. The four outer planets are giant planets, being substantially more massive than the terrestrials. The two largest, Jupiter and Saturn, are gas giants, being composed mainly of hydrogen and helium; the two outermost planets, Uranus and Neptune, are ice giants, being composed mostly of substances with relatively high melting points compared with hydrogen and helium, called ices, such as water, ammonia and methane. All planets have almost circular orbits that lie within a nearly flat disc called the ecliptic.

The Solar System also contains smaller objects. The asteroid belt, which lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, mostly contains objects composed, like the terrestrial planets, of rock and metal. Beyond Neptune's orbit lie the Kuiper belt and scattered disc, which are populations of trans-Neptunian objects composed mostly of ices, and beyond them a newly discovered population of sednoids. Within these populations are several dozen to possibly tens of thousands of objects large enough that they have been rounded by their own gravity. Such objects are categorized as dwarf planets. Identified dwarf planets include the asteroid Ceres and the trans-Neptunian objects Pluto and Eris. In addition to these two regions, various other small-body populations, including comets, centaurs and interplanetary dust, freely travel between regions. Six of the planets, at least four of the dwarf planets, and many of the smaller bodies are orbited by natural satellites, usually termed "moons" after the Moon. Each of the outer planets is encircled by planetary rings of dust and other small objects.

The solar wind, a stream of charged particles flowing outwards from the Sun, creates a bubble-like region in the interstellar medium known as the heliosphere. The heliopause is the point at which pressure from the solar wind is equal to the opposing pressure of interstellar wind; it extends out to the edge of the scattered disc. The Oort cloud, which is thought to be the source for long-period comets, may also exist at a distance roughly a thousand times further than the heliosphere. The Solar System is located in the Orion Arm, 26,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way

The James Webb Space Telescope (sometimes called JWST) is a large, infrared-optimized space telescope. The project is working to a 2018 launch date. Webb will find the first galaxies that formed in the early Universe, connecting the Big Bang to our own MIlky Way Glaxy. Webb will peer through dusty clouds to see stars forming planetary systems, connecting the Milky Way to our own Solar System. Webb's instruments are designed to work primarily in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum, with some capability in the visible range. Webb will have a large primary mirror, 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) in diameter and a sunshield the size of a tennis court. Both the mirror and sunshade won't fit onto the Ariane 5 rocket fully open, so both will fold up and open once Webb is in outer space. Webb will operate in an orbit about 1.5 million km (1 million miles) from the Earth. The James Webb Space Telescope was named after the NASA Administrator who crafted Apollo program, and who was a staunch supporter of space science.

From : Parimah  Salehi , University of Vienna 2016