[sparky@home]

NASA’s InSight mission successfully landed on Elysium Planitia, Mars, on 26 November 2018, at around 19:54 UTC. The InSight lander, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is a NASA mission designed to study Mars’ interior structure.

https://youtu.be/RVzzgwVyH4Y

[sparky@home]

The shadow of the Earth and the Venus Belt loom above the horizon behind the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma in this panorama of astrophotographer Chirag Upreti.
(Image: © Chirag Upreti)

In this beautiful panorama of the Canary Islands, the planet Earth casts a shadow over its own atmosphere, creating a dark blue arc at dusk. Directly above the shadow is a pink glow known as the Belt of Venus, the sky.
The astrophotographer Chirag Upreti took this view from the island of La Palma, which contains some of the most powerful telescopes in the world. Here you can see the Nordic optical telescope (left) and the William Herschel telescope, the large white telescope with onion-shaped dome. To its right are several smaller telescopes, including the Dutch Open Telescope, the Swedish Solar Telescope and the Isaac Newton Telescope.

Link : https://newsbeezer.com/the-shadow-of...anorama-photo/

[KrisTvpm]

Despite scouring T-BHP for the last 7years or so, I don't know how I missed THIS ONE. Astronomy/SETI/secrets of the universe (is it uni or multi !?)/ general/special theories of relativity, string theory etc. are very close to my heart since childhood! Having had the fortune to grow up in a village with relatively pristine skies I've been stargazing right from childhood, and have made many a sightings with the help of those detailed maps of constellations from illustrated weekly etc.

So other than Ayrton Senna/Schumacher/Paul Walker et al, my heroes had been Einstein, Fermi, Sagan, Hawking, Michiko, and so on causing a disdainful frown on the missus' brows when I spend time on these.
Though I don't own any pro tools for stargazing/photography, have a basic telescope and couple of basic DSLRs, and try my luck at whatever celestial object I can sight (with the limited visibility from the highly dusty/polluted Bengaluru skies !).

Some snaps I took, just our humble moon - Nikon Coolpix B700 with moon-view/focus. Some day with good tools - the milkyway & auroras!







Really gleeful for stumbling upon this gem of a thread Likeminded T-BHPians, please bring those amazing posts on!

[KomS_CarLog]

Good shots, Kris The humble moon never ceases to amaze and mesmerise.

You don't really need specialised tools to get a good shot of the milky way. Rather, all you need is a dark sky, a tripod and a good camera.

I managed a few milky way shots with my Nikon D5100 and a nornal lens. Infact, I got these with out a tripod. I shall try to upload them here in the next few days

[KomS_CarLog]

As suggested in my previous post, I am attaching a photo of the night sky

[KrisTvpm]

Originally Posted by KomS_CarLog

As suggested in my previous post, I am attaching a photo of the night sky

Wow, that's a nice shot! May I ask which lens did you use for this ? And any filter ? I use a basic DSLR - Canon EOS D1500 (Rebel7) with kit lens(18-55 & 55-250). Do you think with this it'd be possible to get such a shot ?

Guess from where I am, getting an unpolluted (both light & particulate) non-hazy sky is a challenge. Need to goto some nearby villages/hills to have such.

[KomS_CarLog]

I used my old 18-200mm Tamaron. Yup, you certainly can get a good shot with what you have

[Meccanico]

Finally submitted my final year research project for astrophysics! Surely tested my perseverance and passion. In short for the research I observed and photographed a cluster of stars, found their their ages, chemical composition and luminosities.

[girishv]

India launched its first multi-wavelength mission dedicated for astronomy. From past two years we are publishing AstroSat picture of the day similar to NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) which is accessible at ISRO and Public Outreach cell of ASI (Astronomical Society of India).

Please check out the gorgeous pictures and new results obtained from our own mission at,
https://www.isro.gov.in/update/08-ma...th-of-feb-2019


and,
https://astron-soc.in/outreach/apom/

Just as a note, anybody can ask for observations from the mission. Check out if you are inteterested in using AstroSat
https://www.isro.gov.in/update/06-ma...e-observations

-Girish

[girishv]

Here is a picture of the Moon I took from my Kitchen window. Hope you like it.

[tsk1979]

Periodic table of the STARS

Guess what 43 and 61 do not exist naturally today !

[shashanka]

Originally Posted by tsk1979

Periodic table of the STARS

Guess what 43 and 61 do not exist naturally today !.....

Duh! Whaa....! But then, that's me!

[Gany]

Originally Posted by KomS_CarLog

As suggested in my previous post, I am attaching a photo of the night sky

This is really a cool shot...what was the exposure?

[Fraz33r]

INTO THE ABYSS The first image of a black hole shows a bright ring with a dark, central spot. That ring is a bright disk of gas orbiting the supermassive behemoth in the galaxy M87, and the spot is the black hole’s shadow.

This is what a black hole looks like.

A world-spanning network of telescopes called the Event Horizon Telescope zoomed in on the supermassive monster in the galaxy M87 to create this first-ever picture of a black hole.

“We have seen what we thought was unseeable. We have seen and taken a picture of a black hole,” Sheperd Doeleman, EHT Director and astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., said April 10 in Washington, D.C., at one of seven concurrent news conferences. The results were also published in six papers in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“We’ve been studying black holes so long, sometimes it’s easy to forget that none of us have actually seen one,” France Córdova, director of the National Science Foundation, said in the Washington, D.C., news conference. Seeing one “is a Herculean task,” she said.

That's because black holes are notoriously hard to see. Their gravity is so extreme that nothing, not even light, can escape across the boundary at a black hole's edge, known as the event horizon. But some black holes, especially supermassive ones dwelling in galaxies’ centers, stand out by voraciously accreting bright disks of gas and other material. The EHT image reveals the shadow of M87’s black hole on its accretion disk. Appearing as a fuzzy, asymmetrical ring, it unveils for the first time a dark abyss of one of the universe’s most mysterious objects.

“It’s been such a buildup,” Doeleman said. “It was just astonishment and wonder… to know that you’ve uncovered a part of the universe that was off limits to us.”

The much-anticipated big reveal of the image “lives up to the hype, that’s for sure," says Yale University astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan, who is not on the EHT team. "It really brings home how fortunate we are as a species at this particular time, with the capacity of the human mind to comprehend the universe, to have built all the science and technology to make it happen."

More News here: Source: ScienceNews

[V.Narayan]

On this day, April 12th, 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first human to fly into space and orbit planet Earth

Yuri Gagarin piloted Vostok 1 for a 108 minute single orbit around planet earth. This was what we today call a low earth orbit with a maximum altitude of 327 kms or somewhat over a million feet. Upto this point Soviet rocket launches had enjoyed exactly a 50% chance of success in take-off and the danger of Gagarin getting killed was real. There was also the risk of the retro rocket mechanism not working properly or the exact timing sequence getting missed and Vostok 1 with Gagarin getting stuck in orbit. For that eventuality the capsule was equipped with 10 days of food and water in the hope that orbit decay may get him back. Today when we expect near perfection from space missions it is noteworthy to remember just how recent in history space missions are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Gagarin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostok_1


Yuri Gagarin (1934 - 1968). He was all of 27 years old at time of this world beating and pioneering feat.


The Vostok 1 capsule that housed Yuri Gagarin and brought him back to Earth


The navigation panel of Vostok 1. How electronics hardware has changed.


Vostok 1 lift-off, 12th April 1961


Model of the Vostok spacecraft