Amid the Stars

@amidthestarstours.com

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Astronomy educator and writer in Southern California. I post space images with breakdowns, astronomy fun facts, and articles on various space topics. Amid the Stars is a guided stargazing experience in the San Bernardino Mountains. amidthestarstours.com

A cloud of gas in space. It is vaguely shaped like the North America continent, with parts that invoke the shape of Mexico, Florida, Alaska, and more.
A red cloud in space shaped vaguely like a human brain. The background is filled with an even wispier red cloud.
The wispy tendrils of a galaxy's spiral arms around an elongated central core that glows far brighter than the rest.
A blue nebula cloud in space that is vaguely shaped like a human hand reaching out to grab a red cloud above it. A bright light is in the hand's wrist.
A nebula cloud in space wraps around the image like a circular frame. Several bright red stars shine through the cloud. In the background are many more lights of various shapes and sizes.
A field of lights. Most look like single points, but some are larger and are clearly spiral and disk shaped galaxies.
The Earth as seen from space. Near the north end of the globe, a large circular shadow is present.
A field of white stars with four diffraction spikes on each.
A vast cloud in space with two bright patches. In the center bright patch, several orbs of light are visible.
Two stellar clouds. The much larger one is mostly red with some traces of blue and looks lumpy. The smaller one is all blue and looks like a shell.
A mostly black image with several beams of light stretched across it. Within one beam is a tiny bluish pixel that barely stands out against its background.
Two distinct galaxies are in the process of merging into one. The one on the left is mostly pale light, while the one on the right has a rich red light around it in a nearly ring-like formation.
A view of the Earth lowering behind the horizon of the Moon from a perspective above the Moon's surface. An Earthset.
The Moon from above. The Earth can be seen as a small blue half-circle above the Moon's horizon. Apollo 11's lunar module floats above the Moon's surface.
A spiral galaxy seen close up and head on. The galaxy glows with knots and webs of red, orange, and yellow, and is brighter closer to the center.
Saturn with a colorful blue band around its north pole.
Several pillars of dust in outer space stretch across the image with impressive detail. There are stars both around and within the pillars. It's the famous Pillars of Creation image, but with even more detail.
Three technicians in full clean suits, masks, and gloves inspect a large, golden, hexagonal mirror, one of the panels of the primary mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope.
A shadowy nebula with tints of orange, red, and blue. There are several bright, newly formed stars. Some of those stars have great jets of interstellar gas emerging from opposite ends. The jets of multiple stars are all at the same angle.
A deep field showing countless galaxies. Several brighter lights with point-like glares coming off of them are stars in the foreground, while all theo ther lights are galaxies, some even having their spirals visible. At the center is an intensely bright galaxy cluster. Streaks of light, some looking like stretched galaxies, curve around the bright cluster thanks to gravitational lensing.
The surface of Jupiter, with its color enhanced to better show the detail of its surface features. A swirling interaction between lighter and darker bands. Where the light and dark bands meet, there are bright spirals and ovals.
A planetary nebula known as the Spider Nebula. A large hourglass-like cloud of gas in space. The center of the hourglass glows red, while the outer parts are blue. Behind it, numerous stars shine brightly.
A silhouette of a space shuttle against a sunset in orbit. Behind the shuttle are distinct bands of color. First red-orange, then white-blue, and finally dark blue before the black of space.
A large diffuse nebula with a large concentration of bright blue stars at its center. Around the star cluster is a bubble where the nebula has been pushed away by the stellar winds of the stars.
An image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope featuring a towering, pillar-like cloud of interstellar gas and dust in shades of red and orange. The pillar extends diagonally from the bottom-right toward the top-left, appearing dense and semi-opaque with swirling, textured layers. At the very tip of the pillar, a bright, prominent blue light is surrounded by a faint, circular reddish ring. Stars and galaxies appear scattered across the background.
IC 5332 as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. A typical spiral galaxy with clear spiral arms. Unlike the image from Webb, the finer structure of the spiral arms cannot clearly be seen.
IC 5332 as seen by the James Webb Space Telescope. A spiral galaxy made up of an intricate and twisted web of filaments. Behind it, further away galaxies are visible in the background.
A close-up photograph of Saturn's rings, captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. The rings appear as wide, textured bands of beige, tan, and gold, stretching diagonally across the frame. To the left of the rings is the black void of space, featuring two tiny, bright white dots. In the upper-left corner, a much thinner ring of Saturn is visible.
A wide-field composite view of NGC 6357, also known as the Lobster Nebula. The image reveals blue visible light, orange infrared, and pink X-ray data, highlighting long gas filaments coiling around huge cavities where massive new stars are forming.