bobreflected

@bobreflected.bsky.social

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Emeritus Professor of Materials Physics. Public understanding of science. Astrophotography (more aspiration than success 😉); Creative Writing; occasional blogger: https://bobreflected.blogspot.com. Husband, father, grandfather, believer.

Image shows the front cover of the official conference programme together with my attendee's lanyard.
part of the Sun showing a sunspot and a filament (which is a prominence seen from above); the effect of the Sun's magnetic field is evident in the light/dark pattern over the surface. This is a false-colour image.
In the centre, a blue-glowing nebula, reflecting light from a nearby star. Around it, a dark area where starlight has been blocked.
A reflection nebula (the Iris nebula) showing blue and surrounded by dark clouds of dust and gas which hide the stars beyond. Out of the cloud new stars may be born.
It depends what you mean by ...
Whole-disk image of the Sun showing six active regions. Their official numbering is shown.
The dark background of space, dotted with stars and a few tiny distant galaxies - and at the centre a ball of stars. Only the outer layers are resolved because the core is so densely packed.
A pair of images showing telescopes and astrophotography setups
Image of the Sun - neutral/natural off-white colour - showing 6 sunspots with their labels.
Andromeda galaxy filling the diagonal of a 1.4 X 1.4° image. There are small satellite galaxies and foreground stars.
The image diagonal is essentially filled with the Andromeda galaxy, including its darker dust lanes and a couple of small satellite galaxies top and bottom; lots of stars in the foreground from the Milky Way.
Glowing red, a cloud of hydrogen around an energetic star has been compressed into a shockwave.
Mostly reddish background with a brighter red glow near the centre within which there appears to be a bubble. There's a small cluster of stars top right which is M52, the Scorpion Cluster. All this sirs within Cassiopeia in the northern sky.
Night sky with large blue, white and yellow stars and a small red/green fuzzy patch in the middle - M1, the Crab Nebula.
Tiny blue dot mid frame: Neptune
'robot' astronomy camera atop an angled mount and tripod
View from an upstairs window towards the place where the Moon would be as it rose - were it not for the clouds.
Image showing a fraction of the aircraft condensation trails in the sky - a blight in so many ways.
Screenshot of signature confirmation
A busy astrophotography image: galaxy NGC7331 in the centre with a group of 4 more distant galaxies above it and a group of 5 below.
Image showing galaxy and two satellite galaxies
A field of stars - with a colourful planetary nebula in the centre having a shape vaguely reminiscent of a dumbbell.
Infrared image of man sat in front of a laptop and telescope, dressed for the chill.
Reddish nebulosity in the rough shape of North America. A field of view of ~2.9 X 1.6 °
Image shows many stars, a star cluster and extensive dust/gas clouds the Bubble nebula is in the centre, tinged red.
Image shows two hedgehogs, one eating food set out for it on my patio and the other drinking. Apparently doing well in spite of the ravages of habitat loss and climate change.
Snapshot of my opening slide taken during the setup for my talk at the South East Kent Astronomy Society's July meeting. The title was 'From data to images: astrophotography processing ... my way'. Yellow text on a blue-green background (- created from a blurred and stretched picture of a star field).
A total of 21 galaxies identified in a single 1.9 X 1.4 degree frame
Image showing the curve of galaxies known as Markarian's Chain together with several other galaxies which happen to be in the line of sight. Image reduced to 8-bit to reduce file size.
A planetary nebula, Reddy outer sections of the oval shape, blue or blue-green in the centre around a faint white dwarf.
Bar chart showing relative temperature change since 1884
Almost perfectly edge on galaxy in the centre of the frame with a prominent dust lane partially obscuring the galactic centre.
Blueish nebula surrounded by an 'absence' of stars for about half the frame. The nebula is 1400 ly away and 6 ly across. The blue-white binary star that illuminates it is HD2000775, m = 7.8, 1158 ly away. 76 x 200s frames
Screen capture of the image which kicked off my blog post: a group of sheep atop a monolith at Stonehenge.
Merging galaxies that have already passed through each other once.
A large edge-on spiral galaxy looking like the profile of a baleen whale (NGC4631) and a dwarf galaxy beneath (NGC4627, the pup). Above them in the image is a warped edge-on galaxy (the hockey stick or crowbar) relatively nearby and thus distorted through gravitational interaction.
Image showing a face-on spiral, an elliptical and an edge-on spiral galaxy. Altair 80edr refractor and 533c camera; 55 x 200s plus darks and flats.
Three spiral galaxies, each about 35 Mly away. One is almost perfectly edge-on, showing a distinct band of dust, the other two are at an oblique angle.
Central spiral galaxy with red patches indicating high levels of H-II (star-forming). Other galaxies are far small/more distant.
Two galaxies, each 48 Mly away and separated by only 150 kly and group of five galaxies in the background at about 400 Mly
Two galaxies, M81 and M82; near face-on and the other edge-on. Both about 11.8 My away.
Lots of grass with some tiny figures playing cricket
A reddish nebula with a portion 'blown out' by an energetic star creating the impression of a bubble. This is NGC7635, the Bubble nebula in Cassiopeia. Lower right is a globular star cluster M52/NGC7654.
Image with a large bright spiral galaxy in the middle and five more distant/smaller galaxies.
Image with cluster of stars at its centre and two very small background galaxies
Telescope assembly under protective cover, waiting for darkness
Image shows a plethora of stars except where a thick nebula blocks them out. In the centre of the illuminated nebula lies the cavity or bubble. Lower right in the frame is the K52 star cluster.