@joncst.bsky.social

@joncst.bsky.social

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Amateur Astronomer, Esperantist. Por-gxua astronomisto, esperantisto.

Galaxy M100, a face-on spiral is at the center of the image. A small edge-on spiral is below and to the left, while an airplane was traveling from the bottom left towards the center right. This is the raw image, before AI denoising, and tweaking the brightness and contrast
At the center of a sparse star field with few bright stars, the barred spiral galaxy NGC 2903 is not quite face-on, and runs diagonally upwards fro left to right at about a 45 º angle. It appears fairly small in this image due to low magnification (about 40x). It has a small bright core with a central bar extending out both sides (though more pronounced on the lower left. From the bar the spiral arms are at first very tightly wound, then more loosely, with faint portions extending fairly far away from the central portion. It is quite a nice galaxy, though overshadowed by the more famous "Leo Triplet" (M65/M66/3628) and the "Leo Double-Triple" (M105/M95/M96/3384/3389) Imaged with an S50, then "AI denoised", with manual tweaking of the brightness and contrast.
At the center of a star-filled image, the Centarus A galaxy (also known as NGC 5128 or Caldwell 77) is a not-quite-round warm glow, with a prominent dark lane running diagonally across it from lower center-left to upper center-right. The lane has small brighter areas, small dots at the left, then a large irregular patch in the center of the lane. Zooming in on the image rewards you with intriguing details.
C/2025 R3 in pre-dawn The comet is still visible, in an increasingly narrow window between it rising and dawn. I set the S50 out with a plan to take 4 images of 10 minutes each, starting at 5:30, when the comet would reach 15 degrees above the horizon. This is the third. It captured only about 5 out of the 10 minutes, affected by both the nearby moon and the increasing twilight. I had to tweak the contrast and brightness to bring out any detail in the tail. These images seem to show the tail in three parts: short broad spikes to either side of the longer "traditional" tail.
Galaxy M101 in Ursa Major. It is a beautiful face on spiral galaxy. The outermost arm has a distinctive kink which makes it instantly recognizable.
The comet C/2025 R3 (PANSTARRS) glows against a backdrop of stars. The comet has a bright greenish-blue head, and a long tenuous tail extending out past the top of the frame. Seestars don't track comets very well, so there may be some blurring, but it's really quite a nice image for being so close to dawn.
At the center of a rich star field is a subtly colored galaxy, almost round, with a dark dust lane diagonally from the lower center left to the top center right. The dust lane shows internal structure of dark bands with a lighter overlay from right to about 1/2 way to the left. Zooming in shows the galaxy is somewhat irregularly shaped, not perfectly round. A chain of stars extends from the lower left diagonally up to just above the galaxy, and another arc of stars stretches from about the half way point of the chain horizontally to just below the galaxy.
The core of M44 (the Beehive cluster) stretches diagonally upward from the lower left corner. About a dozen brighter stars appear amongst many ore dimmer ones. In the top right corner the planet Mars is an orange(ish) over-exposed glow.
An astro-image of open cluster M50 in Monoceros. Two or three brightish stars, a dozen or so less so, and another 2-3 dozen fainter ones stand out agains a rich winter Milky Way background. The cluster is centered, covers nearly half the frame left to right, and about 1/5 of the frame top to bottom. It is elongated left to right. It looks a bit like a bug with an elongated proboscis pointing down, sweeping arcs of stars to the left and right for legs, with a bulbous abdomen at the top of the cluster.
Against a star filled dark background, M104 (the Sombrero galaxy) is almost perfectly edge-on. It is showing off its dark lane, with the galactic core bulge visible above and below the disk.
An image of about half of a nearly-first-quarter-moon has a silhouetted spider apparently traveling from Mare Fecunditatis towards Mare Nectaris.
An image of the northern half of a waxing crescent moon. Mare Nectar's is the grey area, with several craters curling around it. a short distance away is a short bright bar, which is part of the much longer Rupes Altai, part of the outer edge of the mare.
Across the dark background of space are scattered points of light. The three brightest in the top third are stars in our Milky Way galaxy. Nearly a dozen are distant galaxies, part of the Coma Berenices galaxy cluster. Some of these have fuzzy halos of light around them. Others are so small or far away they appear star like.
An image of the "stargazing" screen of the S50 cell phone app. The black background of the sky is sprinkled stars, some three are brighter but most are very faint. Almost indistinguishable from the stars are many many tiny galaxies. The "mark" feature of the app has been turned on, and each deep-sky object has been circled and labeled. About two dozen galaxies are identified, most or all members of the Coma cluster of galaxies.
In a photo taken through a window, giving a grey cross-hatch effect, visible past the window latch and (fake) window leading, a several-foot high (just under a meter for those using sensible measuring systems) drift of snow rises on the roof, next to but not touching, the white vinyl siding of the house. An adjacent part of the roof has been swept clear of snow by the wind, which apparently deposited it on the drift.
Outlined against a clear blue winter sky, hree turkey vultures perch in the bare trees above our Quonset Hunt barn. I'm hiding while I take the picture so I don't spook them away. Out of sight behind the barn to the right are many more vultures in other trees.
Nearly-full moon at center, in a glory, inside a 23 degree halo. Jupiter is inside the halo at top. A blue internal reflection is below and to the left of the moon, and is an artifact of the inexpensive cell-phone camera.
in a dark field with small faint stars scattered, a galaxy spans the frame from left to right. The galaxy is nearly edge-on, and rotated with respect to the frame in the 8 o'clock to 2 o'clock direction. The bright core is small, and surrounded by an oval of spiral arms, then much dimmer arms extend left and right. The right arm is much shorter and thinner than the left. Both arms show variations in size and density, with the left arm shining and fading, the recovering and extending nearly as far as the rest of the galaxy.
in the middle of a star-strewn astro image, a comet-like nebula grows from a narrow apex (pointing down and right) to a wider fan, then fades to a pale remnant. A long pale spike extends from the left-most corner of the fan to about the same length as the main body of the nebula. This is the un-modified image as originally captured.
An image of a dense starfield, with hundreds of faint stars with a few brighter ones, contains a small dark blot. This is dark nebula Barnard 335, a cloud of gas and dust blocking the light of the background stars.
In a scene lit by a night-sky friendly light, three green treefrogs are waiting for bugs. Two are on a screen door panel off its track and leaning against the house. The third is on the wall.
A large white dog (Great Pyrenees) wallows vigorously on something stinky she’s found on a green lawn.
NGC 188 (also called Caldwell 1) is at the center of the frame. About 100 dim stars are sprinkled over the field, covering about 1/2 of the frame from side to side, and about 1/3 from top to bottom,
A white cat with black patches on her head, body, and tail lies curled up on a multicolored striped towel.
against a dark field of dark space, with a few stars scattered across it, the Sculptor galaxy (NGC 253, also known as Caldwell 64) stretches diagonally across the field from upper middle left to lower middle right. The galaxy is tilted nearly edge-on, but a lot of internal structure is visible, especially dark blots where gas and dust blot out the stars in the galaxy's arms.
In a field of yellow blooming goldenrod a birds nest is woven around several stalks. The nest is a lovely cup shaped construct.
On a gnarled fence post a black and white jumping spider is tucked into a recess. Its extremely green fangs were gleaming in the sun. In fact, the intense green color was what made me notice the spider on the post.
M44, the Beehive cluster, spreads across the field of view as strings of widely separated but bright stars, with lots of fainter stars in the background. At top right, the planet Mars glows (overexposed), and a satellite photobombs from the upper center down to the left.
Open cluter M41 in Canis Major appears as a set of stars concentrated towards the center of the image, but stretching nearly side-to-side, and occupying about a 1/3 of the image field of view.
Barnard 92 is a cloud of gas and dust blocking the light of the stars in the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud. Because of the star cloud, the background of the image is very, very full of faint stars, with a few brigher ones scattered about. The dark nebula is somewhat oval, oriented up and down at the center of the image, with a flattened area at the bottom and less dark extentions reaching the right edge of the image.
A small green tree front is sitting on a handrail. It is in perfect position to accidentally run your hand over it.
at the edge of a field of grass with white farm buildings in the background, a dark horse is grazing head downward. Several white cattle egrets are hunting bugs stirred up by the horse's movements.
An astroimage of M 11, the Wild Ducks. M11 is an open cluster, which means in contains a fairly low number of stars (under 1000), as compared to globular clusters, which can contain hundreds of thousands of stars. This frame contains many background stars because the cluster is in a rich arm of the Milky Way galaxy. The cluster ins at the center of the image, and is quite rich and moderately concentrated. There is an outer halo of stars, more or less round. inside the halo the stars grow more concentrated, and appear to have straight lines on three sides, amost a parallelagram. The innermost part of the cluster shows a pattern almost like a tiny cat, standing facing left, but looking out at you looking at it.
At the center of the image, a small dim star still hasn't gone nova.
Jen verda araneo, kun longaj krurojn kaj pinta korpo, Here's a green spider, with long legs and a pointy body.
At the center of the image, globular cluster 6760 is barely visible, as basically an eraser smudge.
At the center of the image is a very small globular cluster, looking mostly like an eraser smudge
A bright, overexposed star is at the center of the image. Immediately to the right of the star is a tiny red nebula, about 1/3 the size of the the star, Surrounding the star throughout the image are redish clouds of gas, with dark nebulae superimposed, blocking the light of the clouds. In addition to the random background stars scattered, there is a small open cluster at the bottom left of the image.
M27, the Dumbell Nebula, close multicolored against a starry background. In this image space isn't dark, because the waxing moon is giving a reddish-brown hue. The nebula itself looks a bit like an apple core turned sideways in the image. There are two rims of redish at eiter side. Whitish green stretches a between the rims, narrowing towards where they meet. Green puffs spill out the top and bottom.
against a dark background, stars are sprinkled, At the center is a colored donut, or perhaps a bagel: the Ring nebula. It is the outer layers of a star, blown off at the end of its life to form a bubble of gas. At the center, too small to be seen at this scale, is a white dwarf. Energy from this star makes the gasses glow.
Ĉielarko kurbas super kamparo. A rainbow curves above a farm.
A swarm of Canada geese fly down from a cloudy sky. They have a lot to say as they fly overhead, and eventually land in our pasture beyond the pond.
A lace monitor from Australia. A dark grey lizard with white spots is climbing a tree with white bark. To me it resembles the dark nebula Barnard 295
Verda arbo-rano grimpas supren sur nia fenestro. A green treefrog is climbing upward on our window.
A star-filled photograph near the center the Milky Way galaxy. A dark cloud of gas and dust blocks the light of the stars, leaving an outline a bit like lizard crawling up a wall.
A field filled with faint stars, a few brighter ones scattered here and there. At the center is a dark nebula, a half-disk, silhouetted against the background stars. Below the main part of the nebula, a long think trunk descends down and to the left, where it meets another larger portion, about half the size of the main part, and not quite round.
A very rich field of stars from our Willy Way galaxy is overlain with blobs of dark nebulae, clouds of gas and dust. At the center is a dark arc above a lobster claw. At top left is a not-quite round one, and at bottom is a less opaque nebula which looks a bit like a small bear. Taken ,with a #seestar S50 🔭
A dark nebula snakes across the starry background. The dark pattern is caused by clouds of gas and dust obscuring the background stars.
A black and white cat is standing on its hind feet, front paws on a bedside table, investigating a pretzel stick protruding off the edge. Of the table.
In an unpaved section next to a Costco parking lot, 7 mushrooms appear against green grass and reddish mulch. The largest mushroom is in the grass between a cement curb and a mulched area. Three medium sized mushrooms are in the mulch at the boundary with the grass, two close togeter and one much further away to the left. Two tiny mushrooms are further away, but very close together making a colon punctuation mark. A final, barely emerging mushroom, is next to the two tiny ones, making a straight line.
A photo taken just after sunset. Above a field and small stand of pine trees, high cirrus clouds cover much of the sky in a pinkish wash. Radiating from a point near where the sun has set, long narrow dark triangles extend from points near the horizon across the sky to above our heads. The dark streaks are shadows, caused by clouds blocking the light of the sun which is below the horizon, but still illuminating the sky.
Against the dark background of space, a few stars are sparesly sprinkled pretty much at random. Near the center of the image is a dim (9th magnitude) star which the world has been waiting to see it bloom into a nova hundreds of times brighter than it is now. It has been predicted to go nova "any time now" since a year ago spring. The whole image occupies a portion of the sky about the size of your thumbnail held out at arms length.
In a greyish-black astrophotographers image taken by a "smart" telescope, the "Blaze Star" (T CrB) is at the center of a sprinkling fo faint stars. It is not yet in the nova phase, still at about 9th magnitude. If/when it actually does go nova, it should brighten to somewhere between 2nd and 3rd magnitude. It should become the second brightest star in the constellation for a short while.
A white wall above a door has a ledge with anti-bird wire grid is home to a swallow’s nest, anchored to the grid
Two images of dark nebulae, one of B143, one of B142, abutted to show "Barnard's Famous 'E' Nebula". Dark nebulae are clouds of gas and dust blocking the light of background stars. In this spliced image, dense background stars fill the field of view. B143 is a "U" shaped dark area at the upper left of the combined image, base of the "U" facing lower left, and the open part of the "U" facing upper right. B142 is long and thin, extending from lower center to upper right, but has an extension to the lower right, bending at right angles to reach the bottom of the image. B142 might look a bit like a tilted chair facing lower right.
This image was created with Stellarium. It simulates an image entered into a Seestar S50 "plan", which shows three galaxies in the field of view: a large spriral with sweeping counter-clockwise arms at the lower left; an irregular galaxy with jets from the core at lower right; and a small spiral at upper left. I was really hoping to capture the three galaxies in a single frame. What i neglected to consider was that in the three hours betweeen when i defined the "plan" and when the telescope executed it, the skies rotated.