Astronomical Images - the best from 2023
Featuring:
Clicking on some images won't do anything, and on others might toggle you through an image sequence.
Galaxies are my target of choice, so I'm going to pick two images. A tricky choice, and what is almost certainly my best image of the Andromeda spiral didn't make it.
We start out with objects around 250 million light years away with an image from 7th November 2023:
My target is the galaxy NGC 891, and the galaxy group Abell 347. These are to the eastern edge of the constellation of Andromeda, close enough to the plane of the Milky Way for a rich star field, but far enough away to see plenty of galaxies.
I've labelled the brighter galaxies on the small picture here. If you click/tap this image you go to a bigger version without the labels.
NGC 891 (aka C 23) is to the right of the image. An edge on spiral with obvious dust lane, it's about 100 thousand light years across and less than 30 million light years away. Similar in size but slightly closer to us than the galaxies of the Leo Triplet.
Moving left and down we see NGC 898, also an edge on spiral, but around 250 million light years distant.
The remaining marked galaxies all belong to the Abell 347 cluster, around 240 million light years away. If you click/tap the image to big it, and scroll around it you should see a good number of other galaxies which are part of this cluster.
Some details:
1000 mm focal length f/5;
Sony A6300 camera;
147 30 second exposures at ISO 5000;
Mid time 2023/11/07 00:10 UT
Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker, processed in AstroArt 6.
Second in the galaxies section is the Needle Galaxy, taken on the 15th April 2023:
This is NGC 4565, or Caldwell 38, the Needle galaxy.
(Click on the image to go to a 50% resolution version of the original.)
NGC 4565 is an edge on spiral galaxy in Coma Berenices, around 30 million light years away, and a bit bigger than our own galaxy.
From measurements of my picture, it would be 120,000 light years across if it were 30 million light years away.
157 30 second exposures with the 1000mm focal length, Sony A6300 camera at ISO 4000. Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker with the colour processing in Astro Art 6.
The images were taken either side of 22:20 BST.
A section for Nebulae and star clusters. Only one nebula featured in my 2023 images, twice, The Horse Head Nebula in Orion (with the close by NGC 2023). These were certainly close to the best images of this feature I have produced, but neither made to this section.
Instead, a selection of summer globular clusters around 25000 light years away. Images taken on the 26th May 2023:
It's rare that I post a picture of a star cluster (Pleiades excepted) on these pages. My impression has been that such things impress when viewed through the eyepiece, and an image adds very little.
So, by way of balance, here are four globular clusters:
(Click on the image to go to a 50% resolution version of the originals)
They are all within (just over) 35 degrees of each other, and with declinations within (just over) 6 degrees of each other. The images were taken in Right Ascension order, all with 15 second exposures at ISO 2000 using the Sony A6300 and 1000mm focal length 'scope. Here's some more details:
M 5, the brightest of the four, is 24500 light years away, slightly closer than the 26000 light year distance to the centre on the Milky Way. The image is a stack of 101 exposures centred on 00:32 BST.
M 12, 15700 light years seems a popular distance to quote for this cluster, NASA claim 23000 light years. The image is a stack of 72 exposures centred on 01:03 BST.
M 10 is reported as being 14300 light years distant. The image is a stack of 53 exposures centred on 01:24 BST.
M 14 is 29000 to 30000 light years from us. The image is a stack of 67 exposures centred on 01:47 BST.
For all these images, North is to the right.
The images seem to get redder in the order in which they were taken. Most of this will be the altitude of the object when the image was taken, and moisture in the atmosphere and condensing on the optics (should have used my dew heater!). Evidenced by the sky background being redder.
It does happen to be true though, that the stars in M 14 are much redder than those in M 5!
Since the first image, our distance scale is reduced by a factor of 10000. A smaller (but similar order of magnitude) ratio to the next jump to the Ooort cloud.
The one comet featured in 2023 was C/2022 E3 (ZTF). At the time the image was taken it was a mere 68 million km away. However, this is a long period comet (so long it may never return) from the very outer most regions of the solar system - the Ooort cloud, up to 1 light year distant. 1 light year is 9.5 trillion km, so the ratio of distances between where the comet came from and where it was on the 21st January 2023 is about 1:140000 :
This is comet C\2022 E3 ZTF.
It is not quite naked eye visible, and is close to being it's brightest. I couldn't even see it in the small bins, not surprising given the amount of water vapour in the air, and the lowish altitude at the time I took it (either side of 23:30).
I had two different versions of the same set of images, one aligned and stacked on the stars, and the other on the comet itself. The small image here is the comet aligned version. Clicking on it takes you to 33 percent resolution version of the star aligned image.
Next up my "best of" planetary images, all pretty much to the same scale...
Uranus (distance 2790 million km), taken on 25th November 2023:
Saturn (distance 1410 million km), taken on 6th November 2023:
Jupiter (distance 596 million km), taken on 6th November 2023:
Also featuring the Galilean satellites Io (and its shadow) on the left, and the largest satellite in the Solar System Ganymede right.
And Mars (distance 234 million km), taken on 2nd January 2023:
Moving on to minor planets, there were the usual occurrences of these orbiting between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter in one of the galaxy images, but then this special one....
Near Earth Object (640 thousand km), taken on 24th March 2023:
A fairly large (~100m) asteroid was due to pass between the Earth and Moon. Closest approach to Earth (about 180000 km) would be some time on Saturday 25th. I had a go at imaging it on the evening of the 24th, when it was still around 640000 km distant, the Moon is around 380000 km away.
The NEO is the small blurred line near the centre of the image (showing how far the thing travelled in the 30 second exposure time!).
It absolutely belted along over the hour and forty minutes of imaging. Here's a movie of its progress...
There are a number of jumps of various sizes in the movie, while cloud was in the way.
To get the video size down, I converted all the source images to monochrome. There is a better version in this one drive folder
No question which was my best solar image from 2023, it's this one taken on 21st May 2023
(we go backwards a bit on our decreasing distances up to 149 million km):
The Sun, featuring sunspots (dark) and faculae (light).
(Clicking on the image goes to a 50% resolution version of the original)
It's the green channel only, which has the most contrast.
The best Lunar image features the Moon (398 thousand km) and also the International Space Station (500 - 600 km). Images taken on 27th May 2023:
At 9:01pm BST on the 27th, the ISS was set to pass in front of the Moon, as viewed from my back garden in Bluntisham.
Here's the picture:
The image is generated from a 4 minute movie (playing safe there Mike) taken either side of the predicted pass.
If you want to see the movie, there is a much reduced grayscale version of snippet of it in this Onedrive folder.
Clicking on this image takes you to a 100% resolution version of a stack of 19 still frames taken just before the ISS pass. It's a jolly nice picture, worth perusing at full res!
There had been a number of chances of pictures of Aurora over 2023, the one image I took hasn't made it to the best of pages. Instead:
Nacreous clouds (approx. 25 km), image taken on 20th December 2023:
Nacreous clouds, or Mother-of-pearl clouds form at an altitude of about 25 km. This is high. They are made of small ice crystals, producing rainbow colours as they scatter light from a low sun. The sun had already set when this image was taken.
Whoops, sorry about the telephone wire. The image is a merge of 5 phone camera images, hence the excessive width. You can click the image for a better resolution version, in which you can see the wire not lining up from one picture to the next.
Forming in very cold polar air, the clouds are a winter phenomenon. They are rare at the 52 degree latitude of Bluntisham, requiring a shift in the jet stream to push that cold polar air south. Normally they would be associated with quite cold conditions on the ground, but 20th December 2023 was a relatively mild (if very windy) day.
So we have gone from 250 million light years to 25 km. We are back on the ground now, walking the dog and....
This features the Moon, Venus and Saturn, image taken on 23rd January 2023:
Still freezing cold. But I was persuaded out to a frozen over Berry Fen for this shot of a two day old Moon, Venus and Saturn.
You will have to click on the image to big it to see Saturn, and you may then have to zoom in or big it again.
Nacreous clouds, galaxies, planets, the Sun, Moon and a Near Earth Object!
NGC 891 (Caldwell 23, galaxy in Andromeda), Abell 347 galaxy group, NGC 465 (Caldwell 38 Needle galaxy), M5, M10, M12 amd M14 (globular clusters), Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) and more.
I'm going to do things a little bit differently this year, and list my choices of best pictures by category, in decreasing distance (approximately).
If you don't like the choices, the full blog for 2023 will be kicking around for a while, so you could e-mail your suggestions for consideration (or comment on the blog - Google account required I think).
Clicking on some images won't do anything, and on others might toggle you through an image sequence.
Galaxies
Galaxies are my target of choice, so I'm going to pick two images. A tricky choice, and what is almost certainly my best image of the Andromeda spiral didn't make it.
We start out with objects around 250 million light years away with an image from 7th November 2023:
My target is the galaxy NGC 891, and the galaxy group Abell 347. These are to the eastern edge of the constellation of Andromeda, close enough to the plane of the Milky Way for a rich star field, but far enough away to see plenty of galaxies.
I've labelled the brighter galaxies on the small picture here. If you click/tap this image you go to a bigger version without the labels.
NGC 891 (aka C 23) is to the right of the image. An edge on spiral with obvious dust lane, it's about 100 thousand light years across and less than 30 million light years away. Similar in size but slightly closer to us than the galaxies of the Leo Triplet.
Moving left and down we see NGC 898, also an edge on spiral, but around 250 million light years distant.
The remaining marked galaxies all belong to the Abell 347 cluster, around 240 million light years away. If you click/tap the image to big it, and scroll around it you should see a good number of other galaxies which are part of this cluster.
Some details:
1000 mm focal length f/5;
Sony A6300 camera;
147 30 second exposures at ISO 5000;
Mid time 2023/11/07 00:10 UT
Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker, processed in AstroArt 6.
Second in the galaxies section is the Needle Galaxy, taken on the 15th April 2023:
This is NGC 4565, or Caldwell 38, the Needle galaxy.
(Click on the image to go to a 50% resolution version of the original.)
NGC 4565 is an edge on spiral galaxy in Coma Berenices, around 30 million light years away, and a bit bigger than our own galaxy.
From measurements of my picture, it would be 120,000 light years across if it were 30 million light years away.
157 30 second exposures with the 1000mm focal length, Sony A6300 camera at ISO 4000. Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker with the colour processing in Astro Art 6.
The images were taken either side of 22:20 BST.
Inside our Milky Way Galaxy
A section for Nebulae and star clusters. Only one nebula featured in my 2023 images, twice, The Horse Head Nebula in Orion (with the close by NGC 2023). These were certainly close to the best images of this feature I have produced, but neither made to this section.
Instead, a selection of summer globular clusters around 25000 light years away. Images taken on the 26th May 2023:
It's rare that I post a picture of a star cluster (Pleiades excepted) on these pages. My impression has been that such things impress when viewed through the eyepiece, and an image adds very little.
So, by way of balance, here are four globular clusters:
(Click on the image to go to a 50% resolution version of the originals)
They are all within (just over) 35 degrees of each other, and with declinations within (just over) 6 degrees of each other. The images were taken in Right Ascension order, all with 15 second exposures at ISO 2000 using the Sony A6300 and 1000mm focal length 'scope. Here's some more details:
M 5, the brightest of the four, is 24500 light years away, slightly closer than the 26000 light year distance to the centre on the Milky Way. The image is a stack of 101 exposures centred on 00:32 BST.
M 12, 15700 light years seems a popular distance to quote for this cluster, NASA claim 23000 light years. The image is a stack of 72 exposures centred on 01:03 BST.
M 10 is reported as being 14300 light years distant. The image is a stack of 53 exposures centred on 01:24 BST.
M 14 is 29000 to 30000 light years from us. The image is a stack of 67 exposures centred on 01:47 BST.
For all these images, North is to the right.
The images seem to get redder in the order in which they were taken. Most of this will be the altitude of the object when the image was taken, and moisture in the atmosphere and condensing on the optics (should have used my dew heater!). Evidenced by the sky background being redder.
It does happen to be true though, that the stars in M 14 are much redder than those in M 5!
Since the first image, our distance scale is reduced by a factor of 10000. A smaller (but similar order of magnitude) ratio to the next jump to the Ooort cloud.
The Solar System
The one comet featured in 2023 was C/2022 E3 (ZTF). At the time the image was taken it was a mere 68 million km away. However, this is a long period comet (so long it may never return) from the very outer most regions of the solar system - the Ooort cloud, up to 1 light year distant. 1 light year is 9.5 trillion km, so the ratio of distances between where the comet came from and where it was on the 21st January 2023 is about 1:140000 :
This is comet C\2022 E3 ZTF.
It is not quite naked eye visible, and is close to being it's brightest. I couldn't even see it in the small bins, not surprising given the amount of water vapour in the air, and the lowish altitude at the time I took it (either side of 23:30).
I had two different versions of the same set of images, one aligned and stacked on the stars, and the other on the comet itself. The small image here is the comet aligned version. Clicking on it takes you to 33 percent resolution version of the star aligned image.
Next up my "best of" planetary images, all pretty much to the same scale...
Uranus (distance 2790 million km), taken on 25th November 2023:
Saturn (distance 1410 million km), taken on 6th November 2023:
Jupiter (distance 596 million km), taken on 6th November 2023:
Also featuring the Galilean satellites Io (and its shadow) on the left, and the largest satellite in the Solar System Ganymede right.
And Mars (distance 234 million km), taken on 2nd January 2023:
Moving on to minor planets, there were the usual occurrences of these orbiting between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter in one of the galaxy images, but then this special one....
Near Earth Object (640 thousand km), taken on 24th March 2023:
A fairly large (~100m) asteroid was due to pass between the Earth and Moon. Closest approach to Earth (about 180000 km) would be some time on Saturday 25th. I had a go at imaging it on the evening of the 24th, when it was still around 640000 km distant, the Moon is around 380000 km away.
The NEO is the small blurred line near the centre of the image (showing how far the thing travelled in the 30 second exposure time!).
It absolutely belted along over the hour and forty minutes of imaging. Here's a movie of its progress...
There are a number of jumps of various sizes in the movie, while cloud was in the way.
To get the video size down, I converted all the source images to monochrome. There is a better version in this one drive folder
The Sun
No question which was my best solar image from 2023, it's this one taken on 21st May 2023
(we go backwards a bit on our decreasing distances up to 149 million km):
The Sun, featuring sunspots (dark) and faculae (light).
(Clicking on the image goes to a 50% resolution version of the original)
It's the green channel only, which has the most contrast.
The Moon
The best Lunar image features the Moon (398 thousand km) and also the International Space Station (500 - 600 km). Images taken on 27th May 2023:
At 9:01pm BST on the 27th, the ISS was set to pass in front of the Moon, as viewed from my back garden in Bluntisham.
Here's the picture:
The image is generated from a 4 minute movie (playing safe there Mike) taken either side of the predicted pass.
If you want to see the movie, there is a much reduced grayscale version of snippet of it in this Onedrive folder.
Clicking on this image takes you to a 100% resolution version of a stack of 19 still frames taken just before the ISS pass. It's a jolly nice picture, worth perusing at full res!
The Atmosphere
There had been a number of chances of pictures of Aurora over 2023, the one image I took hasn't made it to the best of pages. Instead:
Nacreous clouds (approx. 25 km), image taken on 20th December 2023:
Nacreous clouds, or Mother-of-pearl clouds form at an altitude of about 25 km. This is high. They are made of small ice crystals, producing rainbow colours as they scatter light from a low sun. The sun had already set when this image was taken.
Whoops, sorry about the telephone wire. The image is a merge of 5 phone camera images, hence the excessive width. You can click the image for a better resolution version, in which you can see the wire not lining up from one picture to the next.
Forming in very cold polar air, the clouds are a winter phenomenon. They are rare at the 52 degree latitude of Bluntisham, requiring a shift in the jet stream to push that cold polar air south. Normally they would be associated with quite cold conditions on the ground, but 20th December 2023 was a relatively mild (if very windy) day.
So we have gone from 250 million light years to 25 km. We are back on the ground now, walking the dog and....
Best Scenic Astronomy Image 2023
This features the Moon, Venus and Saturn, image taken on 23rd January 2023:
Still freezing cold. But I was persuaded out to a frozen over Berry Fen for this shot of a two day old Moon, Venus and Saturn.
You will have to click on the image to big it to see Saturn, and you may then have to zoom in or big it again.
Comments
Post a Comment