SciBuff.com

Here’s my first shot of the International Space Station (ISS) passing over Amsterdam (taken at 19:00 UTC on March 07, 2010). The station passed right through the constellation Orion only a fraction of a degree north of the Orion’s belt.

ISS Above Amsterdam crossing the constellation of Orion - (4 subframes exp. 10s f/5.6 ISO 1600 each, stacked with RegiStax)

The ISS will be visible in Amsterdam until March 20 and the next visibility window will start on April 10. Below is the list of the “best” passes over the city:

Source: Heavens-Above.com

For more information about (visible) passes of ISS, and satellites, not only in Amsterdam but for any place on Earth, visit the heavens above website. You can also follow @twisst on twitter.

Here’s a photo of waxing crescent Moon taken tonight at 19:00 GMT from Amsterdam. Only 2 days and 17 hours old, not many features are visible on the surface. The two prominent craters visible at the bottom just at the terminator are Langrenus (right) and Petavius (left).

Photo of waxing crescent Moon taken tonight through a refractor ATC Monar (D=70mm f/4.6) with Canon 450D, exp. 1/50s

The image below portraits two galaxies known as M81 (NGC 3031 or Bode’s Galaxy) and M82 (NGC 3034 or the Cigar Galaxy). M81 is one of the most striking examples of a grand design spiral galaxy, with near perfect arms spiraling into the very center. M82 is five times as bright as the whole Milky Way and one hundred times as bright as our galaxy’s center. Tidal forces caused by gravity have deformed this galaxy, a process that started about 100 million years ago. The interaction between the galaxies has caused star formation in M82 to increase 10 fold compared to “normal” galaxies.

170 minute black and white image of M81 and M82 - Credit: Lightbuckets.com

The inverted image (below) reveals much more that meets the eye. The wispy tendrils seen in the inverted and stretched image are known as Galactic Cirrus. They are high galactic latitude nebulae that are illuminated not by a single star (as most nebula in the plane of the Galaxy are) but by the energy from the integrated flux of all the stars in the Milky Way.  These nebulae clouds, an important component of the Interstellar Medium, are composed of dust particles, hydrogen and carbon monoxide and other elements.

Inverted image of M81 and M82 showing the Galactic Cirrus between the galaxies - Credit: Lightbuckets.com

Galactic Cirrus was first found in plates in the Palomar Sky Survey in the mid 1960’s. Alan Sandage investigated them further in 1975 while working with the Palomar 1.2m Schmidt Telescope. The surface brightness of these structures is about 25 mag. or even fainter, which makes them extremely hard to capture with most amateur equipment.

The galaxy group, consisting of M81, M82, NGC 3077 and NGC 2976, is the nearest galaxy group to our own local group (which contains the Milky Way, Magellanic Clouds, M33, and the M31 – M32 – M110 system). At 12 million light years distance, the nearby proximity of galaxies M81 and M82 makes them one of the most spectacular sights in the spring sky.

- The images used in this post have been taken by Alvin Jeng during a test run of the Lightbuckets’ LB0002 – a 0.2m Newtonian Astrograph.

The European South Observatory (ESO) has released this magnificent image of the giant stellar nursery surrounding NGC 3603 taken at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) facility in Chile. NGC 3603 is an open cluster of stars situated in the Carina spiral arm of the Milky Way around 20,000 light-years away from our solar system. It was discovered by John Frederick William Herschel in 1834.

NGC 3603 is a starburst region: a cosmic factory where stars form frantically from the nebula’s extended clouds of gas and dust - Credit: ESA

[High-res version]

The central cluster of stars inside NGC 3603 harbors thousands of stars of all sorts: the majority have masses similar to or less than that of our Sun, but most spectacular are several of the very massive stars that are close to the end of their lives. One star in NGC 3603, namely Sher 25, was found to have thrown off matter in a pattern similar to that found for the supernova 1987A.

NGC 3603 was selected at the best target to investigate collective, massive star formation, in particular the coalescence of high- and low-mass stars in the violent environments of starburst regions. NGC 3603 is the only massive, galactic HII-region in which a central cluster of strongly UV-radiating stars of types “O” and “B” that ionize the nebula can be studied at visual and near-infrared wavelengths. Because of NGC3603’s location relative to Earth, the line-of-sight to the cluster is relatively free of interstellar dust that dims the near-infrared radiation due to matter interaction. Because enough infrared (IR) light reaches the Earth, the Infrared Spectrometer And Array Camera (ISAAC) at VLT can study the densest part of the cluster resolvable only in very sensitive IR instruments.

These images of the NGC 3603 region were obtained in three near-IR filter bands (Js, H and Ks) with the ISAAC instrument at the ANTU telescope at the VLT at Paranal - Credit: ESO

[High-res version]

Previously, an international group of astronomers used the ESO Very Large Telescope to perform unique observations of an interstellar nebula in which stars are currently being born. Thanks to the excellent imaging properties of the first of the four 8.2-m VLT Unit Telescopes, ANTU, they were able to demonstrate, for the first time, the presence of large numbers of small and relatively light, new-born stars in NGC 3603.

Source – ESO: The Stars behind the Curtain & Lots of Small Stars Born in Starburst Region

It was a very cold day in Amsterdam today but along with it came virtually cloudless sky, so I had the chance to continue taking photos of the Moon as it approaches the Full Moon (06:18 GMT on January 30) as well as the perigee (09:04 GMT on January 30, 2010) when the it will be 356,592 km away from the Earth – the closest this year.

Waxing Gibbous Moon taken tonight through a refractor ATC Monar (D=70mm f/4.6) with Canon 450D, exp. 1/50s

(Compare the Moon with photos from January 25 and January 20)

My next target was the open cluster Pleiades (M45). The effects of close proximity with the Moon tonight is visible on the left side of the photo.

Open star cluster Pleiades (M45) through Canon 450D ISO 1600 f/8 exp. 10s

Finally, I turned the camera towards the constellation of Orion and one of the most scrutinized and photographed objects in the night sky – The Orion Nebula (M42).

The Orion Nebula (M42) through Canon 450D ISO 1600 f/8 exp. 10s

Here’s a photo of waxing gibbous Moon taken tonight at 19:20 GMT from Amsterdam.

At the terminator near the top, the edge Sinus Iridum (“Bay of Rainbows”), the plain of basaltic lava that forms a northwestern extension to the Mare Imbrium, is clearly visible. To the south of Mare Imbrium is a prominent lunar impact crater named after the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. Just past the terminator on the night side near the south pole is the Cabeus crater where the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) ended its mission impacting the lunar surface on October 9, 2009.

Photo of waxing gibbous Moon taken tonight through a refractor ATC Monar (D=70mm f/4.6) with Canon 450D, exp. 1/50s

The position of the Cabeus crater with respect to Lunar maria (Click to embiggen) - Source: Virtual Moon Atlas