Flame Nebula taken by Hubble Space Telescope
This nebula is an emission nebula— a star forming region in the Orion constellation. The nebula is filled with young stars; however, dense gas obscures the majority of the cluster.
In this cluster, it contains at least one O-type star that emits light, exciting the gas around it.
O-type stars are huge blue stars that are easily seen from Earth, even from farther distances. They have extremely high surface temperatures, causing them to lose energy at a much faster rate than other stars. These massive stars live for much smaller lifetimes, before resulting in supernova explosions and eventually forming a neutron star or black hole.
✦ 6. 2. 25 ✦📓✦ Thursday ✦
I missed school (Physics and art especially!!) :) A friend told me that they like the exam phase better, because you have free days inbetween, but I honestly will take anything but that. I don´t care if I´m overloaded with work (that I can manage lmao) it´s chill. Anyway.
I´m doing (and will finish) my polish homework rn, so I guess that´s one of the things I did today. More are:
I ordered flowers to pick up for a bday party
Sketchbook page
Organised school to do´s
And I have now 5 "events" planned with different friends and it feels amazing. Finally time for that again!!
it’s been a little over two years since i took a picture of ursa major while flying. it was a surreal experience and i lowkey want to travel again just so i can see that :)
really regret not getting my phone reflection out of it so if anyone has any tips to remove it i’d love to hear them!
Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) taken by Auvo Korpi on January 27 2023.
During the formation of the sun, there was a protoplanetary disk (cloud of debris and gas) that orbited around it. The farthest parts of this disk were far from the heat emitted, and cooled down. The cold material clumped with frozen gasses and water, creating icy rocks.
These rocks orbit far away from the sun in huge elliptical orbits, in the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud. At one point, the icy rocks get closer to the sun. The ice is heated and releases dust, known as the comet’s trail.
Comet ZTF was first discovered in March 2022, but came closest to Earth in a long time in January of 2023. At first, the comet was believed to be an asteroid, but when it got closer to the sun, it was observed to have its signature green glow.
The green comes from the diatomic carbon, which is part of the comet’s atmosphere. As it got closer to the sun, the molecules became excited and radiate green light. This is also why the green color doesn’t extend to the tail, instead it is happening in the comet’s nucleus.
I remember going out with my telescope around this time to view the comet. At that point I think it was just above the Taurus constellation, and I had a lot of trouble angling the lens to point that high up.
I don’t remember being able to see the tail, but just with the naked eye, I could see the comet’s light. I can’t believe it’s already been two years since then. Time really flies.
Star Trails taken by Rob on February 24 2024
Star trails are photographs taken over long exposures, where the rotation of the Earth causes the stars to appear as arcs in the sky instead of points. The Earth rotates around its axis every 23 hours and 56 minutes.
Typically, star trails are focused on Polaris in the northern hemisphere, but I found this photo unique because it opted for a different composition. It also really highlights how dense the sky is with stars.
It begs the question, why isn't the sky infinitely bright with infinite stars? This is actually the observation that helped cosmologists find theories for the age of the universe. For a young universe, not enough time has passed for the light from incredibly distant stars to reach us, leading to the dark sky we see when we look up at night.
i got accepted into the research internship i applied to!!! 🥳 i guess my interview wasn't that bad after all lol
random physics comp i probably bombed 😭
classical mechanics is so fundamental but also kind of plain
i think i’m cooked for this midterm. and i haven’t even studied for hyperbolic paraboloids or hyperboloids or ... i don’t even remember their names
my test is in two days lol
Electric field or smt
actually studying in the library for once 😊 and yes, i did spend five minutes drawing those gorgeous field lines instead of being productive
Dolphin Head Nebula taken by Ben Brown on February 23 2024
The Dolphin Head Nebula, Sh 2-308, is an emission nebula caused by the Wolf-Rayet star EZ Canis Majoris. WR stars have completed fusion of hydrogen and are now fusing heavier elements such as helium and carbon. They have unique emission spectrums for this reason, with no hydrogen emission lines.
The temperature of WR stars is much higher than typical stars, reaching 20,000 K to 210,000 K. WR stars are some of the most luminous stars due to their high temperatures, but most of their output is in the ultraviolet spectrum, meaning we can't see it with the naked eye.
This UV radiation ionizes the gas around it, leading to the emission nebula you can see in the photograph.