Astronomy

[Jimmy Quinn]

Fantastic photo Fuzzy…it looks like you’ve captured an alien😁

[fuzzy]

A few years ago, Mrs Fuzzy and I had a belated honeymoon (30 years after the wedding) and went to Hawaii (Big Island- stayed in Hilo).

Whilst there, we did a sunset visit to the Mauna Kea observatory- several research telescopes atop a 14,000 foot volcano.





One of the telescopes up there is the Subaru Telescope. They have a webcam set up with a 24/7 live feed-

https://www.webcamtaxi.com/en/usa/hawaii/maunakea-subaru-telescope-cam.html

Cloudy as fuck at the moment but, I frequently check in during the day here when it is full dark in Hawaii- the sky is amazing and, I reckon on at least one meteor during a 5 minute visit every other session.

[Batch]

That looks awesome fuzzy

[fuzzy]

Yes Batch, it was a brilliant excursion and we finished with a sky tour by the driver pointing out various constellations and targets. The moon was up and bright but the dark sky was still much better than you would normally see from town.

[fuzzy]

Was out till stupid o'clock this morning grabbing data.
Here is a capture of M51 The Whirlpool Galaxy which is busy swallowing up another, smaller galaxy. It is 31 million light years away from us so, god knows how far the devouring process has advanced now.

30 x 60 second frames with darks and flats to remove garbage. Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and tweaked in SIRIL and GIMP.

[4D]

Fantastic 

[Ginginho]

Brilliant stuff

[Pericardinho]

31 million light years... the human brain can't even comprehend such distance. It blows my mind.

For context; the Voyager probes left 47 years ago travelling approx 38,000 MPH

They have not even reached 1 light DAY yet.

It would take approx 18,000 years for it to do 1 light year.

Then it just needs to do that distance another 31 million times and it will be there.

Just the 555 billion years travel time in total.

The universe has only been going for around 14 billion.

And yet you can see this thing on your telescope. How fucking weird is that.

[fuzzy]

I regulalrly get to the stage wher I think my brain is going to