The Horsehead Nebula is a dark nebula in the constellation Orion. The nebula is located just to the south of the star Alnitak, which is farthest east on Orion’s Belt, and is part of the much larger Orion Molecular Cloud Complex.
Distance to Earth: 1,500 light years
Coordinates: RA 5h 40m 59s | Dec -2° 27′ 30″
Radius: 3.5 ly
Apparent dimensions (V): 8 × 6 arcmins
Designations: Barnard 33, LDN 1630
Notable features: Resembles a horse’s head
Changing weather forecast kept us wondering if we would be able to view the Full Blood Red Flower Moon. Fortunately the clouds disappeared just in time. The 5” Takahashi refractor telescope provided the best “wide angle” images from inside the Kohl Dome. Images by Claire Lukawski Felong and Tom Traub.
Fly your name around the Moon aboard Artemis I. Artemis I will be the first uncrewed flight test of the Space Launch System rocket and the Orion spacecraft. The flight paves the way toward landing the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon! Sign-up here: www.nasa.gov/send-your-name-with-artemis/
This Sunday night, May 15, 2022 - a total lunar eclipse! The "Blood Flower Moon” eclipse starts about 10:30pm with totality about 11:30pm fading to partial after about an hour. One of the longest eclipses until 2029. Members will be at the observatory to host visitors that wish to view the eclipse. Please call the observatory before coming as the weather forecast is not currently favorable: (716) 569-3689. Attached images are of a previous Blood Flower Moon taken by member, Tom Traub at the Martz-Kohl Observatory 👍 🔭
Forecast looks like cloudy skies! Will the Observatory be open if it's clear?
"The most convincing evidence yet of a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way?" - an actual image from the Event Horizon Telescope! ❤️ 🔭Behold! The first image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy!
This picture from the Event Horizon Telescope is the first direct visual evidence of the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A*, which is about 27,000 light-years from Earth. It took years of hard work by scientists around the world to create this image.
Can we get a round of emoji applause for the EHT team? Well done! 👏👏👏
You can learn more at: eventhorizontelescope.org/blog/astronomers-reveal-first-image-black-hole-heart-our-galaxy
(Image: EHT Collaboration)
When the planets align in the sky, as they will in the South-East for the next few mornings before sunrise, it is a time of wonder. Spacecraft have traveled the Solar System and have taken images and collected data - in our lifetime. We have learned so much... and still know so little. Visit the Martz-Kohl Observatory to view the planets through our large telescopes and learn-about and be amazed by Space. martzobservatory.org/
“Danger, Will Robinson!” Scientists as well as astronauts have discovered that space really is dangerous. It’s not the ride into space—rockets are pretty reliable now. And it’s not meteors shooting through space, either. It’s just being there, sitting around on a space station, that might be the most dangerous. It’s the radiation that can kill you, give you heart disease, or even cancer years later.
This presentation by Dr. Robin Elgart will provide a brief description of the space radiation environment, as well as a summary of a study assessing excess cardiovascular disease or cancer mortality in early NASA astronauts.
Come to the Martz-Kohl Observatory THIS WEDNESDAY, April 20, 2022 at 7:30pm, to attend. Meet Robin virtually on our high-resolution, conference screen and join in our always lively Q&A after her talk. Later, if the weather cooperates, we offer tours and viewing opportunities through the big telescopes. Friends from far away are invited to join and interact by Zoom. More info: martzobservatory.org
Don’t look up! Just kidding. The largest comet ever has been discovered using the Hubble Space Telescope.
Hubble Confirms Largest Comet Nucleus Ever Seen
go.nasa.gov
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has determined the size of the largest icy comet nucleus ever seen by astronomers.Vanessa Titus check this out
Recently for the first time ever, a team of astronomers viewed, in real-time, the dramatic end to a red supergiant’s life, watching it collapse in a supernova. Of course, the star was about 120 million light-years away from Earth which means the actual event happened 120 million years ago! The research team reported their findings in a paper published January 6, 2022 in the Astrophysical Journal.
“We finally detected the death throes of this relatively common type of stellar explosion,” said Ryan Foley, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz in California.
Foley’s team leads the Young Supernova Experiment (YSE) transient survey, which observed the red supergiant during the last 130 days leading up to its deadly detonation. “This is a breakthrough in our understanding of what massive stars do moments before they die,” said lead author Wynn Jacobson-Galán, “Direct detection of pre-supernova activity in a red supergiant star has never been observed before in an ordinary Type II supernova. For the first time, we watched a red supergiant star explode!”
Using the Pan-STARRS telescope at the Haleakala Observatory in Hawaii, the YSE team first detected the doomed massive star in summer of 2020 via the huge amount of light radiating from the red supergiant. A few months later, in fall 2020, a supernova was observed.
Based on data obtained from Keck Observatory’s DEep Imaging and Multi-Object Spectrograph (DEIMOS) and Near Infrared Echellette Spectrograph (NIRES), they determined SN 2020tlf’s progenitor red supergiant star, located in the NGC 5731 galaxy about 120 million light-years away, was 10 times more massive than the sun. More info: www.hawaii.edu/news/2022/01/06/explosion-of-supergiant-star-captured-by-uh-telescope/