Saturday, July 11, 2015

Pluto and Pegasus deep sky images

You may notice if you watch the news during the next several days that there will be a lot news about the New Horizon space craft that is due to pass Pluto on July 14, 2015. Here is a link to the NASA New Horizon site if you want to follow along:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html

Also NASA will be broadcasting on NASA TV for the next several days to inform the public of what is being discovered. Here is a link to  NASA TV. You can check the schedule for the broadcast regarding New Horizons;

https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/nasatv_live_iphone/#.VaGbevlVhBc

Here is one of the latest images of Pluto and it's moon Charon. No one in the history of the human race has seen what Pluto and Charon look like until now. The pictures in the coming days will have much more detail, and far greater resolution.




























This past week I have imaged several galaxies, globular clusters and Planetary nebula, mostly in the constellation Pegasus.  The first is a planetary nebula in Vulpecula. It represents a star that grew old, swelled up and blew off it's outer layers. What you see here is a remnant of that great explosion.


Next is an image of M15, a globular cluster, that is in orbit around our galaxy. It consists of thousands of suns rotating around a common center.


Below is spiral galaxy NGC7331 far outside of the Milky Way, and you may notice several other smaller galaxies nearby. A galaxy consists of billions of suns large and small rotating around a common center.


These two galaxies are NGC 7332 and NGC 7739. They form an interesting pair of galaxies, seen nearly edge on.


Finally we have a beautiful barred spiral galaxy NGC 7479. 







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