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These amazing astrophotography images were captured by Destin Heilman right here in Becket! We recommend that you visit Destin's Stellar Solace website to learn more about the photos and how important dark skies are to their existence.
M101 - Pinwheel Galaxy
The Pinwheel Galaxy is a face-on spiral galaxy in the constellation of Ursa Major 21 million light years from Earth. At 170,000 light years in diameter, this galaxy is 70% larger than our Milky Way. The dense spiral arms and blue color are the result of gravitational interaction with other galaxies which caused contraction of dust and gasses spurring formation of yourng, hot blue stars. Recent evidence tracking intermediate velocity hydrogen gas pulled from M101 strengthens the case for past interaction with the nearby dwarf galaxy NGC 5474 (just right of this captured field). This interaction likely caused the distortion in the outer spiral arms of M101.
M33 - Triangulum Galaxy
A member of our Local Group at 3 Mly distant, Triangulum is the runt in the family of regular galaxies at 60,000 ly in diameter. It is also a curious spiral in that it lacks a central bulge and supermassive black hole, making it a focus of study for galaxy formation and particularly the role of these black holes in galactic evolution. Triangulum presents itself nearly face on with several moderately defined, delicate and punctate spiral arms. Capture of Ha (red) reveals a host of swirling energized stellar nurseries that decorate the spiral arms out to the very edges of the galactic disk. Some of these patterns are rich with structure even at this distance and image scale owing to their great size, many hundreds or thousands of light years wide. The most prominent of these, featured in the upper right of the galaxy is NGC 604, one of the largest sites of stellar formation yet discovered at 1500 ly wide and harboring hundreds of stellar hyper giants. That's 40 times the size of our Orion Nebula with a luminosity over 6000 times greater!
M81 and M82 - Bode's Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy
M81 and M82 are two prominent members (center) of a larger "M81 Group" of galaxies that are galactic neighbors to our own Local Group galaxies - both groups being part of the greater Virgo Supercluster. M81, or Bode's Galaxy, was discovered by Johann Elert Bode in 1774 and is the largest member of the group. At 12 million light years distant it has an apparent magnitude of 6.94 owing to a bright active galactic nucleus, home to a 70 million solar mass supermassive black hole. A relatively recent tidal encounter with M82 (estimated at 200-600 million years ago) resulted in significant contraction of the spiral arms of M81 and a burst of new star formation. This is evident in the image by the dominance of blue light in the spiral arms and knots of red Hα emission. The red Hα emission emanating from the core of M82 is also a result of the encounter, and is the result of a massive amount of gas contraction and star formation leading to a "starburst" galaxy, the archetypal and closest example of this occurrence Many other galaxies are visible in this wide-field image of the region.
NGC7023 - Iris Nebula
Space if far from empty. In addition to the copious amount of gas that permeates the intragalactic medium, space is full of dust. These particles range in size and composition, much of which is 50-500 micrometer sized porous matter composed of various silicon compounds, water ice, and many different organic molecules including more complex hydrocarbons. Massive clouds of this dust form prominent lanes in galaxies and can obscure direct observation of many objects within them, including in our own Milky Way. This image shows one of the more dusty areas in the sky in the constellation of Cepheus. Within the dust and gas is a class B2Ve (very young) triple binary star system (HD 200775), whose light is scattered off of the surrounding dust reflecting the deep blue-white hues of this class of large and luminous star. In addition to capturing the typical RGB channels, I added Ha to the mix as more recent infrared data indicates that irradiated hydrocarbons in the nebula also contribute to more reddish tones that can be picked up by a hydrogen filter. This gives the Iris nebula a slight violet hue in its final processed image to accentuate the wonderful details revealed by the illuminated dust in the "petals" of this cosmic flower that lends its namesake.
M31 - Andromeda Galaxy
The Andromeda Galaxy, M31, is the nearest major galaxy to our Milky Way at 2.5 million light years distant. At 220,000 light years in diameter, it is significantly larger than the Milky Way and recent data indicates that it contains greater than twice the number of stars at nearly 1 trillion making M31 the most massive of the Local Group galaxies. The bright central bulge of the galaxy has an apparent magnitude of 3.4 making this one of the most distant objects visible to the naked eye. Blue light emanates from young stars which is contrasted by the dark dust lanes that make the spiral shape of the galaxy more evident. The diffuse bright ellipses above and below the plane of the galaxy are two of M31's satellite dwarf galaxies known as M32 (smaller above) and M110 (larger below).
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