Tag Archives: deep-sky observing

Space Clouds

Posted on by June 25, 2026

 

clouds that wander through the sky
sometimes low and sometimes high
in the darkness of the night
in the sunshine warm and bright
ah! I wonder much if you
have any useful work to do
-anonymous-

 

The telescope points at the night sky and finds a giant molecular cloud hundreds of thousands of light years away. A  camera, mounted on the telescope gathers photons and squashes the cloud into one small magnificent and colourful image.

My adventure to these far away clouds began with less sophisticated equipment. I saw no colour just faint smudges and in some I could detect dark blotches, bands or filaments.

Maybe my first observations, without modern interventions were closer to what they might look like if we could one day travel so far.

One thing is for sure. Molecular Clouds have useful work to do. They are the stellar incubators and nurseries. They are the reason we see stars.

Women|Space|Slooh

Posted on by November 15, 2022
As women of the Slooh Community our mission is to inspire, encourage and nurture a love for Astronomy.
We invite women from across the world, who have an interest in the stars, to join this group.
This is our SPACE.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1187203534993170

RS Ophiuchi- a rare occasion

Posted on by September 6, 2021

Life seems to be chugging along when suddenly there’s a thermonuclear eruption somewhere far far away. By far away I mean 5000ly!
What’s happening there?

A white dwarf star and a red giant are orbiting one another and maybe too close for comfort. The white dwarf siphons off material from the red giant star and developes a dense atmosphere which consists mainly of hydrogen. The newly accreted atmosphere is thermally heated by the hot white dwarf.  With this extra mass, gravity increases and the white dwarf becomes compressed which causes it to ignite.
I’ve read that only 10 recurrent novae have been identified. So what I’m following here is quite rare
To get a visual comparison, I’ve been setting up missions to RS Ophiuchi on the same telescope at Slooh and more or less at the same time of night. Cloudy weather was persistent but just as well because the Moon might have been too bright and in close proximity on those cloudy nights.
I did not give up and last night, conditions were perfect and I got a beautiful follow-up image. There’s no doubt, RS Oph is dimming and will go into slumber mode again.

To do an accurate comparison, I have not processed or cropped these images.

Gum 50 & Trumpler 23

Posted on by July 21, 2021

While working through South African astronomer, Magda Streicher’s, list of delightful asterisms to enjoy the pretty in the night sky, I have come across some very interesting deep-sky objects in the nearby regions of the sky.

I noticed a pinkish-reddish object to the north of asterism, Streicher 34. I ran the co-ordinates in Aladin Sky Atlas and identified this as Gum 50. Then another surprise! I also found the faint but destinctive open cluster, Trumpler 23 northeast of Gum 50. The cluster has an interesting shape and almost looks connected to Gum 50 by a string of stars. Could they be somehow connected?
If only I could understand what’s been written in scientific papers by Y M and Y P Georgelin and Veta Avedisova, I would have a clearer idea.

At one stage Avedisova placed Gum 50 and Trumpler 23 in the same star forming region. After measuring distances and determining spectral classes of the stars, the Georgelins cast doubt on whether the cluster was associated with Gum 50, which goes by RCW 99 as well.