Category Archives: Astronomy

The Shanghai Astronomy Museum by Ennead Architects opened its doors to the public on July 18, 2021, after being under development since 2014. It serves as the astronomical branch of Perkins + Wills Shanghai Science and Technology Museum, which is also relatively new, completed back in 2015.

At 420,000 square feet (39,000 sqm), the Shanghai Astronomy Museum is the worlds largest museum solely dedicated to astronomy. Its a monumental structure set within an expansive green zone and designed without straight lines or right angles to echo the geometry of the universe and the dynamic energy of celestial movement.

The breathtaking new museum creates an immersive experience, placing visitors in direct engagement with real astronomical phenomena.

The website reads:

The international competition-winning design celebrates the continuum of time and space: it is modern and forward-looking while at the same time presents a link to the past, mirroring both the rich history of Chinese astronomy and the future ambitions of Chinas space exploration program.

In linking the new Museum to both scientific purposes and the celestial references of buildings throughout history, the exhibits and architecture will communicate more than scientific content: they will illuminate what it means to be human in a vast and largely unknown universe.

The building heightens visitors awareness of our fundamental relationship to the earths orbital motion and the sun through form, scale, and manipulation of light. Ennead drew from the classic three-body problem in physics for its design, looking to the intricate choreographies made by the gravitational attraction of multiple bodies within solar systems.

Thomas J. Wong, a Design Partner at Ennead Architects, said:

In making this building, we wanted to create a place where the institutional mission is fully entangled with an architecture that itself is teaching and finds form in some of the fundamental principles that shape our universe. So the big idea of the Shanghai Astronomy Museum was to infuse a visceral experience of the subject matter into the design and deliver that before you even enter the building. And at the end of your visit, there is this culminating moment directly with the sky, which is framed and supported by the architecture.

The building consists of three principal architectural components: The Sphere, The Oculus, and the Inverted Dome. They function as astronomical instruments, tracking the sun, stars, and moon.

The Sphere, half-submerged in the building, dipping into the museum proper, houses the planetarium theater. It evokes an illusion of weightlessness, floating, or anti-gravity with visible supports kept to a minimum. Its spherical form references the primordial shapes in our universe.

The Oculus, suspended over the main entry, functions as a sundial, marking the passage of time by tracking a circle of sunlight across the ground of the entry plaza and its reflecting pool. During the summer solstice at noon, a full circle aligns with a circular platform in the entry plaza.

The Inverted Dome is a giant inverted glass structure. It rests on top of the central atrium and can be reached by a 720-degree spiraling ramp from where visitors get an unimpeded view of the sky. This is the final experience for the visitor, an actual encounter with the universe.

The museum includes permanent and temporary exhibits, a 78-foot solar telescope, and several smaller surrounding buildings housing an observatory, an optical Planetarium, a Digital Sky Theater, and an Education and Research Center.

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New World's Largest Astronomy Museum Connects Visitors To The Universe Intelligent Living - Intelligent Living

The best astronomy photos of the year invite the eye upward and outward, bringing stunning views such as auroras above Earth and visions of a stellar nursery 554 light-years away.

These images, from the finalists in the 13th annual Royal Observatory Greenwich's Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition, are a beautiful reminder of the size and age of the universe. One image, created by photographer James Rushforth, shows the comet NEOWISE passing over Stonehenge, a structure that didn't even exist when the comet last streaked by Earth 6,800 years ago.

Held in cooperation with BBC Sky at Night magazine, the competition drew more than 4,500 entries from 75 different countries. Winners in 12 categories will be announced on September 16, 2021, and the winning photographs will be exhibited in the National Maritime Museum in London. Here are the shortlisted competitors.

The International Space Station travels across a waning crescent moon in this daylight shot. Photographer Andrew McCarthy of Elk Grove, California, used two cameras and two telescopes to capture the images, which he then blended together into a seamless scene.

(For the monochrome image: McCarthy used a Celestron EdgeHD800 telescope at f/10, Hobym Traveller mount, ZWO ASI174MM camera, 1,000 x 1-millisecond exposure. And for the color, he chose the Orion XT10 telescope at f/10, Hobym Traveller mount, Sony A7II camera, ISO 200, 1-millisecond exposure.)

The aurora borealis outshines the lights of Murmansk, Russia, in this photograph taken in January 2020. Photographer Vitaliy Novikov had to wait for a strong solar flare so that the aurora was visible despite the city lights.

(To capture the skylights, Novikov used a Nikon D850 camera, 24 mm f/5.6 lens, ISO 1000, 0.8-second exposure.)

This image was stitched together from shots taken of the Veil Nebula in June, July and August 2020. The nebula is the remnant of a giant supernova explosion the death throes of a massive star. The image was snapped from Pest County, Hungary.

(The photographer used a SkyWatcher 200/800 Newton Astrograph telescope at f/4.6, Astronomik Ha and OIII filters, SkyWatcher NEQ6 Pro mount, Moravian G3-16200 Mark II camera, Ha-OIII composite, 12 hours total exposure.)

This chateau in Centre-Val de Loire, France, was a photographer's dream and a challenge for Benjamin Barakat of the U.K., who had to snap photographs during minute-long pauses in the castle's lighting, which occurred once every 15 minutes.

(Baraket used the following equipment: Sigma Art 40 mm telescope, iOptron SkyTracker Pro mount, Canon 6D Baader modified camera. For the foreground, Baraket used a 40 mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 3200, 4 x 30-second exposures; and for the sky, he used a 40 mm f/2 lens, ISO 1600, 8 x 30-second exposures.)

Stonehenge didn't exist 6,800 years ago, the last time the comet NEOWISE passed by Earth. This stunning shot, captured by James Rushforth of the U.K., hints at the incredible changes our planet has seen since the astronomical phenomenon last occurred. An orange glow emanates from the villages of Durrington and Larkhill, and a passing truck's lights illuminate the stones.

(Equipment: Nikon D850 camera, 70200 mm lens at 100 mm f/2.8, ISO 5000, 4-second exposure)

The Dolphin Head Nebula sits in the middle of the constellation Canis Major. Yovin Yahathugoda, of Sri Lanka, captured this shot with the help of the Telescope Live remote telescope in Chile. The gorgeous result represents 90 minutes of exposure time spread over three nights of uncooperative weather.

(Yahathugoda used the ASA 500N telescope at f/3.8, Astrodon filters, ASA DDM85 Premium mount, FLI PL16803 camera, Ha-OIII composite, 1.5 hours total exposure.)

Star trails reveal the rotation of Earth in this shot taken over Dugi Otok in Croatia. The stars reflected in the water were added in post-production because winds over the water prevented the photographer, Ivan Vucetic, from capturing the real-life reflection of the stars.

(Vucetic used a Nikon D600 camera, 20 mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 1600. The foreground required a 526-second exposure, and the sky 247 x 25-seconds.)

The Milky Way shines over Mount Damavand, Iran, in this shot from May 2020. To capture this image, Masoud Ghadiri took a seven-hour hike to get into position. The photo contains 10 stacked images, five for the sky and five for the foreground.

(Ghadiri used Nikon D850 camera, Vixen Polarie mount, 24 mm f/4 lens, ISO 6400, 10 x 30-second exposures.)

Our favorite cameras for night sky photography

This view of the Milky Way contrasts the stars of the galaxy with the lavender fields of Valensole, France. The photographer, Stefan Liebermann, shot the foreground and night sky separately because the lavender blowing in the breeze would otherwise look like a blur in the long exposures required to capture the Milky Way's beauty.

(Liebermann captured the shot with a Sony ILCE-7M3 camera, Fornax Mounts LighTrack II mount, 16 mm f/2.8 lens. For the foreground: ISO 2500, 15 x 0.8-second exposures; and for the sky: ISO 2000, 5 x 120-second exposures.)

The aurora lights up the sky near Vik, Iceland, in this shot taken in January 2020. The photographer, Larryn Rae, noted that capturing the northern lights over the powerful natural environment of Iceland in winter was an amazing experience.

(Rae used a Canon EOS 5D Mark 4 camera, 16 mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 6400, 20 x 6-second exposures.)

The entrance of Luna Park, an abandoned amusement park in Sydney, Australia, is dark for just a few hours each night. That fleeting period of darkness allowed photographer Ed Hurst to capture this image of stars against the defunct human creation.

(Park used a Pentax 645Z camera, 25 mm f/4 DA lens. For the foreground: ISO 100, 60-second exposure at f/13; for the sky: ISO 1250, 3,004 x 1.6 second exposures at f/5.)

The sun sets on Mars in this shot made from images taken by the Curiosity Rover in 2015. The sun looks slightly smaller than it does on Earth, given Mars' greater distance from our nearest star. The photo is credited to John White.

Durdle Door, a coastal rock formation in Dorset, England, foregrounds the Milky Way in this shot taken in May 2020 by Anthony Sullivan. Saturn and Jupiter are visible above the horizon on the left side of the frame.

(Sullivan captured the images with a Canon 6D camera. For the foreground: 20 mm f/8 lens, ISO 100, 244-second exposure. And for the sky: 20 mm f/4 lens, ISO 1600, 4 x 240-second exposures.)

The setting sun lights up the clouds as the moon appears over the Lovell Telescope in northwest England. Matt Naylor snapped the image from Holmes Chapel on Dec. 29, 2020.

(Naylor used a Canon EOS 90D camera, Canon EF 100400 mm lens at 286 mm f/14, ISO 100, 1/15-second exposure.)

The Flame Nebula sits in the constellation Orion, between 900 and 1,500 light-years away from Earth. Steven Mohr took this composite image from Australia between November and December 2020.

(Mohr used a planewave CDK 12.5" telescope at f/8, Astrodon and Baader filters, AP900GTO mount, SBIG STXL-1100 + AOX camera, L-RGB-Ha composite, 23 hours total exposure.)

NGC 3981 is a galaxy 65 million light-years away in the constellation Crater. Here, its interaction with a nearby galaxy is clear the outer arms are being muddled and swept away by the gravity acting between the two objects.

(Photographer Bernard Miller used an ASA RC-1000AZ telescope at f/6.8, Astrodon filters, ASA Alt-Azimuth Direct Drive Mount, FLI PL16803 camera, L-RGB composite, 34 hours total exposure.)

NGC 6188 is a stunning nebula found within the constellation Ara, some 4,000 light-years from Earth. The Cielaustral team stitched together a mosaic of images taken over more than 250 hours to create this image of the gaseous region of space. The team of photographers included Jean-Claude Canonne, Didier Chaplain, Georges Chassaigne, Philippe Bernhard, Laurent Bourgon and Nicolas Outters.

(The image was captured with a CDK 20" homemade telescope at f/6.8, Paramount ME2 mount, Moravian G4 16803 camera, RGB-Ha-SII-OIII composite, 253 hours total exposure.)

This is a full-moon-size slice of the Dark Molecular Cloud found within Corona Australis, a constellation 554 light-years away. Within this cloud, new stars are born. On the left is NGC 6723, a globular cluster that sits a stunning 28,400 light-years away.

(Photographer Steven Mohr used a planewave CDK 12.5" telescope at f/8, Astrodon and Baader filters, AP900GTO mount, SBIG STXL-11000 + AOX camera, L-RGB-Ha composite, 82.58 hours total exposure.)

The moon travels over Paris in this photograph, which was taken from the flat of photographer Rmi Leblanc-Messager in the central part of the city during a period of pandemic curfew in February 2021.

(The photographer used a Canon EOS 6D camera, 28 mm f/6.3 lens, ISO 200, 1,080 x 15-second exposures.)

Fourteen-year-old Jashanpreet Singh Dingra took this image of the Pleiades star cluster over Punjab, India, in December 2020.

(Equipment: Takahashi FSQ-85ED telescope at 450 mm f/5.3, Astrodon filters, Avalon M-Uno mount, QSI 660WSG-8 camera, L-RGB-Ha composite, 3 hours 3 minutes total exposure)

The Andromeda galaxy fills this image, taken by Hungarian photographer Pter Feltti in several exposures between October 2017 and January 2021.

(Equipment: SkyWatcher 200/800 Newton Astrograph telescope at f/4, Astronomik filters, SkyWatcher NEQ6 Pro mount, ZWO ASI183MM Pro, Moravian Instruments G3 16200 Mk II and Canon EOS 600D cameras, L-RGB-Ha composite, 14.1 hours total exposure)

The details of Saturn's rings stand out in startling beauty in this photograph taken by Damian Peach from Spain in July 2020. The planet's polar hexagon, a persistent cloud pattern, is seen near the pole.

(Equipment: ASA 500 mm Cassegrain telescope, SkyWatcher EQ-8 mount, ZWO ASI290MM camera, c.100,000 x 0.03-second exposures)

Sculptures in the Tengger Desert near Wuwei, China, reflect the light of the Milky way in this shot taken in August 2020 by photographer Wang Zheng. The metal columns that point skyward are called raindrops. To capture the image, Zheng placed the camera at a low spot in the center of the sculpture.

Stars trail across the sky over Lujiazui city in Shanghai's Pudong district. Light pollution makes this a difficult place to shoot, but a clear autumn night allowed the photographer Daning Kai to capture this reminder of the night sky above urban areas.

(Equipment: Sony ILCE-7RM3 camera, 16 mm f/5.6 lens, ISO 100, 305 x 15-second exposures)

Photographer Yang Sutie was driving on a mountain road in Tibet late one night when he noticed the Milky Way and the mountains lining up for the perfect shot. He set his camera to shoot automatically and climbed up the hillside to get into the frame himself.

(Equipment: Nikon Z 7II camera, 17 mm f/2.8 lens; car lights and figure: ISO 1000, 2 x 25-second exposures; sky and mountains: ISO 6400, 25-second exposure.)

Just a few minutes from the Lujiazui financial district in Shanghai, sunrise takes on a particular beauty. The photographer Jiajun Hua took four exposures from the same perspective to capture this image.

(Equipment: Sony ILCE-7RM3 camera, 403 mm f/9 lens, ISO 320, 4 x 1/320-second exposures)

A sunspot flickers in this image of the sun's chromosphere, part of the outer atmosphere of the star at the center of our solar system. Photographer Siu Fone Tang stacked several images together and enhanced them in Photoshop to show the contrast in this restless layer of the sun.

(Equipment: SkyWatcher Esprit 150 telescope at f/7, DayStar Quark Gemini lens, SkyWatcher EQ8Rh-Pro mount, ZWO ASI174MM camera, 2,000 x 16-millisecond exposures)

Dark and light contrast in this shot of the aurora borealis seen from a cave, which was taken by Markus van Hauten in January near Breidamerkurjkull, Iceland.

(Equipment: Canon EOS 5D Mark IV camera, 16 mm f/4 lens; foreground: ISO 100, 1/-800-second exposure; sky: ISO 800, 20-second exposure.)

The comet 2020F8 SWAN is a visitor from the Oort Cloud that surrounds the solar system. The comet may have disintegrated completely after it appeared in the southern sky in May 2020, but it left behind this indelible image of its gas-rich tail, captured by Gerald Rhemann from Austria.

(Equipment: ASA Astrograph 12" telescope at f/3.6, ASA DDM 85 mount, FLI ML16200 camera, LRGB composite, 21 minutes total exposure)

The crater Clavius in the southern highlands of the moon appears to harbor two eyes actually smaller craters illuminated by the rising sun, in this shot taken by Thea Hutchinson from London in February 2021.

(Equipment: Celestron C11 HD Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope at f/10, Baader filter, Celestron CGE Pro mount, ZWO ASI174MM camera, 1,200 x 5.895-millisecond exposures)

The full moon rises over Hodynka, a park in Moscow that was once an airfield. Moscow often has cloudy weather, but the sky cooperated with photographer Anna Kaunis in this July 2020 shot.

(Equipment: Nikon Z6 camera, 200500mm lens at 500 mm f/22, ISO 400, 0.25-second exposure)

Magnetic field lines shimmer on the sun in this image that was originally captured in black and white. Andrew McCarthy captured this shot after a large solar flare in November 2020.

(Equipment: Coronado Solarmax III telescope at f/5, Hobym Traveller mount, ZWO ASI178MM camera, 6-millisecond exposure)

The stars sparkle above the village of Hongcun near Huangshan Mountain in Anhui province, China. Hongcun has been populated for at least 900 years and is a World Heritage Site. Zhang Xiao captured this photo after 1 a.m. when the streetlights had gone out.

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These are the best astronomy images of the year - Livescience.com

Astronomy Fans; YOU Are Invited to a Free Lectureon Telescopes and Technology to See the StarsPhoenix, AZ The Phoenix Astronomical Society PASAZ.ORG is proud to announce that Mr. Mark Johnston will be our guest lecturer on July 15, 2021 during our ZOOM meeting starting at 7:00 p.m.The link to this meeting can be obtained at the PASAZ.ORG website under the heading of "PAS Calendar, & the date of this meeting.Marks lecture is titled Electronically Assisted Astronomy. Technology is now helping amateur astronomers see more than ever before and allowing them to take pictures of these awesome images above us in the dark sky.Mark is a NASA Solar System Ambassador and also runs a technology consulting business in Scottsdale.A member of PAS and numerous other astronomy societies, he has shared the Arizona night sky with thousands of people in his public outreach star parties. He is also a certified cruise ship speaker on astronomy and space science, and an enthusiastic astrophotographer. This lecture is open to the public, so please tell a friend.

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Astronomy Fans; July 15 - YOU Are Invited to a Free Lecture on Telescopes and Technology to See the Stars - Glendale Daily Planet

Ennead Architects has unveiled its completed Shanghai Astronomy Museum, the celestial object-focused new branch of the landmark Shanghai Science and Technology Museum in the citys Pudong district. (The Perkins&Will-designed Shanghai Natural History Museum at Jingan Sculpture Park is the museums other main satellite location.) Spanning 420,000-square-feet, the expansive facility, which opens to the public on July 18, is the largest astronomy (only) museum in the world.

As detailed by the firm, which opened its Shanghai-based office in 2014 and was tapped for the project a year later, the building uses scale, form, and the manipulation of light to heighten awareness of our fundamental relationship to the sun and the earths orbital motion. Notably, the design of the structure features nary a straight line or right angle, to reflect the geometry of the universe and the dynamic energy of celestial movement.

In making this building, we wanted to create a place where the institutional mission is fully enmeshed with an architecture that itself is teaching, and finds form in some of the fundamental principles that shape our universe, explained Thomas J. Wong, design partner at Ennead Architects, in a statement. Leading the project, which broke ground in November 2016, alongside Wong was Ennead management partner, V. Guy Maxwell.

The big idea of the Shanghai Astronomy Museum was to infuse a visceral experience of the subject matter into the design, and to deliver that before you even enter the building, added Wong. And at the end of your visit, there is this culminating moment directly with the sky, which is framed and supported by the architecture.

As further detailed by the firm, Wong was inspired by the three-body problem in physics and looked to the intricate choreographies created by gravitational attraction of multiple bodies within solar systems. The resulting structure features a spiraling facade and a building envelope that traces a series of arcing paths that are visibly influenced by gravitational pull: the heart of the central atrium, the forward momentum at the entry, and the planet-like sphere that envelopes the planetarium theater.

Featuring exhibits and interactive elements divided into three thematic areas (Home, Cosmos, and Odyssey), the museum is defined by a trio of core architectural components that pull double-duty as functional astronomical instruments that track the sun, moon, and stars: The Oculus, the Inverted Dome, and the Sphere.

Suspended directly above the museums main entry point, the Oculus creates a veritable time piece by tracking a circle of sunlight on the ground opposite the museums entry plaza and reflecting pool. At noon during the summer solstice, there is a full circle, which aligns with a circular platform within the Museums entry plaza, explained Ennead.

Situated at the buildings roofline above the central atrium and the 720-degree spiraling ramp, the Inverted Dome takes the form of an inverted glass tension structure where visitors can congregate and crane their necks upwards to enjoy unobstructed views of the heavens above. As noted by the firm, the culmination of the exhibit journey, this space cuts the view of the horizon and adjacent urban context and focuses the visitor on the all-encompassing skya real encounter with the universe to conclude the simulated experience within.

Finally, the Sphere, instantly reminiscent of Enneads Hayden Sphere at the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, is home to the museums half-submerged planetarium theater. The Sphere derives its shape not only from the requirements of the programmatic element it contains, but as an abstract manifestation of a primary celestial form explained Ennead. Embedded in the roof plane of the lower Museum wing, as if rising out of the Earth-bound horizon, the sphere gradually emerges into view as one rounds the building, the drama unfolding as though one were approaching a planet from one of its moons, allowing visitors to experience it as a weightless mass from below.

Other major programming elements and buildings located at the Shanghai Astronomy Museums park-like campus in the Nanhui New City (formerly the Lingang New City), a booming free trade zone southeast of the central business district, include: A crowd-drawing range of temporary and permanent exhibits, a 78-foot solar telescope, an observatory, an optical planetarium, an education and research center, and Digital Sky Theater. Per Ennead, the museums programming will showcase immersive environments, artifacts and instruments of space exploration, and educational exhibitry.

While the Shanghai Astronomy Museum officially opens to the public later this month, some guests have already toured the vast space during a preview run. One early visitor told the Global Times that she was overwhelmed by the museums augmented and virtual reality-heavy exhibitions because the demonstrations of astronomy are so realistic.

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Ennead Architects' Shanghai Astronomy Museum opens this month as the largest in the world - The Architect's Newspaper

Using AI driven data analysis to peel back the noise and find the actual shape of the Universe. Credit: The Institute of Statistical Mathematics

Japanese astronomers have developed a new artificial intelligence (AI) technique to remove noise in astronomical data due to random variations in galaxy shapes. After extensive training and testing on large mock data created by supercomputer simulations, they then applied this new tool to actual data from Japans Subaru Telescope and found that the mass distribution derived from using this method is consistent with the currently accepted models of the Universe. This is a powerful new tool for analyzing big data from current and planned astronomy surveys.

Wide area survey data can be used to study the large-scale structure of the Universe through measurements of gravitational lensing patterns. In gravitational lensing, the gravity of a foreground object, like a cluster of galaxies, can distort the image of a background object, such as a more distant galaxy. Some examples of gravitational lensing are obvious, such as the Eye of Horus. The large-scale structure, consisting mostly of mysterious dark matter, can distort the shapes of distant galaxies as well, but the expected lensing effect is subtle. Averaging over many galaxies in an area is required to create a map of foreground dark matter distributions.

But this technique of looking at many galaxy images runs into a problem; some galaxies are just innately a little funny looking. It is difficult to distinguish between a galaxy image distorted by gravitational lensing and a galaxy that is actually distorted. This is referred to as shape noise and is one of the limiting factors in research studying the large-scale structure of the Universe.

To compensate for shape noise, a team of Japanese astronomers first used ATERUI II, the worlds most powerful supercomputer dedicated to astronomy, to generate 25,000 mock galaxy catalogs based on real data from the Subaru Telescope. They then added realist noise to these perfectly known artificial data sets, and trained an AI to statistically recover the lensing dark matter from the mock data.

After training, the AI was able to recover previously unobservable fine details, helping to improve our understanding of the cosmic dark matter. Then using this AI on real data covering 21 square degrees of the sky, the team found a distribution of foreground mass consistent with the standard cosmological model.

This research shows the benefits of combining different types of research: observations, simulations, and AI data analysis. comments Masato Shirasaki, the leader of the team, In this era of big data, we need to step across traditional boundaries between specialties and use all available tools to understand the data. If we can do this, it will open new fields in astronomy and other sciences.

Reference: Noise reduction for weak lensing mass mapping: an application of generative adversarial networks to Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam first-year data by Masato Shirasaki, Kana Moriwaki, Taira Oogi, Naoki Yoshida, Shiro Ikeda and Takahiro Nishimichi, 9 April 2021, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stab982

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Astronomers Use Artificial Intelligence to Reveal the Actual Shape of the Universe - SciTechDaily

Not all of us have a billionaire brother who can let us hitch a ride into space, so we rely on talented photographers to give us a glimpse into the beyond.

London's Royal Museums Greenwich has unveiled the finalists for the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2021. The astrophotography competition, which has been running for 13 years, received over 4,500 entries taken from 75 countries.

Below, you'll find a collection of the incredible finalists, with the full shortlist available on the RMG website. The winners will be announced Sept. 16 before an exhibition of the images opens at London's National Maritime Museum from Sept. 18.

From magical views of the Milky Way over French lavender fields to a truly hardcore looking sunspot, this year's finalists literally light up the skies and space around our planet. There are nine categories including skyscapes, aurorae, people and space, our sun, our moon, stars and nebulae, galaxies, and planets, comets, and asteroids.

If you're keen for more otherworldly looks into the stars, here are last year's winners.

Iceland Vortex by Larryn RaeCredit:

"Harmony" by Stefan Liebermann. A panorama of the Milky Way over lavender fields in Valensole, France.Credit: Stefan Liebermann

"Milky Way rising over Durdle Door" byAnthony Sullivan. Taken in Dorset in England.Credit: Anthony Sullivan

"Bicolour Veil Nebula" by Peter Feltoti.Credit: Peter Feltoti

"The Soul of Space (Close-up of the Soul Nebula)" by Kush Chandari (who is 13!).Credit: Kush Chandari

"Dolphin Head Nebula" by Yovin YahathugodaCredit: Yovin Yahathugoda

"Flame Nebula" by Steven-Mohr.Credit: Steven Mohr

"NGC 6188 SHOrgb" by Cielaustral team Jean-Claude Canonne, Didier Chaplain, Georges Chassaigne, Philippe Bernhard, Laurent Bourgon, and Nicolas Outters.Credit: Cielaustral team

"Sunspot Looking Out Into Space" by Siu Fone Tang.Credit: Siu Fone Tang

"Star Fall" by Wang Zheng.Credit: Wang Zheng

"The Cave" by Markus van Hauten.Credit: Markus van Hauten

"The Star Observer" by Antoni Cladera Barcelo.Credit: Antoni Cladera Barcelo

"NGC 6723, NGC 6726, NGC 6727 and NGC 6729 Dark Molecular Cloud in Corona Australis" by Steven MohrCredit: Steven Mohr

"The Milky Way on the Ancient Village by Zhang Xiao.Credit: Zhang Xiao

"Star Watcher" by Yang Sutie.Credit: Yang Sutie

"Pleiades Sisters" by Jashanpreet Singh Dingra.Credit: Jashanpreet Singh Dingra

"The Exceptionally Active Ion Tail of Comet-2020F8-SWAN" by Gerald Rhemann.Credit: Gerald Rhemann

"Waterfall" by Anna Dobrovolskaya-Mints.Credit: Anna Dobrovolskaya-Mints

"Glory of Damavand and Milky-Way" by Masoud GhadiriCredit: Masoud Ghadiri

"Chateau de Chambord" by Benjamin Barakat.Credit: Benjamin Barakat

"Dugi Otok - Variant A" by Ivan Vucetic.Credit: Ivan Vucetic

"The Tumult of the Sun" by Hassan Hatami.Credit: Hassan Hatami

"The Rose" by Josep Drudis.Credit: Josep Drudis

"The Magnetic Field of our Active Sun" by Andrew McCarthy.Credit: Andrew McCarthy

"Sunrise of the Magic City" by Jiajun Hua.Credit: Jiajun Hua

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25 ethereal astronomy photos that literally light up the skies - Mashable

100 black holes

The globular star cluster Palomar 5 has always been strange. The cluster is one of the fluffiest known, Its less massive than other globulars and has a greater distance between its stars. It also has two long streamers of stars flowing away from the cluster. And now astronomers have found a new quirk of Palomar 5: its hiding more than 100 black holes at its center. A team of astronomers announced July 1, 2021, that this unusual globular cluster has about three times as many black holes as expected. Some 20% of the clusters mass comes from black holes. These astronomers said that, one day, the stars will be gone, and nothing will remain but the black holes.

The scientists published their study on July 5, 2021, in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Astronomy.

Palomar 5 is a globular cluster, a huge ball of stars that orbits in the halo of the Milky Way. Discovered by Walter Baade in 1950, Palomar 5 lies 65,000 light-years away from us in the direction of the constellation Serpens. This globular cluster is ancient more than 10 billion years old because it formed at the same time as the galaxy. The globular cluster is in the process of dissipating, and long streamers of stars are flowing away from it out into space.

Palomar 5 has an unusual number of black holes for a globular cluster. Mark Gieles of the University of Barcelona and lead author of the paper said:

The number of black holes is roughly three times larger than expected from the number of stars in the cluster, and it means that more than 20% of the total cluster mass is made up of black holes. They each have a mass of about 20 times the mass of the sun, and they formed in supernova explosions at the end of the lives of massive stars, when the cluster was still very young.

The black-hole heavy cluster is losing stars as they flow away from the cluster out into space, leaving long tails visible in deep-sky surveys. Tidal streams, as they are called, are made up of stars that were ejected from disrupting star clusters or dwarf galaxies. Palomar 5 is the only globular star cluster displaying tidal streams. But in the last few years, astronomers have discovered almost 30 thin tidal streams unconnected to clusters in the Milky Ways halo. As Gieles said:

We do not know how these streams form, but one idea is that they are disrupted star clusters. However, none of the recently discovered streams have a star cluster associated with them, hence we cannot be sure. So, to understand how these streams formed, we need to study one with a stellar system associated with it. Palomar 5 is the only case, making it a Rosetta stone for understanding stream formation and that is why we studied it in detail.

The higher black hole concentration may play a key in the formation of tidal streams. He continued:

We have shown that the presence of a large black hole population may have been common in all the clusters that formed the streams.

Using computer modeling, the scientists ran different simulations until they found one that matched the properties of Palomar 5. They found that Palomar 5 likely formed with a lower concentration of black holes. Then stars escaped more easily than black holes, so that the fraction of black holes to stars in the cluster increased. The black hole interactions with the stars created gravitational slingshots, which helped create its fluffy appearance and led to more stars escaping and fueling the exiting tidal stream. The scientists said that a billion years from now, just before the cluster completely dissolves, it will consist entirely of black holes.

The scientists study gives us a more complete picture for understanding globular cluster formation, the initial masses of stars and the evolution of massive stars, and has important implications for gravitational waves.

Bottom line: Scientists have discovered that the globular cluster known as Palomar 5 has a large proportion of black holes and will one day lose all its stars and be made entirely of black holes.

Source: A supra-massive population of stellar-mass black holes in the globular cluster Palomar 5

Via the University of Barcelona

Kelly Kizer Whitt has been a science writer specializing in astronomy for more than two decades. She began her career at Astronomy Magazine, and she has made regular contributions to AstronomyToday and the Sierra Club, among other outlets. Her childrens picture book, Solar System Forecast, was published in 2012. She has also written a young adult dystopian novel titled A Different Sky. When she is not reading or writing about astronomy and staring up at the stars, she enjoys traveling to the national parks, creating crossword puzzles, running, tennis, and paddleboarding. Kelly lives with her family in Wisconsin.

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Astronomers find 100 black holes in Palomar 5 - EarthSky

Waterfall by Anna Dobrovolskaya-Mints (Israel)This waterfall is in the middle of nowhere in Lapland, but the closest city is Arvidsjaur. It was very cold and while the photographer was waiting for the aurora to start, she put the camera outside to capture the star trails. The last few frames caught the start of Northern Lights and the photographer decided to merge all the frames and got this exceptional result.

Exceptional images of the stars are on full display at the Royal Observatory Greenwich announced its shortlist for the thirteenth Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest. From the Northern Lights reflecting in the waters of remote Sweden to incredible views of spiral galaxies, the finalist images are an inspiring view into the world of astronomy.

While the overall winner, which will be announced in mid-September, will take home a 10,000 cash prize, there are many other categories that will also be rewarded. This includes Aurorae, People and Space, Our Sun, and Galaxies. There is also the Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year, which will be awarded to a talented photographer under the age of 16.

A quick scroll through some of the shortlist shows just how much there is to see and explore within our universe. Some images are clearly rooted on Earth, while others, like Damian Peach's portrait of Saturn, bring us far into the solar system. The finalists hail from around the globe and include familiar names like Andrew McCarthy, who is known for his impressive backyard astrophotography.

Chteau de Chambord by Benjamin Barakat (UK)This magnificent chteau in Chambord, Centre-Val de Loire, France was an amazing location chosen by the photographers best friend and mentor Ralf Rohner, but it proved to be a challenging one as the castle had intervals of illumination with a minutes pause every 15 minutes. During the pauses, the photographer shot away trying to get as many images as possible and while processing it he had to try to mimic the reflection due to the time delay caused by the castle lights.

The Soul of Space (Close-up of the Soul Nebula) by Kush Chandaria (UK), aged 13The Soul Nebula is one of those incredible targets that no matter where you point your telescope, there are always some incredible structures and details to be uncovered. This was the case with this image. With 14 hours of exposure, faint details and structures deep within the nebula began to emerge. The photographer chose to use narrowband filters to image this target and created a Hubble Palette composite.

Saturn at its Best by Damian Peach (UK)In this image, Saturn is shown near its best for 2020, displaying a wealth of details across the globe and ring system. The famous polar hexagon can be seen around the pole at bottom, while many other belts and zones are seen across the planet. The famous Cassini and Encke divisions dominate the view of the rings.

Star Watcher by Yang Sutie (China)As the photographer was driving on the mountain road late at night and turned the corner, he saw a mound on the right side of the road. The mountains lined up and the Milky Way was lined-up in front of the photographer, so he stopped and climbed up the side of the road, set the camera to shoot automatically, and then drove back and forth in this curve. Then he climbed up the hillside and integrated himself into the picture.

The Magnetic Field of our Active Sun by Andrew McCarthy (USA)This image shows how the magnetic field of the Sun pulls up portions of the chromosphere following a large solar flare, with the magnetic field lines on crystal clear display along the limb in hydrogen-alpha light. This also happened while a particularly large active region was along the face of the solar disc. This was captured in black and white and processed partially inverted to highlight the contrast on the surface as well as the atmospheric features on the limb, presented in false color for the aesthetic. This was one of the most interesting features on the Sun in all of 2020 and represents the first major activity since the start of the new solar cycle. The photographer is pleased with the way the processing shows the nature of the Sun in a naturally blue sky while preserving close to the proper hydrogen-alpha tones.

NGC 2024 Flame Nebula by Steven Mohr (Australia)The Flame Nebula, designated as NGC 2024 and Sh2-277, is an emission nebula in the constellation Orion, lying some 900 to 1,500 light-years away from Earth. The bright star Alnitak (just outside the field of view at the top of this image), the easternmost star in the Belt of Orion, shines energetic ultraviolet light into the Flame and this knocks electrons away from the great clouds of hydrogen gas that reside there. Much of the glow results when the electrons and ionized hydrogen recombine. Additional dark gas and dust lies in front of the bright part of the nebula, and this is what causes the dark network that appears in the centre of the glowing gas. The Flame Nebula is part of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, a star-forming region that includes the famous Horsehead Nebula.

Pleiades Sisters by Jashanpreet Singh Dingra (India), aged 14This is an outstanding image of shining stars over the photographers region in winter. The Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters and Messier 45, is an open star cluster containing middle-aged, hot B-type stars in the north-west of the constellation Taurus. It is the nearest star cluster and Messier object to Earth and it is the cluster most obvious to the naked eye in the night sky. The data of this image was processed in Deep Sky Stacker, Photoshop CC 17 and Gimps.

The Star Observer by Antoni Cladera Barcel (Spain).Menorca was declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 1993 and credited as a Starlight Reserve in 2019. The photographer captured this image at this natural stone bridge shaped by water erosion. A watchman stands vigilant under the stars as the Milky Way is vertical above the natural arch. To add a soft and warm tone to the arch, the photographer used the light pollution from Mallorca, the neighboring island. The photographer wanted to humanize the landscape and incorporate the human element in the composition to prove that we are just natures guests.

The Milky Way on the Ancient Village by Zhang Xiao (China).Hongcun, an ancient village at the foot of Huangshan Mountain in China, has a history of more than 900 years and in 2000 it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its existing buildings have the unique characteristics of Hui Style Architecture from the Ming and Qing Dynasties. A galaxy of stars fell on the famous Yuezhao Lake surrounded by ancient buildings. This photo was taken after 1a.m., the streetlights in the village had gone out, and no one was around.

Dugi Otok Variant A by Ivan Vucetic (Croatia)The photograph shows a captivating star trail over Dugi Otok in Croatia and the extraordinary relationship between our Planet and the Universe in a way that the human eye cannot perceive it. The photographer intended to capture the reflection of the stars on the water together with the sky, however during the long exposure time that was necessary for star trails the wind increased and seeing conditions were not favorable enough for a clear reflection of the stars. The photographer had to use the stars from the sky in post-processing to achieve the final result.

NGC 3981 by Bernard Miller (USA)This is an image of NGC 3981. It is a spiral galaxy about 65 million light years away in the constellation Crater. Its windswept look is due to its outer arms being stripped away by an interaction with another galaxy. The galaxy is part of the NGC 4038 group, which also contains the well-known interacting Antennae Galaxies. This group is part of the larger Crater Cloud, which is itself a smaller component of the Virgo Supercluster.

NGC 2024 Flame Nebula by Steven Mohr (Australia)The Flame Nebula, designated as NGC 2024 and Sh2-277, is an emission nebula in the constellation Orion, lying some 900 to 1,500 light-years away from Earth. The bright star Alnitak (just outside the field of view at the top of this image), the easternmost star in the Belt of Orion, shines energetic ultraviolet light into the Flame and this knocks electrons away from the great clouds of hydrogen gas that reside there. Much of the glow results when the electrons and ionized hydrogen recombine. Additional dark gas and dust lies in front of the bright part of the nebula, and this is what causes the dark network that appears in the centre of the glowing gas. The Flame Nebula is part of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, a star-forming region that includes the famous Horsehead Nebula.

Sunspot Looking out into Space by Siu Fone Tang (USA)This image shows a close-up of a sunspot and the plasma as it flickers and follows the magnetic lines generated by the Sun. The photo depicts what is called the chromosphere, this is imaged using a hydrogen-alpha filter. The photo is made up of multiple frames that are stacked together and then later enhanced using Photoshop. It is an inverted view which creates more contrast.

Sunrise of the Magic City by Jiajun Hua (China)Shanghai is one of the most economically developed cities in China. The photo is taken 16 kilometers away from Lujiazui financial district. Every year there are only a few weeks when photographers can capture the scene of the Sun rising the Central Business District (CBD). The photographer waited for a few days and finally witnessed the Sun rising from the most prosperous area of Shanghai on a heavily polluted morning. The photo is composed of four different exposures from the same perspective, recording the process of the Sun rising.

Iceland Vortex by Larryn Rae (New Zealand)This is a 250 panorama of the Aurora Borealis in Iceland. The photographer came across this estuary that reflected the sky perfectly on a well below freezing winters night, and captured the panorama first, and then took a shot of himself out on the ice. For the photographer this is one of the most amazing aurora images that he has ever captured, and it sums up an awe-inspiring trip to Iceland in wintertime that also emphasized the feeling of being just a tiny part of the planets existence in the face of a very powerful natural environment. The panorama is comprised of twenty images, two rows of ten, captured on a Canon 5DMk3 and Canon 16-35mm.

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Incredible Finalists of the 2021 Astronomy Photographer of the Year - My Modern Met

The universe comes off as a vast and immeasurable entity whose depths are imperceptible to Earthlings. But in the pursuit of simplifying all that surrounds us, scientists have made great strides in understanding the space we inhabit.

Now, Japanese astronomers have developed an astounding technique to measure the universe. Using artificial intelligence, scientists were able to remove noise in astronomical data which iscaused by random variations in the shapes of galaxies.

What did the scientists do?

Scientists used supercomputer simulations and tested large mock data before performing the same on real data from space. After extensive testing, scientists used the tool on data derived from Japans Subaru Telescope.

To their surprise, it worked! The results that followed remained largely in sync withthe currently accepted models of the universe. If employed on a bigger scale, the tool could help scientists analyse expansive data from astronomical surveys.

Current methods cannot effectively get rid of the noise which pervades all data from space. To avoid interference from noise data, the team used the worlds most advanced astronomy supercomputer called ATERUI II.

Using real data from the Subaru Telescope, they generated 25,000 mock galaxy catalogues.

Also read:Explosion on Sun equivalent to millions of hydrogen bombs causes biggest solar flare in 4 years

What's causing data distortion?

All data from space can be distorted by the gravity of whats in the foreground eclipsing its background. This is called gravitational lensing. Measurements of such lensing is used to better understand the universe. Essentially, a galaxy directly visible to us could be manipulating data about what lies behind it.

But its difficult to differentiate oddly-looking galaxies from distorting ones that manipulate data. Its called shape noise and regularly gets in the way of understanding the universe.

Based on these understandings, scientists added noise to the artificial data sets and trained AI to recover lensing data from the mock data. The AI was able to highlight previously unobservable details from this data.

Building on this, scientists used the AI model on the real world, covering 21 square degrees of the sky. They found that the details registered about the foreground were actually consistent with existing knowledge about the cosmos.

Also read:'Orphan cloud' bigger than Milky Way found in 'no-galaxy's land' by scientists

The research was published in the April issueof Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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Astronomers use artificial intelligence to reveal the true shape of universe - WION

In the scheme of galactic magic tricks, one of the more difficult is making an entire star disappear. Especially with the added difficulty of making it reappear again a little over six months later.

Yet this is apparently what happened to a star halfway across the galaxy from us. In 2012, the star slowly faded over a few months, dropping in brightness by an astonishing 97% (that that, Betelgeuse!) before rising again at the same rate it faded. A drop like that is extremely weird, and very difficult to explain.

In fact, it's not clear what caused it. Astronomers studying it think they have an idea a giant disk of dust blocking the star from our view but it doesn't explain everything. So this trick is still something of a mystery.

The star is called VVV-WIT-08, and that name itself is worth a moment to explain. It was found in a project called the VISTA Variables in Via Lactea where VISTA stands for the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy, Variables means stars that change brightness, and Via Lactea is the original Latin term for, literally, Milky Way. This is a survey that looked toward the galactic center, observing hundreds of millions of stars (!!) to measure their brightness over a period of several years.

When you look at that many stars, most will be well behaved and understood, young ones, middle-aged ones like the Sun, dead or dying ones, and so on. But with such a huge number, some are going to act weird. Astronomers kept a list of objects they didn't understand, which they called the "What is this?" list WIT.

So yup. VVV-WIT-08 is the eighth star on their list. Others included bizarre objects that may be stars that have collided, a distant galaxy that changed in brightness, and more.

The star in this case is a bit strange all by itself. It's clearly a big star, and cooler than the Sun, which means it probably started out life very much like the Sun but is now dying. Stars like that expand hugely and their temperature drops, so we call them red giants. VVV-WIT-08 is probably something like 100 million kilometers across wide enough that if you replaced the Sun with it, the star would engulf Mercury.

That's actually a bit smaller than you'd expect for a star like this, which is odd. Also, when they measured how fast it was moving through space, it was hauling gas, moving at nearly 500 kilometers per second. The distance to the star isn't well constrained, but it's likely a part of what's called the bulge, the roughly spherical cloud of stars surrounding the center of the Milky Way. Some stars in the bulge do move that rapidly, but one way of measuring its distance puts it well on the other side of the bulge from us, which in turn means its moving so rapidly it might escape from the galaxy entirely! But that distance measurement relies on knowing what kind of star it is, and if it's not a giant (but, say, on its way to becoming one, what we call a subgiant) then maybe it's closer than that measurement indicates, and indeed part of the bulge.

The point being the star is weird without suddenly dropping to 3% of its normal brightness over the course of a few months.

What could do that?

The obvious idea is that something blocked its light. Some stars do brighten and dim, but not by that huge amount. So this is more likely some external object getting in the way. The astronomers who looked at the data first assumed it was a dust cloud between us and it, but the odds of that happening in this way are extremely small, so they rule that out.

Their next idea is that there's something orbiting the star itself blocking its light. Looking at the data carefully and running various models to see what works best to explain the observations, what they found is no less astonishing than the star itself: It must have a companion star orbiting it, and surrounding that star is a vast disk of opaque dust, at least as wide as the giant star itself and possibly much larger.

We see this circular disk at an angle, so it looks like an ellipse (like the circular the rim of a drinking glass seen at an angle). The narrow diameter of the ellipse is something like 100 million kilometers, then, and the long axis may be much larger. It's also possible we're seeing it nearly edge-on, in which case it's the thickness of the disk that's the size of the giant star. Either way, it's a big disk.

So what then is the companion star? That's not clear. Middle-aged stars like the Sun can have disks but they tend to be thin; the fact that the disk blocked nearly all the star's light indicates the observed disk is thick and opaque. White dwarfs (dead cinders of stars once like the Sun) can have thick disks, but they're too small to explain what was seen with VVV-WIT-08. Other kinds of stars have similar issues.

One idea that fits well is that the companion star stripped material from the giant via gravity. This sort of mass transfer is common, and would explain why the giant is smaller than expected. However, given the length of time of the eclipse (200 days) and the fact that is was only seen once and never repeated, the companion star would have to orbit the giant at a decent distance, too far for mass transfer to occur. Maybe they started closer, but as the material moved from one star to the other a lot of the mass was lost to space; this would decrease the stars' mutual gravity, and they'd separate.

So yeah, as you can see, there's no simple explanation here. Everything has lots of steps, weird circumstances, and difficult to overcome obstacles.

Surprisingly, other stars like this are known. Epsilon Aurigae, a star visible in the northeast in winter, also undergoes eclipses by a dust disk surrounding companion stars, though the system details are different. And the astronomers found two more stars (VVV-WIT-10 and 11) that behave in a similar fashion to 08. So it's weird and rare but not necessarily one of a kind.

Astronomy is a peculiar science. We look at a dot in the sky, one of billions, and over time see it change. And from that meager data we get dying stars, binary stars, stars encircled by huge dark disks, stars racing through space at high speeds and sometimes all of those at once. It's quite the result from such a small effort.

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What caused an old, giant star to disappear for over half a year? - SYFY WIRE