Gaia, I mean, wow!

[Star101]

michael.h.f.wilkinson posted a topic tonight about a Supernova

This lead me to the website Gaia. Where I found the Supernova and so much more.

I looked around their image of the galaxy and zoomed into the Horsehead Nebula. The detail is amazing to me. Thought I would mention it.

 

 

 

http://gsaweb.ast.cam.ac.uk/alerts/alert/Gaia15agl/

Click on the link then click on the image the two arrows to expand to full screen and zoom around. Look for the Milky Way and enjoy

 

 

Edited May 7, 2020 by Star101

[Knight of Clear Skies]

You're looking at images from the Digitised Sky Survey (DSS) which ran between 1983 and 2006. I think that image is from the first release which was taken with photographic plates.

My favoured method for browsing various sky surveys is to use World Wide Telescope. Other interesting datasets include the WISE all sky IR survey, the SFD dust map and an all-sky ha map. For example, here's Orion in Ha and WISE IR.

In IR it's much clearer that the Angelfish nebula is a supernova remnant, dust has been swept into a circular feature by the explosion.

Another good trick is, if you upload one of your images to http://nova.astrometry.net/upload it gives you a link to view it in WWT, if it plate solves successfully.

You can then adjust the crossfade slider to see how well different features line up across wavelengths.

Hope that's of some interest.

Edited May 8, 2020 by Knight of Clear Skies

[Star101]

Thanks for the links. That's great

I think I could spend hours on these sites lol.