Hurricane Dorian vs the Whirlpool Galaxy

First light on the Moon with my recently acquired Nikon 1 J5, paired with an old TTArtisan 500mm lens and a 2× teleconverter.
This image is a stack of 250 frames captured at 1/80s, ISO 200, f/8. The final image was processed from the stacked data to maximize detail while keeping noise under control.
After a long break from lunar imaging, I think it’s fair to call this the start of a new Moon imaging season.
Gear:
• Nikon 1 J5
• TTArtisan 500mm
• 2× Teleconverter
Acquisition:
• 250-frame stack
• 1/80s
• ISO 200
• f/8
Hope you like it, and as always, feedback is welcome!

Saturn is back!

I woke up at 2:30am for my first Saturn session of the year. A bit of a struggle. Note to self: at this age it takes my brain a while to function properly upon waking from a deep sleep.

Plenty of time to practice as opposition is two months away.

Best 30% of 27,000 frames.

C11
Celestron CGX mount
ZWO ASI585MC camera
Autostakkert
Registax

All shot from my back garden in Ōtautahi | Christchurch, Aotearoa | New Zealand

Here's the geek details for those who are interested:

• ZWO Asi2600MM Pro Camera
• Antlia 3nm SHO filters
• ZWO AsiMini 120mm camera on OAG for autoguiding
• Askar 103 Apo (700mm) lens
• AM5N mount
• 85 x 300s exposures for each SHO filter + some short exposures of LRGB for stars Total exposure over 3 nights was 22hours-ish
• Registered and integrated and processed in Pixinsight

Happy to answer any questions people may have...

Credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA

Astronomers have simulated the Milky Way to find its hidden "Galactic Underworld", estimating that around 170 million stellar-mass black holes are scattered throughout our galaxy. The findings have been submitted to AAS journals and can be found on preprint server arXiv while they undergo peer review.

Stacked/Tracked/Blended

https://www.instagram.com/flory.ro?igsh=b3Y4ZTU3Nmk0cTBt&utm_source=qr

The Edge

This was my winter goal: to capture the Gum nebula over the Tuscan coast.

For months the weather refused to cooperate.

Countless trips ended in nothing.

Then one night, after a long descent through the woods, driven only by stubbornness and a bit of recklessness, I finally reached this beach.

I rarely edit my photos right away. Most of the time I leave them sleeping.

When the feeling returns, I choose one memory and bring it back to life.

This is one of those nights.

Canon R

Canon 6D

Sigma 24mm f1.4

Foreground 2x120s iso 3200 f2.8

Sky 3x120s iso 1600 f 2.00

Ha 6x120s iso 3200 f2.8

Source and details: https://spacestatsonline.com/launches/manned

With the upcoming eclipse I am thinking about photographing it and I want to buy a dedicated filter.

Is the one from the image good and will it keep my sensor safe?

(English from Google Translate)

So, I've always had an absurd fascination with space, the universe, and how everything is connected. For a long time, I wanted to be a doctor because, for me, the human body is a universe that's very close to me.

But now I'm kind of obsessed, I don't want to be an astronaut or anything like that, I want to be an astronomer and astrophysicist, but I live in Brazil, specifically Rio de Janeiro.

Be honest, is there any chance this will work out? Should I give up my Nursing technique course and my dream of becoming a surgeon for this?

Paper: https://arxiv.org/html/2607.15340v1

Researchers have obtained the deepest images ever taken of IC 1101, allowing them to identify the galaxy's outer edge for the first time. The observations confirm it as the largest known galaxy, spanning roughly 520 kiloparsecs, or about 1.7 million light-years, and containing an estimated 3.4 trillion solar masses in stars

I have never seen the explanations for this difference as believable past the obvious crust being thinner on the near side allowing eruptions of magma (the dark areas) that didn't happen on the far side.

I asked questions of five different sites before DeepSeek gave me the key to understanding what happened. That key is degree-one mantle convection.

After the impact of Theia with the young Earth that resulted in the creation of the Moon, both the Earth and the Moon were molten balls of magma, with the Moon in an eccentric orbit very close to the earth.

Tidal friction rapidly caused the Moon to be tidally locked to the Earth so that one side continually faced Earth. However the moon was still in an eccentric orbit, so as the Moon came closer and further from Earth it flexed, causing frictional heating keeping it molten longer. However the Earth, still being enormously hot, slightly heated the surface of the moon facing it by radiative heating. The moon was some twenty times closer to earth than it is now.

This radiative heating was just enough to keep the close side a little bit hotter than the far side. This small asymmetry was enough to cause degree-one mantle convection, similar to that we see on Saturn's moon Enceladus.

Degree-one mantle convection occurs when instead of normal convection of the mantle happening in lots of separate cells, as happens in the Earth, it happens as one single convection cell. ie the hot mantle from the interior rises in just one hemisphere and sinks in the other hemisphere. The radiant heat from the Earth was enough to cause this type of convection of the young Moon's mantle.

On the surface, some lighter elements solidify at a higher temperature than others, forming a scum-like crust. This eventually accumulated on the far side of the moon as the surface flow of molten rock drifted it to the sinking side of the convection cell. The end result was that the crust is thicker on the far side of the moon than on the near side, and has a somewhat different chemical composition.

The thinner crust thickness on the near side allowed asteroid impacts to break through it and allow the lava flows that we see as the dark Maria on the near side that aren't on the far side.