Astronomy Picture of the Day 5-16-03

NASA ^ | 5-16-03 | Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell

[petuniasevan]

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2003 May 16

A Tale of Two Nebulae
Credit & Copyright: Brian Lula

Explanation: This colorful telescopic view towards the northern constellation Lyra reveals dim outer regions around M57, popularly known as the Ring Nebula. While modern astronomers still refer to M57 as a planetary nebula, at one light-year across M57 is not a planet but the gaseous shroud of a dying sun-like star. Roughly the same apparent size as M57, the fainter, often overlooked barred spiral galaxy IC1296 is at the lower right and would have been referred to in the early 20th century as a spiral nebula. By chance the pair are in the same field of view, and while they appear to have similar sizes they are actually very far apart. M57 lies at a distance of a mere 2,000 light-years, well within our own Milky Way galaxy. Extragalactic IC1296 is more like 200,000,000 light-years distant or about 100,000 times farther away. Since they appear roughly similar in size, spiral "nebula" IC1296 must also be about 100,000 times larger than planetary nebula M57.

[petuniasevan]

Ring Nebula

Right Ascension	18 : 53.6 (h:m)
Declination	+33 : 02 (deg:m)
Distance	2.3 (kly)
Visual Brightness	8.8 (mag)
Apparent Dimension	1.4x1.0 (arc min)

Galaxy IC1296

Right Ascension:	18 : 53.3 (hours : minutes)
Declination:	+33 : 04 (degrees : minutes)
Apparent Magnitude:	15. p
Apparent Diameter:	1.3 (arc minutes)

Has everyone been watching the lunar eclipse? The clouds rolled in around here just as totality began. :-(

Fabulous photos were being posted at this thread:

The Eclipse of the Scorpion Moon

I sent poorman to South Dakota with the Mavica digital camera. I nagged him via cellphone this afternoon to get some shots from there. Here, Mom tried some old-fashioned telephoto lens-and-tripod shots through the clouds. Hope they work.

Now that totality (and indeed most of the eclipse) is over, the clouds disappeared. Rats!

[petuniasevan]

[WSGilcrest]

This is from my backyard with my Sony. Had to read my boy a bedtime story, so I didn't catch the end of the eclipse.

[petuniasevan]

Thanks for posting the images. It's much appreciated.

Now I need to go to bed; gotta be at work in 6 hours!

[sistergoldenhair]

Thick cloud cover here.

[firewalk]

Thanks for the ping
Good morning

[GodBlessRonaldReagan]

Thanks for the ping!

Heavy clouds & rain here last night - appreciate the eclipse pics.

[mikrofon]

'Glad that you got to see and record at least some of the eclipse -- nice job!

Here in the NE we were swamped by showers, unfortunately not of the meteor variety...

[MikeD]

Alamo country was all clouded over. Unfortunate, because this is the first eclipse that my son would have been old enough to appreciate...

MD

[Dengar01]

Great pictures, I have a question though, here in Illinois the eclipse began from the bottom of the moon up. Your pictures give a different angle. Does the eclipse look different from different points on Earth?

[RightWhale]

Thanks for the pics. There was no eclipse here.

[Soaring Feather]

Pretty, thank you.