Virgo Cluster (is a large cluster of galaxies whose center is 53.8 ± 0.3 Mly (16.5 ± 0.1 Mpc) away in the constellation Virgo. Comprising approximately 1,300 (and possibly up to 2,000) member galaxies, the cluster forms the heart of the larger Virgo Supercluster, of which the Local Group (containing our Milky Way galaxy) is a member. The Local Group actually experiences the mass of the Virgo Supercluster as the Virgocentric flow. It is estimated that the Virgo Cluster's mass is 1.2×1015 M? out to 8 degrees of the cluster's center or a radius of about 2.2 Mpc. Many of the brighter galaxies in this cluster, including the giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87, were discovered in the late 1770s and early 1780s and subsequently included in Charles Messier's catalogue of non-cometary fuzzy objects. Described by Messier as nebulae without stars, their true nature was not recognized until the 1920s. The cluster subtends a maximum arc of approximately 8 degrees centered in the constellation Virgo. Although some of the cluster's most prominent members can be seen with smaller instruments, a 6-inch telescope will reveal about 160 of the cluster's galaxies on a clear night. Its brightest member is the elliptical galaxy Messier 49; however its most famous member is the elliptical galaxy Messier 87, which is located in the center of the cluster)

Calling it a night............................

War and Peace Nebula or NGC 6357 is a diffuse nebula near NGC 6334 in the constellation Scorpius. The nebula contains many proto-stars shielded by dark discs of gas, and young stars wrapped in expanding "cocoons" or expanding gases surrounding these small stars. It is also known as the Lobster Nebula. This nebula was given the name  by the Midcourse Space Experiment scientists because of its appearance, which, in infrared imor ages the bright, western part resembles a dove, while the eastern part looks like a skull

X-71 (was the classification of two space shuttles in the movie Armageddon that transported the astronauts from Earth to the asteroid. The two known X-71s are the Freedom and the Independence)

Off to work....................................

Yukitsuna is a core member of the Maria family (506), a large intermediate belt family of stony asteroids. Alternatively, it has also been assigned to the stony Eunomia family (502), one of the most prominent families in the intermediate main belt with more than 5,000 members.

It orbits the Sun in the central main-belt at a distance of 2.2–2.9 AU once every 4 years and 1 month (1,489 days; semi-major axis of 2.55 AU). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.16 and an inclination of 16° with respect to the ecliptic.

The asteroid was first observed as 1943 UF at Heidelberg Observatory in October 1943. The body's observation arc begins as 1974 FQ₁ at Crimea–Nauchnij in March 1974, more than 17 years prior to its official discovery observation at Yakiimo.

Zone of Avoidance (is the area of the sky that is obscured by the Milky Way. The Zone of Avoidance was originally called the Zone of Few Nebulae in an 1878 paper by English astronomer Richard Proctor that referred to the distribution of "nebulae" in John Herschel's General Catalogue of Nebulae. When viewing space from Earth, the attenuation, interstellar dust and stars in the plane of the Milky Way (the galactic plane) obstruct the view of around 20% of the extragalactic sky at visible wavelengths. As a result, optical galaxy catalogues are usually incomplete close to the galactic plane. Many projects have attempted to bridge the gap in knowledge caused by the Zone of Avoidance. The dust and gas in the Milky Way cause extinction at optical wavelengths, and foreground stars can be confused with background galaxies. However, the effect of extinction drops at longer wavelengths, such as the infrared, and the Milky Way is effectively transparent at radio wavelengths. Surveys in the infrared, such as IRAS and 2MASS, have given a more complete picture of the extragalactic sky. Two very large nearby galaxies, Maffei 1 and Maffei 2, were discovered in the Zone of Avoidance by Paolo Maffei by their infrared emission in 1968. Even so, approximately 10% of the sky remains difficult to survey as extragalactic objects can be confused with stars in the Milky Way. Projects to survey the Zone of Avoidance at radio wavelengths, particularly using the 21 cm spin-flip emission line of neutral atomic hydrogen (known in astronomical parlance as HI), have detected many galaxies that could not be detected in the infrared. Examples of galaxies detected from their HI emission include Dwingeloo 1 and Dwingeloo 2, discovered in 1994 and 1996, respectively)

Off to work...................................

The Ant Nebula, whose technical name is Mz3, resembles the head and thorax of an ant when observed with ground-based telescopes. The new Hubble image, with 10 times the resolution revealing 100 times more detail, shows the "ant's" body as a pair of fiery lobes protruding from a dying, Sun- like star. The Ant Nebula is located between 3,000 and 6,000 light years from Earth in the southern constellation Norma.

Round 6..........................

Boötes Void (is an approximately spherical region of space found in the vicinity of the constellation Boötes, containing very few galaxies, hence its name. It is enormous, with a radius of 62 megaparsecs. Its center is located at approximately right ascension 14h 50m and declination 46°. At nearly 330 million light-years in diameter (approximately 0.27% of the diameter of the observable Universe), or nearly 236,000 Mpc3 in volume, the Boötes Void is one of the largest known voids in the Universe, and is referred to as a supervoid. Its discovery was reported by Robert Kirshner et al. (1981) as part of a survey of galactic redshifts. The centre of the Boötes Void is approximately 700 million light-years from Earth. Other astronomers soon discovered that the void contains a few galaxies. In 1987, J. Moody, Robert P. Kirshner, G. MacAlpine, and S. Gregory published their findings of eight galaxies in the void. M. Strauss and John Huchra announced the discovery of three more galaxies in 1988, and Greg Aldering, G. Bothun, Robert P. Kirshner, and Ron Marzke announced the discovery of fifteen galaxies in 1989. By 1997, the Boötes Void was known to contain 60 galaxies in a space that would usually roughly have 2000. According to astronomer Greg Aldering, the scale of the void is such that "If the Milky Way had been in the center of the Boötes Void, we wouldn't have known there were other galaxies until the 1960s." The Hercules Supercluster forms part of the near edge of the void)

Calling it a night.................................

Nicolaus Copernicus (19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance polymath, active as a mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic canon, who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than Earth at its center. In all likelihood, Copernicus developed his model independently of Aristarchus of Samos, an ancient Greek astronomer who had formulated such a model some eighteen centuries earlier

Dark Shark Nebula (is a beautiful dark nebula in the constellation of Cepheus which resembles our favorite ocean predator. It is comprised of dark dust which is faintly illuminated by the surrounding stars and is thus very difficult to image, requiring exceptionally dark skies and moonless nights. The Dark Shark is about 650 light years away and you can see a distant galaxy PGC 67671 through the dust in the top right of the frame. You can also note 2 small blue reflection nebula vdB 149 and vdB 150)

YouTube

Astrophotography & The Dark Shark Nebula

This video shows me capturing the Dark Shark Nebula, its a dim dark nebula target found in the constellation of Cepheus approx 650 light years away from eart...

Calling it a night...................................

The Egg Nebula (also known as RAFGL 2688 and CRL 2688) is a bipolar protoplanetary nebula approximately 3,000 light-years away from Earth. Its peculiar properties were first described in 1975 using data from the 11 µm survey obtained with sounding rocket by Air Force Geophysical Laboratory (AFGL) in 1971 to 1974. (Previously, the object was catalogued by Fritz Zwicky as a pair of galaxies.)

The Egg Nebula's defining feature is the series of bright arcs and circles surrounding the central star. A dense layer of gas and dusts enshrouds the central star, blocking its direct light from our view. However, the light from the central star penetrates the thinner regions of this dusty enclosure, illuminating the outer layers of gas to create the arcs seen in this resplendent image (Hubble Site). Spectra of the starlight scattered by the dust reveal that the central star has a spectral type of F5.^[4] The photosphere of an F5 star is about 900 K hotter than that of the Sun, but it is still not hot enough to have begun ionizing the nebula. Therefore the Egg Nebula is at a slightly earlier evolutionary stage than the Westbrook Nebula whose spectral type B0 central star has just recently begun to ionize the nebula.

The dusty enclosure around the central star is very likely a disc.