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.

Friede (was a fictional spacecraft designed by Hermann Oberth and was featured in the 1929 silent movie Woman in the Moon. The Friede was, at the time, the most realistic depiction of space travel, having multiple stages, liquid fuel, and other details. Having the Friede submerged in water before launch was not replicated for actual Moon launches, however. In the film, the Friede carried five passengers and a stowaway. The Friede was designed to travel to the Moon in search of gold, and the crew successfully found gold on the Moon. One crew member, Turner, tried to hijack the ship. Turner was shot and killed, but the bullets damaged the oxygen tanks, and the crew came to the grim realization that one of them must remain. Two people stayed behind on the Moon, which was depicted as having a breathable atmosphere. During the 1930s, all schematics and blueprints related to the Friede were confiscated by the Gestapo and were lost during the war. Hermann Oberth had trouble creating a flying miniature for the premiere of the movie)

the launch of Friede in the movie.......................

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This is about the movie titled "Gravity". Let me know if I need to change it.

Gravity is a 2013 science fiction thriller film directed by Alfonso Cuarón, who also co-wrote, co-edited, and produced the film. It stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as American astronauts who are stranded in space after the mid-orbit destruction of their Space Shuttle, and attempt to return to Earth.

Cuarón wrote the screenplay with his son Jonás and attempted to develop the film at Universal Pictures. Later, the distribution rights were acquired by Warner Bros. Pictures. David Heyman, who previously worked with Cuarón on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), produced the film with him. Gravity was produced entirely in the United Kingdom, where British visual effects company Framestore spent more than three years creating most of the film's visual effects, which involve over 80 of its 91 minutes.

Gravity opened the 70th Venice International Film Festival on August 28, 2013, and had its North American premiere three days later at the Telluride Film Festival. Upon its release, Gravity was met with widespread critical acclaim, with praise for its direction and visuals. Considered one of the best films of 2013, it appeared on numerous critics' year-end lists, and was selected by the American Film Institute in their annual Movies of the Year list. The film became the eighth highest-grossing film of 2013 with a worldwide gross of over $723 million, against a production budget of around $100 million.

The film earned accolades from numerous critics and guilds. At the 86th Academy Awards, Gravity received ten nominations, including Best Actress for Bullock and Best Picture, and won seven awards, including Best Director, Best Original Score, Best Cinematography, and Best Visual Effects. The film was also awarded six BAFTA Awards, including Outstanding British Film and Best Director, the Golden Globe Award for Best Director, seven Critics' Choice Movie Awards, the 2013 Ray Bradbury Award, and the 2014 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.

Comment: Cool movie ... with two fantastic actors. I loved it.

YouTube

Gravity - Official Main Trailer [2K HD]

http://www.gravitymovie.comhttps://www.facebook.com/gravitymovieIn theaters October 4th.Academy Award® winners Sandra Bullock ("The Blind Side," "The Proposa...

OK for me!

Homunculus Nebula, is a reflection nebula located in the constellation Carina .

Homunculus Nebula is magnitude 6.2 and is 18" in size. For reference, the full moon is 30' (arc minutes) or 0.5° in size.

InSight (The Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission is a robotic lander designed to study the deep interior of the planet Mars. It was manufactured by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and most of its scientific instruments were built by European agencies. The mission launched on 5 May 2018 at 11:05:01 UTC aboard an Atlas V-401 launch vehicle and successfully landed at Elysium Planitia on Mars on 26 November 2018 at 19:52:59 UTC. As of 3 December 2022, InSight has been active on Mars for 1429 sols (1468 days; 4 years, 7 days). InSight's objectives are to place a seismometer, called Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), on the surface of Mars to measure seismic activity and provide accurate 3D models of the planet's interior; and measure internal heat transfer using a heat probe called HP3 to study Mars' early geological evolution. This could bring a new understanding of how the Solar System's terrestrial planets – Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars – and Earth's Moon form and evolve. The lander was originally planned for launch in March 2016. An instrument problem delayed the launch beyond the 2016 launch window. NASA officials rescheduled the InSight launch to May 2018 and during the wait the instrument was repaired. This increased the total cost from US$675 million to US$830 million. NASA stated that due to excessive dust on its solar panels preventing it from recharging, they plan to put InSight in low-power mode for detecting seismic events in July 2022 and continue monitoring the lander through the operational period ending in December 2022)

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

Jodrell Bank Observatory  in Cheshire, England, hosts a number of radio telescopes as part of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester. The observatory was established in 1945 by Bernard Lovell, a radio astronomer at the university, to investigate cosmic rays after his work on radar in the Second World War. It has since played an important role in the research of meteoroids, quasars, pulsars, masers and gravitational lenses, and was heavily involved with the tracking of space probes at the start of the Space Age.

The main telescope at the observatory is the Lovell Telescope. Its diameter of 250 ft (76 m) makes it the third largest steerable radio telescope in the world. There are three other active telescopes at the observatory; the Mark II, and 42 ft (13 m) and 7 m diameter radio telescopes. Jodrell Bank Observatory is the base of the Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (MERLIN), a National Facility run by the University of Manchester on behalf of the Science and Technology Facilities Council.

The Kelly Brothers (Mark Edward Kelly (born February 21, 1964) is an American politician, former astronaut, and United States Navy captain who has served as the junior United States senator from Arizona since 2020. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected in the special election held following the death of Senator John McCain, defeating incumbent Republican Martha McSally. Kelly flew combat missions during the Gulf War as a naval aviator before being selected as a NASA Space Shuttle pilot in 1996. He flew his first space mission in 2001 as pilot of STS-108, piloted STS-121 in 2006, and commanded STS-124 in 2008 and STS-134 in 2011, the final mission of Space Shuttle Endeavour. His identical twin, Scott Kelly, is also a retired astronaut; they are the only siblings to have both traveled into orbit. Kelly's wife, then-Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, was shot and nearly killed in an assassination attempt on January 8, 2011. Six people died in the Tucson shooting. After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting the following year, Giffords and Kelly founded the nonprofit Americans for Responsible Solutions, later renamed Giffords, which campaigns for gun control measures like universal background checks and red flag laws. Kelly announced his candidacy for Arizona's Class 3 U.S. Senate seat in the 2020 special election on February 12, 2019. He won the Democratic primary on August 4, 2020, and defeated incumbent Republican Martha McSally in the November 3, 2020, general election, becoming the first Democrat to win this seat since 1962. Kelly was sworn in on December 2, 2020. In 2022, he was elected to a full term in office, defeating Republican challenger Blake Masters. Scott Joseph Kelly (born February 21, 1964) is an American engineer, retired astronaut, and naval aviator. A veteran of four space flights, Kelly commanded the International Space Station (ISS) on Expeditions 26, 45, and 46. Kelly's first spaceflight was as pilot of Space Shuttle Discovery during STS-103 in December 1999. This was the third servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, and lasted for just under eight days. Kelly's second spaceflight was as mission commander of STS-118, a 12-day Space Shuttle mission to the ISS in August 2007. Kelly's third spaceflight was as a crewmember on Expedition 25/26 on the ISS. He arrived at the ISS aboard Soyuz TMA-01M on October 9, 2010, and served as a flight engineer until he took over command of the station on November 25, 2010, at the start of Expedition 26. Expedition 26 ended on March 16, 2011, with the departure of Soyuz TMA-01M. In November 2012, Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko were selected for a year-long mission to the ISS. Their year in space began with the launch of Soyuz TMA-16M on March 27, 2015, and they remained on the station for Expeditions 43, 44, 45, and 46. The mission ended on March 1, 2016, with the departure of Soyuz TMA-18M from the station. Kelly retired from NASA on April 1, 2016)

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

The Lunar Orbiter program was a series of five uncrewed lunar orbiter missions launched by the United States from 1966 through 1967. Intended to help select Apollo landing sites by mapping the Moon's surface, they provided the first photographs from lunar orbit and photographed both the Moon and Earth.

All five missions were successful, and 99 percent of the lunar surface was mapped from photographs taken with a resolution of 60 meters (200 ft) or better. The first three missions were dedicated to imaging 20 potential crewed lunar landing sites, selected based on Earth-based observations. These were flown at low-inclination orbits. The fourth and fifth missions were devoted to broader scientific objectives and were flown in high-altitude polar orbits. Lunar Orbiter 4 photographed the entire nearside and nine percent of the far side, and Lunar Orbiter 5 completed the far side coverage and acquired medium (20 m (66 ft)) and high (2 m (6 ft 7 in)) resolution images of 36 preselected areas. All of the Lunar Orbiter spacecraft were launched by Atlas-Agena-D launch vehicles.

The Lunar Orbiters had an ingenious imaging system, which consisted of a dual-lens camera, a film processing unit, a readout scanner, and a film handling apparatus. Both lenses, a 610 mm (24 in) narrow angle high resolution (HR) lens and an 80 mm (3.1 in) wide angle medium resolution (MR) lens, placed their frame exposures on a single roll of 70 mm film. The axes of the two cameras were coincident so the area imaged in the HR frames were centered within the MR frame areas. The film was moved during exposure to compensate for the spacecraft velocity, which was estimated by an electro-optical sensor. The film was then processed, scanned, and the images transmitted back to Earth.

During the Lunar Orbiter missions, the first pictures of Earth as a whole were taken, beginning with Earth-rise over the lunar surface by Lunar Orbiter 1 in August, 1966. The first full picture of the whole Earth was taken by Lunar Orbiter 5 on 8 August 1967. A second photo of the whole Earth was taken by Lunar Orbiter 5 on 10 November 1967.

Magellanic Clouds (are two irregular dwarf galaxies in the southern celestial hemisphere. Orbiting the Milky Way galaxy, these satellite galaxies are members of the Local Group. Because both show signs of a bar structure, they are often reclassified as Magellanic spiral galaxies. The two galaxies are: Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), approximately 163,000 light-years away Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), approximately 206,000 light years away. Magellanic clouds are visible to the unaided eye in the Southern Hemisphere but they cannot be observed from the most northern latitudes)

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