#astroprojects

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

This is the Skull Nebula! 💀💀💀

The glow of this eerie nebula is perfect for Halloween! This planetary nebula has a binary star system with a third star orbiting it. The beautiful colors of this nebula come from the outer layers of a Sun-like star that died in an explosion! 👻👻👻

Taken by me (Michelle Park) using the Slooh Canary Three telescope on October 28th, 2021 at 1:57 UTC.

423 notes • Posted 2021-10-28 17:26:10 GMT

#4

This is the Crescent Nebula! 🌙🌙🌙

Happy Valentine’s Day! To celebrate, here is a ❤red❤ emission nebula: its color is created by energized hydrogen. This nebula was formed by a young Wolf-Rayet star blowing stellar wind and when the star became a red giant, it energized the wind! 💫💫💫

Taken by me (Michelle Park) on February 14th, 2021 at 6:51 UTC using the Slooh Canary Two telescope.

438 notes • Posted 2021-02-14 15:04:10 GMT

#3

This is Haley’s Coronet! 👑👑👑

The interaction between the larger spiral galaxy and its dwarf galaxy have created plumes of dust around the duo. The process of the larger galaxy eating the smaller one is actually called galactic cannibalism (spooky)! 👻👻👻

Taken by me (Michelle Park) using the Slooh Chile Two telescope on January 13th, 2021 at 3:18 UTC.

521 notes • Posted 2021-01-16 13:40:35 GMT

#2

This is the Cat’s Paw Nebula! 🐾🐾🐾

This nebula is glowing due to the interactions between its hot stars and large molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. This makes it particularly bright in the infrared and a common target for astrophotography in the Milky Way galaxy! 🔭🔭🔭

Taken by me (Michelle Park) using the Slooh Chile Two telescope on March 7th, 2021 at 6:38 UTC.

533 notes • Posted 2021-03-08 13:07:09 GMT

#1

This is Vega! ✨✨✨

This is the brightest star in the summer constellation Lyra and the 5th brightest star in the night sky. Infrared observations have confirmed a circumstellar disk of dust around this star, similar to the Kuiper Belt around the solar system! 🌃🌃🌃

Taken by me (Michelle Park) using the Slooh Canary Two telescope on July 5th, 2021 at 22:26 UTC. 

580 notes • Posted 2021-07-06 12:57:23 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

This is the ABCs of Space Poster! ✨✨✨

I created this poster from one of the quests offered by Slooh and it includes galaxies, stars, and nebulae corresponding with different letters of the alphabet. You can take pictures and make your own quest posters at Slooh.com! 🤩🤩🤩

This is the Milky Way Explorer Poster! ✨✨✨

The Milky Way is home to a wide variety of interstellar objects, such as globular clusters, open clusters, stars, reflection nebulae, dark nebulae, emission nebulae, and planetary nebulae! 🌌🌌🌌

✨💫🌠🌟🌌🚀 Thank you all so much for 10,000 FOLLOWERS! ✨💫🌠🌟🌌🚀

To celebrate, here is a collage of some of my best pictures that I have uploaded on this blog ♥ I cannot believe we just hit 10,000 followers WOWOOWWOW

Here is a poster of the different light interactions and how we can see them in interstellar objects! 💡💡💡

In this poster, the light interactions of incandescence, absorption, ionized gas emission, and reflection are shown. Each of them provide a variety of beautiful colors!

Incandescence: light from a hot object due to its temperature

Absorption: light gets converted into kinetic energy as it interacts with dust

Ionized gas emission: the temperature of the gas results in electrons changing energy levels and releasing radiation.

Reflection: light from an incandescent source is reflected from an object’s surface.

One of the most difficult collections ever: the Caldwell object collection! ♥♥♥

Taking around 6 months to complete, this was one of the longest collections ever! Many of these objects could be photographed during specific times of the year so I often had to wait months before I could take a picture. 🎇🎆🌌✨💫

Slooh just got a massive update so there are more quests - which means more collages of astrophotos!

I was able to gather all the planets that are visible from the Slooh telescopes! 🪐🪐🪐

One interesting fact about the Solar System is that the heliosphere, or Sun’s outer atmosphere, extends out 100 AU (100 times the distance from the Sun to the Earth)! This means that the Solar System is technically inside the Sun! 🌞🌞🌞