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“What in the world is that?” That’s a natural reaction when you first see this Hubble Space Telescope image of LL Pegasi. The extremely dim spiral pattern is real, and its regularity suggests a periodic origin for the nebula’s shape.

The spiral is thought to arise because LL Pegasi is a binary system, with a star that is losing material and a companion star orbiting it. The companion’s gravitational influence helps sculpt the nebula. The spacing between layers in the spiral reflects the 800-year orbital period of the binary.

Credit: ESA/NASA & R. Sahai.

ALT TEXT: At center left, a faint spiral structure with wide bands has a dark, dusty center. To its right, a bright white star displays four prominent diffraction spikes. A handful of smaller, more distant background galaxies are also scatted throughout the image.

We'll be open April 8th for the eclipse, too, with solar filters and projections of the Sun. Find us at Bridgewater State University's Science and Mathematics Center.

The Spaghetti Nebula, Sh2-240 // Wolfgang Bernhardt

ESA's Gaia Mission has been mapping the Milky Way for over 10 years! Check out its greatest discoveries in this short video (~5 minutes).

Video of the Day!

NASA's Parker Solar Probe broke a record! It got within 3.8 million miles of the Sun's surface - closer than any human-made object before! Not only that, it's the fastest human-made object, reaching a speed of about 435,000 mph.

Each fall and spring season, we host a set of public observatory nights on Wednesday evenings. This spring, we're set to start on March 19, weather allowing. Schedule coming soon!

This striking image captures the interacting galaxy pair known as Arp-Madore 2339-661, so named because they belong to the Arp-Madore catalogue of peculiar galaxies. However, this particular peculiarity might be even odder than first meets the eye, as there are in fact three galaxies interacting here, not just two. 

The two clearly defined galaxies are NGC 7733 (smaller, lower right) and NGC 7734 (larger, upper left). The third galaxy is currently referred to as NGC 7733N, and can actually be spotted in this picture if you look carefully at the upper arm of NGC 7733, where there is a visually notable knot-like structure, glowing with a different colour to the arm and obscured by dark dust. 

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

Wed. Nov. 15 - Tonight's forecasts are inconsistent- we'll wait a few hours to decide if we'll open.

Astronomy Word of the Day

The Magellanic Clouds are two small, irregular dwarf galaxies outside of the Milky Way. These two galaxies are visible in the skies of the southern hemisphere, close to the South Celestial Pole, so they don't appear to set!

Image: https://aaa.org/.../01/southern-skies-the-magellanic-clouds/

Uranus and some of its moons on October 20, 2023 // Louis Fico

I think the moons in this image could be Titania, Umbriel, Ariel, and Oberon, tho which points of light they are is hard to say