Love these complex star structures, glob-clusters. They’re mysterious in many aspects: we’re not certain how’d they form, where they come from, or if they host a single black hole, many, or none whatsoever. This is M5.
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Alcyone & Merope are massive main-sequence stars with an age of about 70 million years. I took this picture from my rooftop in Mexico City.
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😂
Each session was identified with a different color as follows:
Black dots: JD 2416989
Red dots: JD 2460991
Blue dots: JD 2460992
Fuchsia dots: JD 2460994
Maroon dots: JD 2460995
Acqua dots: JD 2460996
Green dots: JD 2461004
Yellow dots: JD 2461005
This set comprises a total of 615 observations made with the Johnson V filter with my telescope installed in Starfront Observatories at Rockwood, TX.
The significance analysis of the fundamental period showed a false alarm probability of 0.000 ± 0.000, meaning the period calculated with the set of observations provided is very close to the actual fundamental.
My most recent observations of CY Aqr, an SXPHE variable star and a subdwarf located in the old disk of our Milky Way. These observations show a slightly longer fundamental period of 0.061046 ± 1.7 × 10-5 d than that found in previous publications.
#AstroSci #Astronomy
Time-lapse of Comet 3I/ATLAS (2025), 48 min of integration compressed in 3.84 s.
#Astronomy
This team found strong evidence of the existence of a middle age (2-5 Gyr) RR Lyrae star in Trumpler 5 star cluster. This challenges the existing evolutionary models and points out the role of binary associations as early producers of this type of stars.
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arxiv.org/abs/2509.22336
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin ✨ figured out what stars are made of ✨ when she was just 25. 🔭🧪
Her PhD thesis basically established the Harvard astro department — at a time when Harvard didn't officially allow woman students.
I wrote this little profile to mark the 100th anniversary of her thesis:
1. Variable stars
2. Literature in Spanish language
3. Formula 1
This is, at last, my first picture EVER of the galaxy where we live, the Milky Way.
The place: San Pedro Mártir, Baja California, very close to the National Observatory.
#astronomy #astrophotography
Two populated clusters of stars flank the center of this picture. Most of the stars are young: you can tell because their white and blue hues. Surrounding them, faint red hydrogen clouds pop up here and there.
In between my science captures, sometimes I shoot a deep sky object of my liking. In this case was the turn of the Double Cluster in Perseus. Ionized hydrogen is present in this region.
#astronomy 🧪🔭
A star field dominated by yellow, orange, and red stars. Two bright white stars pave the way to the immense dark nebula. This seems to form black voids between the stars, but they are not voids; they are clouds with vast volumes of gas and dust that block the starlight within and behind them. 3/3
You are watching here just a tiny portion of the Milky Way’s disk. 2/3
The picture shows the dark molecular cloud close to the bright star Altair in the constellation of Aquila. It is cataloged as LDN 673. Molecular hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and some other molecules form these dark interstellar clouds in which stars are born. 1/3
#Astronomy
A star field dominated by yellow, orange, and red stars. Two bright white stars pave the way to the immense dark nebula. This seems to form black voids between the stars, but they are not voids; they are clouds with vast volumes of gas and dust that block the starlight within and behind them. 3/3
You are watching here just a tiny portion of the Milky Way’s disk.2/3
At the center, the Tulip Nebula stands out from the busy circumstellar environment that surrounds it. Below, you can find a white arc which is a huge bow-shock produced by one of the jets of the first black hole ever confirmed: Cygnus X1.
I like to experiment. This image of the Tulip Nebula (in Cygnus) is a composite of L-Ha-O III-BVR filters. The idea is to show you as much detail of the region where the first confirmed black hole is.
#Astronomy
The image at the beginning belongs to: NASA/CXC/M.Weis. The GIF that follows was taken from the press release announcing the publication of this paper: tinyurl.com/GOTO0650PR. 13/13
This also demonstrates that science is not “a one-man show” (who in turn might be expected to be a sort of genius), but rather a worldwide collaboration of several people with different skills. 12/13
One of the most remarkable aspects of this study is the fact that it is a very good example of collaboration between amateur astronomers, like myself, and professional astronomers. 11/13
The star is question is known as GOTO065054+593624, or GOTO0650 for short. The paper, led by Dr. Thomas Killestein, GOTO065054+593624: An 8.5 mag amplitude dwarf nova identified in real time via Kilonova Seekers, can be found in the following link: tinyurl.com/GOTO0650. 10/13
Well, it turns out that the paper in which I participated studies a dwarf nova, which was actually seen in action by several citizen scientists (!), that also happens to be a period bouncer. 9/13
Some systems, after they reach their lowest angular momentum –i.e., when their orbital period is around 78 minutes– bounce back and start to slowly regain angular momentum. These systems are known as “period bouncers”. 8/13
In the case of these types of stars, the explosion occurs when the system loses angular momentum, resulting in an increase in its accretion rate, which in turn causes their temperature and viscosity to rise. 7/13
Dwarf novae feature recurring outbursts. By “outburst” here, the reader should understand that we astronomers, amateur and professional, refer to “explosions”. 6/13
the main reason for this is that I had the opportunity to collaborate on a paper that studies a very peculiar dwarf nova star, which was recently published in the prestigious scientific journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. 5/13
The first examples of explosions in these systems that come to my mind right now are the very famous Type 1a supernovae, classical novae, and dwarf novae. In this thread, I am going to write about the latter. 4/13
However, the stolen material does not go directly to the white dwarf; first, it is gathered around it, forming an accretion disk that swirls around the white dwarf. It is precisely the existence of an accretion disk that makes these systems so interesting, as it tends to cause them to explode. 3/13
