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If you have a TikTok account, come over and follow me and you can watch my Live with the telescope.
tiktok.com/@cosmosconblog?is…
Here is a clip from tonight's Live session.
cosmoscon retweeted
Atheists sometimes tell me I have to choose between God and science.
I do not, and neither do you.
There is nothing anti-scientific about the idea that an all-powerful, transcendent super-intelligence created the universe and wrote its laws.
In fact, it's far more believable to me that this is the explanation for our lawful, intelligible universe than the story I was expected to believe as an atheist - that the universe "just is" or that it's somehow lawful and intelligible despite having no intelligence or will behind it.
But what about the big bang? Is that a problem for a Bible-believing Christian?
Not at all.
Leave aside the age issue - which is frankly the least explosive part of all this - and consider how modern science has caught up with the Genesis narrative in the last 100 years. Modern science has figured out that the universe isn't eternal, as people thought for thousands of years, but suddenly came into being a finite time ago just as Genesis 1:1 describes.
I do not have to give up God to believe that. In fact, as a scientist, it's the only way I can make sense of why the universe exists at all and is the way it is.
Don't let anyone tell you that you have to choose between God's two books - the Bible and his creation. They are wonderfully compatible.
cosmoscon retweeted
Iris Nebula (NGC 7023) is a reflection nebula in the constellation Cepheus, located about 1,400 light-years from Earth. It is illuminated by the bright star SAO 19158, which is surrounded by dense clouds of interstellar dust. This image was captured during the night of October 17–18, 2026, using a Seestar S50 telescope with the IR-cut filter. The data were collected using live stacking of 242 × 30-second exposures, for a total exposure time of 2 hours 1 minute. Final post-processing was performed in the Seestar S50 app.
#Astrophotography #SeestarS50
ALT Image (c) @RafStargazer
It’s the right thing to do. This Podcast (which really is the best podcast in the universe) just hasn’t been the same without Dvorak. It’s a fitting way to honor his passing and letting it die was the right call.
My best wishes to the entire Dvorak family as they continue to carry on without John and to Adam! I’ll be listening to “We Get To Do This” podcast now!
RIP John and ITM!
@adamcurry explains the end of No Agenda.
No Agenda Is Really Ending — Adam Opens Up About the Dvorak Family Negotiations NoAgendaFun noagendafun.com/why-no-agend…
cosmoscon retweeted
M22: The Great Sagittarius Globular Cluster
Messier 22 (M22) is a globular cluster in the constellation Sagittarius, located about 10,000 light-years from Earth.
I recently started taking Adam Block’s DeepSky Academy course. I highly recommend it.
This astrophotograph is the result of the “Stars and Star Clusters” workflow from that course.
I stacked the RGB data provided by Adam Block and processed it in PixInsight.
Lifelong learning is very important to me, and I enjoy staying up to date on the latest astrophotography processing techniques and in all sorts of other areas.
The desire to keep learning is like fuel for my brain.
How about you? Do you enjoy taking courses (whether related to astrophotography or not)? Maybe you’re taking one right now?
Clear Skies!
ALT M22: The Great Sagittarius Globular Cluster (RGB). Astrophoto by Beatrice Heinze (Processing) and Adam Block (Data).
I got another 90 minutes of data gathering time this past weekend on the Fish Head Nebula (NGC896, on the left) and the Heart Nebula (IC1895, on the right).
They are both located between 6,000 and 7,000 light years away. They look right next to each other but the Fish Head Nebula is 1,000 light years closer to us than the Heart Nebula.
This puts the total exposure time of this area of the Cosmos at close to 3 hours using my 85mm refractor telescope and Canon DSLR camera in a severely light polluted Bortle 7 sky.
cosmoscon retweeted
I took about 50,000 photos through a 14" telescope last night to produce this: A hyper-detailed photo of the full moon. The fidelity of the photo was great enough to allow me to greatly enhance the color, revealing a hidden world of geological diversity.
Max had an incredible shot here!
But I stared for minutes at that shot from the ISS. Amazing!
ICYMI: the International Space Station was seen crossing in front of the Moon earlier this morning from Florida’s Space Coast (left image, taken by me).
@astro_anil was also looking down from the station around the same time and caught the Florida peninsula lit by the near-full moon (right image).
cosmoscon retweeted
Humanity’s orbital outpost and our moon. Can you spot it???
Captured at 1:56:41 a.m. EDT from Florida's Space Coast, the @Space_Station and her crew of 7 were seen crossing the disc of our moon.
On board are @NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins, Luke Delaney, and Anil Menon; @csa_asc astronaut Joshua Kutryk; and Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov, Anna Kikina, and Sergey Teteryatnikov.
📸 - @NASASpaceflight
If you’ve never been up close and personal with the business end of a Saturn V rocket (unlit of course!), I highly recommend!
cosmoscon retweeted
This is one of my telescopes, and it’s my first “real telescope” (before this, I had another small telescope years ago, which was practically unusable and therefore rather disappointing).
I’ve taken most of my photos with it, including lunar, solar, planetary, and deep-sky astrophotography.
The four astrophotos were also taken with this Newtonian telescope.
I’ve owned it since 2017 and still enjoy using it to this day. This Sky-Watcher telescope offers pretty good value for the money.
Over the years, I’ve upgraded it with, among other things, an automatic focuser from Baader Planetarium, the 2" BDS-NT Diamond Steeltrack Focuser (excellent focuser => no backlash!), a 3D-printed primary mirror mask, and a mirror heater for the secondary mirror.
In 2019, I switched from a Sky-Watcher NEQ5 mount to a sturdier mount capable of handling a heavier payload, the iOptron CEM60 (see photo).
I still use the Sky-Watcher NEQ5 mount for my smaller telescopes.
I purchased this telescope equipment, with the exception of the 3D-printed primary mirror mask and secondary mirror heater, from Astroshop.be (formerly: AstroMarket). I’m not being paid to promote them, but I do want to emphasize that I’ve always received high-quality service from Astroshop.be.
Hopefully, we’ll have some clear nights again soon so I can get back to using this telescope setup :-).
I’m really looking forward to spending time under the starry sky again.
Do you have a favorite telescope?
Clear Skies!
ALT A telescope setup for astrophotography, featuring 4 astrophotos. Photo (screenshot) taken by Beatrice Heinze.
Join me live on TikTok while I live stream through my telescope!
tiktok.com/@cosmosconblog?_r…
cosmoscon retweeted
Mineral Moon - Waxing Gibbous Moon 89%
I stacked 50 frames of old data from the waxing gibbous moon phase and processed them in Affinity V3 to create this mineral moon.
The images were taken with a Canon EOS 750D DSLR, paired with a Sky-Watcher Explorer Black Diamond N200/1000 (Newtonian telescope), mounted on a Sky-Watcher NEQ5 mount.
ALT Mineral Moon - Waxing Gibbous Moon 89%. Astrophoto by Beatrice Heinze.
If you’re not an astrophotographer, you may not be familiar with the less “glamorous” part of generating images of our cosmos.
Shooting calibration frames after the observations are done!
I’m sure people think I’m crazy when they see me outside doing this!😂
cosmoscon retweeted
Zoom! 🧐
#galaxies NGC7331
This picture has never seen a desktop. Data beamed directly from the #Vespera II telescope onto my iPhone and slightly adjusted in the incl. SkyColor app.
Why am I showing you this?
Well, this is a refreshing approach to dive in the deep sky. It eliminates the need for special software, a powerful computer, advanced skills and a lot of TIME.⏳🔭
#astrophotography #galaxies NGC7331 & friends
