To my eye, this is one of the most beautiful patches of the night sky. CLICK on IMAGE above to view full-screen
A Stellar Nursery Next Door
At about 460 light-years away, Rho Ophiuchi is one of the closest star-forming regions to Earth — practically in our backyard, cosmically speaking. It’s dense with young stars still wrapped in the gas and dust they formed from, some barely a hundred thousand years old. A few of the youngest already have their own circumstellar disks — the raw material for future planets — which is part of why this region turns up in professional astronomy too.
Bodie decided he wanted to rejoin the festivities after walking down the aisle with his brother, Bentley earlier in the ceremony. As the best man ran into the farmhouse to grab the rings, both dogs made their escape from the house and sprinted through. the ceremony before settling down with one of the bridesmaids.
I feel very blessed to witness the little girl I first met when Amy and I just began dating now truly grown up, taking her vows with her true love, Owen. Along with their rambunctious pups. And Eric Handelman, who, at the happy couples’ request, served as the officiant.
It was a lovely crisp day in Skaneateles, NY near one of the many Finger Lakes south of Rochester. Not only was it an occasion where all four of our immediate family were able to come together, but to bring a multitude of generations in the Handelman-Hogan clan together for this beautiful event.
Let me just say – Dylann is an amazing person – an entrepreneur, a mom and a wife with an amazing drive to get it done – whatever the task. And Owen’s already a great father and will no doubt be a great husband too.
Click more to see the gallery of 100+ photos I took during the event with my brand-spanking new Sony A7V, the first full-frame camera I’ve bought in over a decade.
Some targets earn their reputation. M81 and M82 — Bode’s Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy — are staples of the spring sky, the kind of pair that shows up in every beginner’s first light report and every veteran’s “I need to do this one properly” list. I finally got around to doing it properly.
A Galaxy Group in the Cosmic Neighborhood
What you’re looking at in this image isn’t just two famous galaxies. It’s a whole gravitational family, the M81 Group, a collection of around 40 galaxies bound together by mutual gravity, sitting roughly 12 million light-years from Earth. That sounds impossibly far, but in the grand scheme of the universe, it makes them close neighbors. Our own Milky Way belongs to a similar family called the Local Group, which includes Andromeda, the Triangulum Galaxy, and a few dozen smaller satellites. The M81 Group and our Local Group aren’t gravitationally bound to each other, but they’re near-neighbors in the same larger cosmic structure, the Virgo Supercluster. Think of them as two small towns in the same county.
If you’ve ever looked up at the winter sky and noticed a tight little knot of blue-white stars, you’ve already met the Pleiades. M45 is one of those objects that’s been observed, mythologized, and photographed more times than almost anything else in the sky — and yet there’s a reason people keep coming back to it.
