3/26: Public Night Is Cancelled Tonight Due To Clouds. We'll Try Again Next Week.

The Bearclaw Nebula, Sh2-200 // Dionysus

You can schedule one of our astronomy professors to speak at your venue! More info here: https://www.bridgew.edu/.../obser.../traveling-presentations

Wed. 11/6: We'll be closed tonight - we expect lots of clouds rolling in after sunset. We'll try again next week!

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

Wed. Nov. 8 - Observatory closed due to cloud cover. We'll try again next week.

Picture of the Day!

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has captured a stunning image of the iconic Pillars of Creation, a region where new stars are being born within thick clouds of gas and dust. The three-dimensional pillars resemble towering rock formations, yet they are much more porous. Composed of cool interstellar gas and dust, they sometimes appear semi-transparent in near-infrared light.

“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.

Picture of the Day!

NGC 6188 Nebula is also known as the Firebird Nebula. It is an emission nebula located near the edge of a vast, dark molecular cloud in the southern constellation Ara, approximately 4,000 light-years from Earth.