Post by @CosmicRami@aus.social

2026-04-21 05:26 UTC

Hubble vs. My Backyard's Scope! First of all, happy B'day Hubble Space Telescope! Still the OG space-based telescope that changed our perspective of the Universe. For the B'day, NASA/ESA released an image of a section of the Trifid Nebula (left). You can see a nodule from inside the nebula and a thin stellar jet formed by a young stellar object buried inside the cloud. That's about 0.75 light-years in length. On the right is my 1-hour photo from my backyard - and the jet appears there too! Unlike Hubble, my backyard rig only has a 20cm aperture and has a whole lot of atmosphere, as well as city lights, to deal with. So it is really neat to be able to get that level of detail in 1 hour of observing. See the original Hubble image here: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Hubble_turns_36_with_a_dazzling_Trifid_Nebula_portrait #TrifidNebula #Astrophotography #Science #Hubble #Astronomy #Astrodon

Replies (9)

@corpsmoderne@mamot.fr 2026-04-21 05:34

@CosmicRami@aus.social looks like a deity forgot to cut that support after 3d printing that nebula 😜 Amazing shots, both of them!

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@elaterite@mastoart.social 2026-04-21 05:41

@CosmicRami@aus.social Impressive for such a small ground based instrument!

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@mrgtwentythree@mastodon.sdf.org 2026-04-21 05:55

@CosmicRami@aus.social i can match up so many other objects between the images too. nice!

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@ThePolishDispatch@mstdn.social 2026-04-21 06:22

@CosmicRami@aus.social Mom! A unicorn in the sky!

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@cafuego@misanthrope.social 2026-04-21 06:34

@CosmicRami@aus.social Ah yeh, got it in my data too :-) I’ll shoot some narrowband overnight, see if that makes it stand out more.

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@dtl@8bitorbust.info 2026-04-21 06:35

@CosmicRami@aus.social Nice catch! I need to get my telescope out again.

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@tubsta@social.bsdlab.au 2026-04-22 00:43

@CosmicRami@aus.social Your CCD is probably experiencing a bit of heat soak too. Nice photo and great to see some local backyard astronomy.

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@bluejay@ohai.social 2026-04-22 01:40

@CosmicRami@aus.social Why isn’t everyone calling it the Unicorn Nebula?! 🤩

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@Pixdigit@layer8.space 2026-04-23 14:15

@CosmicRami@aus.social how do you track such a small object so precisely for that amount of time?

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