Dr Maths Physics's blog

This week’s #MessierMonday is M103, aka NGC 581. It’s an open cluster in the constellation Cassiopeia. See how the stars sparkle like gemstones in the sky.
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Happy #MessierMonday!
This week's catalogue member is M102, aka the Spindle Galaxy. It’s a lenticular galaxy 50 million light years away from Earth, in the constellation Draco.
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This week’s #MessierMonday is M101, aka the Pinwheel Galaxy. It’s a spiral galaxy located in the constellation Ursa Major.
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This week’s #MessierMonday is the stunning grand design spiral galaxy M100.
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Credits: NASA, ESA and Judy Schmidt pic.twitter.com/hBLqY8xZhK

Delighted to announce Stars of Orion #paperback is now available to buy from the online link here + from your local bookshop.

It’s the middle of #Movember and it’s #MessierMonday. I got 99 problems but a deep sky object ain’t one.

This week we have the Coma Pinwheel, aka M99.
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It was a week ago today that NASA successfully added another member to the robot population of Mars. It was fantastic to watch the landing, also a strange reminder of how far away everything is in space. The sequence of manoeuvres for the landing itself takes 7 minutes—known as the 'seven minutes of terror'. However, because of the distance, and the finite speed of light, there's an 11 minute delay. So when we're all eagerly watching the landing sequence, it's already happened! Its fate has been sealed. Carl Sagan said 'astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience' and following the progress of Perseverance helps see what he means.

I need to make sure I remember to include my husband's pictures in my #MessierMonday tweets — they're popular!

For the past 40 weeks (or so) I have been writing a new thread on Twitter every Monday about a member of the Messier Catalogue, under the hashtag #MessierMonday. I've been doing it in order, so my next object is Messier 41. I can't believe I've been keeping it up for this long. Only 69 more to go after that! I'm hoping to put them all on here at some point, so watch this space! (No pun intended).