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How to surf on Saturn’s moon Titan

Lakes of liquid methane on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, could offer exhilarating—and terrifying—opportunities for otherworldly surfing
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Ground-based detection of motion in the HH 399 jet and outflow over 17 years

Hi everyone,

I recently compared two images I obtained of the Trifid Nebula, separated by 17 years, and detected proper motion in the HH 399 jet and its extended outflow.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time motion in HH 399 has been detected using ground-based observations. Hubble previously demonstrated motion within the prominent jet; the longer time baseline in these images also reveals motion throughout the unobscured jet and extended outflow.

The movie and explanation are available in other places You will need to find- but the simple blink is available to see at the published research note below.

Acquisition details:

2009 epoch
• 0.6-meter RC Optical Systems telescope
• SBIG STL-11000 camera
• Mount Lemmon SkyCenter, Arizona
• 70 minutes each in red, green and blue

2026 epoch
• 0.6-meter RC Optical Systems telescope
• QHY600 camera
• ObsTech, Chile
• 7 hours each in red, green and blue

Although both observations happened to use telescopes of the same aperture and design, the cameras, observing sites and exposure depths were substantially different. Careful registration and comparison nevertheless reveal coherent displacement of multiple features across the outflow.

The measured displacement is only a few pixels—but at the distance of M20, it represents material moving at hundreds of kilometers per second.

The analysis has now been published as an AAS Research Note titled “Ground-Based Detection of Proper Motion in the HH 399 Outflow of the Trifid Nebula. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/ae8f4a”

I thought this might interest the community because it demonstrates that long-baseline amateur and small-telescope observations can reveal genuine physical change in objects that ordinarily appear immutable.

I’m happy to answer questions about the acquisition, registration, measurements or comparison process.

—Adam Block
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Waxing Gibbous July 24th

Taken at around 11:00pm on July 24th 2026 with my Celestron NexStar 8SE Telescope. Edited using built-in Apple Photos app.
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The North America Nebula & The Cygnus Wall

**Lights:** 79 frames 120sec (Total integration time: \~4 hours)

**Equipment:**
**Telescope:** Skywatcher Evolux 62ED (400mm focal length, f/6.45)
**Flattener:** Adjustable Field Corrector / Flattener
**Camera:** Canon EOS 700D (Astro-modified)
**Mount:** Skywatcher Star Adventurer GTi
**Filter:** SVBONY UV/IR Cut Filter

**Software:** N.I.N.A. for capture, PHD2 for guiding
***Processing Workflow: Siril 1.4 & Graxpert***
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NGC7023 - Iris Nebula

My attempt for **NGC 7023 - Iris Nebula**.

**Telescope:** Newton SkyWatcher 150/750 PDS.

**Mount:** NEQ5

**Camera:** Nikon D3300 (not modified) - 120 x 90s lights at 800 ISO, 20 darks, 50 flats, 50 biases.

**Accessories:** Just a Baader MPCC coma corrector, currently I have no auto-guiding on this scope.

**Software:** N.I.N.A. and Siril for stacking and processing.

Bortle 4 Skies.
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M8 & M20

1500 30s subs with the LP filter.
Using the S30 pro.
Bortle 8-9.
Drizzle 3x.
Processed in pixinsight and photoshop.

My first real project.
Open to feedback.
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Starship 13 Full Cinematic Mission

I was a kid watching our black and white TV for the first missions Apollo missions. Now we enjoy this!
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