iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, is a spiral galaxy located about 2.5 Mly away in the constellation of Andromeda. M31 is the closest large galaxy to our Galaxy (there are closer but much smaller galaxies). M31 and our Galaxy are on a course to collide in about 4.5 billion years. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

M56 is a globular cluster located about 33 kly away in the constellation of Lyra. M56 orbits the galaxy retrograde, that is opposite the general rotation of the stars in the galaxy. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

NGC 5492 (small galaxy at centre) is a spiral galaxy located about 124 Mly away in the constellation of Boötes. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1792. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

IC 4593 is a planetary nebula located about 7900 ly away in the constellation of Hercules. The IC (Index Catalog) is a supplement to the 1888 NGC (New General Catalog) published in 1895 and 1908. Both list several thousand non-stellar objects and are still in use. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

M72 is a globular cluster located about 54.6 kly away in the constellation of Aquarius. Typical of globular clusters, it is old, on the order of 9.5 billion years. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

M70 is a globular cluster located about 29.4 kly away in the constellation of Sagittarius. It is thought to have some blue stragglers near the core. Globulars shouldn't have blue stars as the clusters are too old. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

M8 - the Lagoon Nebula - is an emission nebula located about 4100 ly away in the constellation of Sagittarius. Home of active star formation, M8 contains many Bok globules, dark nebular blobs that contain areas where stars are forming. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

M7 is an open cluster located about 980 ly away in the constellation of Scorpius. It is the southernmost Messier object. This put it very low on the horizon for this image from the telescope's location. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

M34 is an open cluster located about 1500 ly away in the constellation of Perseus. It's age is estimated at about 250 million years. It does contain some white dwarf stars which implies it's heavier intermediate mass stars (~6 solar masses) have fully evolved. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

M103 is an open cluster located about 9400 ly away in the constellation of Cassiopeia. The stars in an open cluster were formed more or less at the same time which makes them great natural laboratories for understanding stellar evolution.

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

NGC 40 is a planetary nebula located about 5300 ly away in the constellation of Cepheus. Quite visible is the central star of this PN. This star is the former core of the progenitor star. No longer undergoing fusion it will cool slowly over billions of years. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

M23 is an open cluster located about 2050 ly away in the constellation of Sagittarius. The very bright star in the upper right is a foreground star, only about 330 ly away. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

M42 is an emission nebula/star formation region located about 1270 ly away in the constellation of Orion. The second image shows the nebula as seen through filters that show light from oxygen, hydrogen and sulfur. You can compare that to the first image which is regular RGB. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

M36 is an open cluster located about 4300 ly away in the constellation of Auriga. M36 contains many hot blue stars which means that it is a very young cluster, about 25 million years old. Not old enough for the blue stars to have evolved to their ultimate demise. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Mars is the 4th planet from the Sun in our solar system. It gets its red colouring from large amounts of iron oxides on its surface. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

NGC 4361 is a planetary nebula located about 3400 ly away in the constellation of Corvus. The central star is very hot, about 126000 K. Despite this temperature the star has already left the Asymptotic Giant Branch of the HR diagram so it is no longer undergoing fusion. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Albireo is a double star located between about 350 to 400 ly away in the constellation of Cygnus. A striking pair in a telescope, it is one of the few things in the night sky the human eye can detect colour in. One start is distinctly blue, the other a golden yellow. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

M93 is an open cluster located about 3400 ly away in the constellation of Puppis. It is a group of stars that formed together about 387 million years ago and are now moving through the Galaxy. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

M40 is an optical double star located in the constellation of Ursa Major. It is an optical double as the stars only appear together in our line of sight. In reality one star is 470ly away and the other 1013ly away. They are not gravitationally associated. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

One wonders why the Hegseth is scrolling through photos of teenagers...

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

M105 (lower right galaxy in the triangle of galaxies) is an elliptical galaxy located about 37 Mly away in the constellation of Leo. Like many large galaxies, M105 is known to have a supermassive black hole at its centre. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

M17 is an emission nebula located about 5500 ly away in the constellation of Sagittarius. It is an HII region, that is a region containing large amounts of ionized hydrogen. Stars are being formed here. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

NGC 7662 is a planetary nebula located about 5700 ly away in the constellation of Andromeda. Though a type of dying star, these objects got their name due to William Herschel comparing them to the planet Uranus which he had discovered earlier. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

M46 is an open cluster located about 4900 ly away in the constellation of Puppis. The planetary nebula NGC 2438 appears to be in the cluster, but is a foreground object, being only about 1400 ly away from us. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

M95 is a barred spiral galaxy located about 33 Mly away in the constellation of Leo. Unlike normal spirals, barred spirals have a prominent bar of stars moving through their cores as seen in M95. Our own Galaxy is a barred spiral.

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Abell 2666 is a galaxy cluster located about 350 Mly away in the constellation of Pegasus. Galaxies tend to be found in clusters as minor fluctuations in the energy of the Big Bang caused mater to coalesce in regions around voids. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Yep, way to risk everyone's life just so you can be a couple of cars closer to the red light...

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

The double cluster is a pair of open clusters located about 7500 ly away in the constellation Perseus. Unlike most objects in space that appear close to each other but aren't, these two clusters are actually only a few hundred ly apart. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) is a long period comet that passed through the inner solar system in 2023. The long period comets are thought to originate in the Oort cloud, a cloud of cometary bodies surrounding the solar system upwards of 1 ly from the Sun. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

M11 is an open cluster located about 6100 ly away in the constellation Scutum. An incredibly rich cluster, it is reasonably easy to find and looks good even in binoculars. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Ye olde Air Force survival instructor skills still occasionally come in handy….

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

M1, the Crab Nebula, is a supernova remnant located about 6000 ly away in the constellation of Taurus. M1 corresponds to the supernova of 1054 which we know of primarily due to Chinese records of that time. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

M24, the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud, isn't a singular object, but a hole in the dust of our Galaxy that allows us to see 10 kly to about 15 kly deeper into the Galaxy than the surrounding sky. The cloud is just the untold millions of stars we see through the hole. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

M26 is an open cluster located about 5200 ly away in the constellation of Scutum. A relatively young cluster at about 85 million years old, it is a group of stars that were formed at roughly the same time and are now drifting off into the Galaxy. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

M30 is a globular cluster located about 27 kly away in the constellation of Capricornus. Its orbit is retrograde, that is opposite the orbits of the general galactic flow suggesting it was captured. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

NGC 6826 is a planetary nebula located about 2000 ly away in the constellation Cygnus. The two brighter parts coming from centre are FLIERs. Fast Low-Ionization Emission Regions are basically jets of fast moving gas moving from the centre of the nebula. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

M109 is a barred spiral galaxy located about 67 Mly away in the constellation Ursa Major. Of the objects in Messier's catalog of non-comet fuzzy objects M109 is the farthest from Earth. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

NGC 2438 is a planetary nebula located about 1400 ly away in the constellation of Puppis. Though it appears in the open cluster M46, it is not a member of the cluster. It is considerably closer as the cluster is about 5000 ly away and so is a foreground object. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

M9 is a globular cluster located about 25.8 kly away in the constellation of Ophiuchus. Globular clusters orbit our Galaxy in its halo. They have also been detected orbiting other galaxies. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

M51 is a spiral galaxy located about 25 Mly away in the constellation of Cannes Venatici. Easily found in a small telescope, it's an example of interacting galaxies as the upper part is a second, smaller galaxy. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

M6 is an open cluster located about 1600 ly away in the constellation of Scorpius. Open clusters help us understand how stars evolve as their members were formed more or less at the same time. It allows a snapshot of how different masses of stars evolve compared to others in the cluster. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Stephan's Quintet is a group of 5 galaxies located about 250 Mly away in the constellation of Pegasus. Only 4 of the 5 galaxies are members of the same galactic group. NGC 7320 (galaxy lower right) is only about 39 Mly away and is a foreground object. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

The office for the past two nights and tonight.

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

NGC 6058 is a planetary nebula located about 11 kly away in the constellation of Hercules. It is a star that has blown off it's outer layers. What was the star's core is now a central star that emits much UV light which causes the blown off gas to glow as the nebula. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Uranus is the 7th planet of our solar system. With Neptune, Uranus is one of two ice giant planets in our solar system. Uranus' rotational axis is highly tilted to its orbital plane at about 82 degrees (the Earth's is at 23.5 degrees) meaning that it rotates on its side. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

M13 is a globular cluster located about 24 kly away in the constellation of Hercules. This cluster is easy to find with even binoculars and is worth a look. Finder chart in second image. #astronomy

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Jason Nishiyama @evilscientistca.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

M28 is a globular cluster located about 18 kly away in the constellation of Sagittarius. It is reddish in this image as from the telescope location it was very close to the southern horizon. The Earth's atmosphere scattered away much of the blue light, making the objects appear redder. #astronomy

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