Astronomy

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3. RED SKY AT NIGHT
   Sharpless 2–126 in the constellation
   Lacerta the Lizard is a magnificent
   section of sky. This large star-forming
   region lies some 1,200 light-years from
   Earth. The energy that makes the cloud
   emit the characteristic reddish color of
   emission nebulae comes from the blue
   main sequence star 10 Lacertae (below
   and left of center). • Richard Sweeney


4. SEVEN ISN’T ENOUGH
   The Pleiades (M45) is the brightest
   and closest celestial object on French
   comet hunter Charles Messier’s list
   of 109 objects that were not comets.
   M45 is also known as the Seven Sisters;
   images push the total number of stars
   in this open cluster into the hundreds.

• Terry Hancock

5. STARGAZER
   This monument in Eretria, Greece,
   shows a woman viewing the sky
   overhead. To complement the
   statue, this photographer captured
   and stacked seven hundred forty-
   three 30-second exposures of the
   background sky, showing how much it
   appears to move in more than 6 hours.
   The smallest curved streak belongs
   to Polaris (Alpha Ursae Minoris).

• Anthony Ayiomamitis

6. MAN IN THE CASTLE
   A skywatcher observes a majestic group
   of sunspots in this carefully planned
   single shot taken September 7, 2017,
   1.3 miles (2.1 km) from the Castle of
   Noudar Park, Portugal. On September
   6, the Earth-sized sunspot AR2673
   — seen at the right side of the man ́s
   silhouette — unleashed an X9.3-class
   solar flare, the strongest in more than
   a decade. • Miguel Claro

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