STEAM with Francisco

09/28/2026

NASA’s Moon Base plans are accelerating fast — partnerships, missions, and new tech coming together to build humanity’s first outpost on the lunar surface. We’re going back to the Moon, and this time, we’re staying.

No aim is too high. No journey is too far. No challenge is too toug...

09/26/2026

A Night of Celestial Capture: NGC 225, Cassiopeia's Sailboat, sailing through stardust.
Common Name: Sailboat Cluster

Technical Designation: NGC 225 (also Collinder 7 and H VIII.78). The reflection nebula vdB 4 and a complex of dark nebulae from the Lynds catalog (LDN) share the same field.

Constellation: Cassiopeia (RA 00h 43.7m / Dec +61° 47′)

Distance: Roughly 1,900 to 2,200 light-years (585–667 parsecs, depending on the study).

General Description: A young open cluster, about 100 to 160 million years old, with an apparent magnitude of 7.0 and an apparent size of about 12 arcminutes. It is visible through binoculars or a small telescope. Its brightest stars trace a semicircular arc that resembles a sailboat's hull. Caroline Herschel discovered it on September 27, 1783. It hosts at least 30 known variable stars, including δ Scuti pulsators, a slowly pulsating B star (SPB), and eclipsing binaries. The blue reflection nebula vdB 4 and a vast network of dark dust accompany it.

I'm bringing you two very different views of the same corner of the sky. They are two ways of telling the same cosmic story, and I promise both are worth your time.

Photo one: Toward the stellar garden. This image gathers no less than 1,082 minutes of integration (more than 18 hours of accumulated light!) with the Seestar S50 Pro. Here I made a deliberate artistic choice: isolate the cluster and leave out all the nebulosity. The result is a stellar field of overwhelming density, a true garden of suns. Look at the center of the vertical frame, and you'll recognize the arc of bluish stars that gives the cluster its name (see the "Object Information" section). Those stars stand out cleanly against the background, which is scattered with thousands of fainter Milky Way points.

What fascinates me most about this version is the natural color palette of the stars. Bluish-white points, which are hot young stars, sit next to golden and orange ones, which are cooler stars or red giants in the galactic background. It's a visual reminder that every color is a cosmic thermometer. Even without the nebulosity processed, a sharp eye can sense darker bands winding through the field, as if stars were missing. They're the first clue to the dust that takes center stage in the second image.
Photo two: Revealing the hidden beauty. Here the story changes completely. With processing aimed at rescuing the faintest signal, the field turns into a stage full of life. At the center shines the jewel of the composition: vdB 4, an electric-blue cloud that looks like a frozen flame. It emerges from dust filaments lit in cream and golden tones. Right next to it, like brushstrokes of India ink, stretch the dark nebulae. They are black, elongated silhouettes, almost like birds or comets in flight, that block the light of the stars behind them.
The panoramic framing works beautifully. The eye starts at the blue center, travels along the brown and ochre wisps of dust that cross the whole scene from left to right, and finds secondary details: a second golden cloud with a dark knot on the right side and grayish filaments across the top. Looking at the image feels like a journey. The difference between the two versions is huge, and it's a wonderful lesson: the sky keeps secrets that only appear when we give it patience and technique.

This star cluster has taken on a new dimension thanks to Marcelo Álvarez's expert processing. Using his software tools, he has achieved spectacular definition, highlighting the intricate structure of the stars and eliminating noise for a crisp, clean view.

What are we really looking at? Let's break it down, because the science behind these images is as beautiful as the photos themselves.

A young cluster with a family history. Open clusters like this one (see the "Object Information" section) are groups of stars born together from the same cloud of gas and dust. They share age and chemical composition, like sisters in one family. Over time, the galaxy's gravity will scatter them. So when we observe a cluster, we see a temporary "family photo" that won't exist as such a few hundred million years from now. The different distance and age estimates listed in the "Object Information" section also teach us something valuable: astronomy is a living science, and measuring the universe is still a challenge that gets refined with every new mission, such as Gaia.

A laboratory of variable stars. Dozens of stars within the cluster have been found to change in brightness. Some pulsate, like the δ Scuti stars, which "breathe" over a matter of hours. Others are eclipsing binaries, where one star passes in front of its companion. These variations are gold for astrophysicists, because they allow the study of stellar interiors through asteroseismology, something like giving a sun an ultrasound.

Why is vdB 4 blue? It is a reflection nebula. It doesn't emit light of its own; what we see is interstellar dust reflecting the light of a nearby star. In this region, the main source of illumination is V594 Cassiopeiae, a young, active emission-line star that ejects material around it. The blue hue comes from the same phenomenon that colors our daytime sky: dust particles scatter short-wavelength light, the blue, more efficiently. Every time you look up during the day, you're seeing nebula physics!

The dark silhouettes: cold dust. The black patches and brown wisps are dark nebulae, clouds of cold dust so dense that they block the light of background stars. They are cataloged by astronomer Beverly Lynds (hence the LDN designation). What's more, vdB 4 is probably the illuminated part of that same dust complex. It's thought it may be a remnant of the original cloud that gave birth to the cluster's stars. In other words: in a single image we see the "daughters" (the stars) alongside the remains of their "cradle" (the dust).

A tribute to Caroline Herschel. I can't close this section without remembering its discoverer (see the "Object Information" section). Caroline Herschel was an 18th-century pioneer who swept the sky by hand and discovered comets, clusters, and nebulae. Her catalog is so thorough that she even recorded this cluster twice, in 1783 and 1784! Every time we point a telescope at NGC 225, we follow in her footsteps.

Two photos, one sailboat. In the first, the stars sail alone, bright and orderly. In the second, we discover the sea of dust they sail through and the cradle they set out from. That's astronomy: the more we look, the more we discover. 243 years ago, Caroline Herschel discovered this cluster with a telescope we would consider rudimentary today, writing it down by hand in her notebook. Today, a smart telescope, a dark sky, and many hours of patience are enough to rescue landscapes that only large observatories could reach a few decades ago. So head outside, look up at Cassiopeia this autumn, and find the sailboat. The universe is waiting for you!

09/19/2026

Would you like to get to know the constellation Corona Australis?

I’ve just published a new blog post featuring my photographs of its main stars and the scientific story behind each one.

If you’re passionate about astronomy or simply enjoy gazing at the sky, you’re going to love this exploration.

Sometimes, to truly appreciate the vastness of the universe, one must look into its most unassuming corners. The constellation Corona Australis—the S

09/07/2026

Would you like to learn about the constellation Aquila beyond Altair?
I’ve just published a new blog post featuring my photographs of its main stars and the scientific story behind each one—from Altair’s extreme rotation to the heartbeat of the famous Eta Aquilae.

If you’re passionate about astronomy or enjoy gazing at the sky, you’re going to love this exploration.

We often find ourselves looking up at the night sky toward Aquila in search of Altair—the dazzling southern vertex of the Summer Triangle—and for most

09/06/2026

Thrilled to share some exciting news: I’ve officially joined the team as a SciStarter Ambassador!
Science isn’t just for laboratories—it’s for everyone. In this new role, I’ll be helping connect local communities with citizen science projects where anyone, anywhere can help answer real scientific questions.
Grateful for this opportunity to spark curiosity and bring people closer to science. Stay tuned for ways you can get involved!

09/04/2026

At the center of this image floats a luminous ghost. It's not a smudge on the lens or dust on the sensor: it's the galaxy, captured from the Nevada desert after 182 minutes of integration with my SeeStar S50.

And here's the beautiful part: what you're seeing is science and art at once. As the light stacks up minute after minute, the structure begins to emerge from the dark. First the nucleus, bright and compact, a heart of old stars. Then the central bar that defines it —the one that earns it the barred spiral classification— from whose tips two faint, diffuse spiral arms unwind, turning like a whirlpool of fossilized light. It doesn't shout. It hints. Given its magnitude, capturing this structure is no formality: it's a small conquest.

And it didn't come to the portrait alone. Look toward the south of the frame, near the bottom, and you'll spot the intruder: M88 (NGC 4501) photobombing —another gorgeous spiral that slipped into the field without asking. Up top, crossing the scene, you'll see two thin, perfectly straight streaks. They aren't shooting stars or defects: they're satellites that crossed the sky during the exposure. I could erase them. I don't. I like leaving them in, because they remind us of something honest: we observe from a planet that is more and more orbited every year.

The galaxy is, above all, a survivor with a story.

It was discovered by Charles Messier on March 18, 1781, during a single prodigious night in which he cataloged eight "nebulae" along the border between Virgo and Coma Berenices. It was the last on that list… and also the most troublesome. Messier made a bookkeeping error: he measured its position relative to M89 but recorded it in his calculations as if starting from M58. The result: for nearly two centuries, when astronomers pointed to where it "should" have been, they found nothing. M91 became a ghost of the catalog.

William Herschel independently observed this same galaxy —today's NGC 4548— on April 8, 1784, without knowing he was looking at Messier's lost object. The mystery wasn't solved until 1969, and it wasn't solved by a great observatory but by an amateur astronomer from Texas, William C. Williams, who redid the math and proved that M91 and NGC 4548 were the same galaxy. A lovely reminder that amateurs do science too.

But there's a second, deeper story. M91 belongs to the Virgo Cluster, which means it isn't alone: it orbits within a metropolis of more than a thousand galaxies. And such a crowded neighborhood comes at a cost. M91 is classified as an "anemic" galaxy: gas-poor, with a low rate of star formation. The leading idea is that the cluster itself has been stripping away its gas —the fuel from which new stars are born— as the galaxy plows through the hot medium that fills Virgo. So when I call it a survivor, it isn't only poetry: its structure still stands while the environment, slowly, has been hollowing it out from within.

We become obsessed with what is brightest—with Orion, with Andromeda—and we leave aside what is tenuous, what is difficult, what requires patience. M91 teaches us just the opposite: that what is valuable does not always shine, and that there are entire universes that can only be seen if you insist, if you add minutes, if you look with intention.

If you've never tried hunting M91s, do it. It is the perfect challenge for your smart telescope or for your more modest telescope. Because finding it is not seeing another galaxy: it is rediscovering a lost history—and, in the process, verifying that perseverance is also a form of discovery.

09/04/2026

A Night of Celestial Capture: Messier 90 (M90) The Galaxy Falling Toward Us as It Fades.
The image was captured with my ZWO SeeStar S50, from 116°W, 36°N, with 241 minutes of accumulated exposure in the early morning of April 19.

At first glance, the object appears to be just an elegant and diffuse spot, almost a sigh against the black background. But astrophotography rewards those who linger. With 241 minutes of accumulated light from the desert, the image begins to tell its story: a bright, compact, almost stellar nucleus, from which pale spiral arms unfurl and dissolve into the dark like smoke.

Just above it, that small luminous beauty mark is IC 3583, the irregular galaxy accompanying our protagonist (see "Object Information"). Its presence breaks the symmetry and lends the composition a quiet tension —that of two objects caught in the same cosmic choreography.

And here lies the poetry of the gesture. This light traveled some 60 million years to end its journey on a sensor the size of a coin, inside a telescope that fits in a backpack. To capture it from the desert is an act of radical closeness with something immense.

Visually, it is serene; scientifically, it is an anomaly. While almost the entire universe recedes from us through cosmic expansion, the galaxy in "Object Information" does the exact opposite: it approaches, at about 235 km/s. It is one of the few galaxies with a blueshift —not because it defies cosmology, but because, within the Virgo Cluster, its orbital velocity is so high that it overcomes the local expansion. It is, quite literally, falling toward us.

Yet its story has a darker side. As it plows through the intracluster medium —the hot, tenuous gas that bathes the Virgo Cluster— the galaxy undergoes ram-pressure stripping: that environment tears away its gas, the raw material from which it builds new stars. We are watching it, in cosmic real time, in the very act of shutting down: a spiral in transformation, losing its power to create.

We tend to picture the cosmos as distant, eternal, and unchanging. This object reminds us of the opposite: galaxies have biographies too. They are born, they create, they collide, they age, and they transform.

That light left the galaxy about 60 million years ago, when dinosaurs had been extinct for just 6 million years. Messier cataloged it in 1781. We have only been looking up for a moment, and yet we caught its brilliance from the desert, with a telescope that fits in a backpack. That changes the scale of all things.

If you can, look for Virgo this spring. You won't see this with the naked eye, but knowing it's there—falling toward us as it fades—forever changes the way you look at the sky.

09/01/2026

SEPTEMBER 2026: STELLAR BUBBLES & THE ZODIACL LIGHT!

Autumn is almost here, bringing cooler desert nights and longer imaging sessions! As your Solar System Ambassador and EOP, I am thrilled to unveil the September 2026 Astrophotography Challenge. This month features an extraordinarily dense globular cluster, an expanding stellar bubble, and a rare, ethereal dust phenomenon!

🎯 September Targets:
Great Pegasus Cluster (M15): A "Dense Core Marvel." This ancient globular cluster has one of the tightest, brightest cores in the sky, housing a rare central black hole or incredibly packed star system!

Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635): A breathtaking "Stellar Wind Bubble" created by a massive, hot star blowing cosmic gas outward into space.

🌟 BONUS TARGET - RARE PHENOMENON: Zodiacal Light! From September 9–14, capture the ghostly, pyramid-shaped glow of interplanetary dust illuminated by the Sun. Best viewed about 2 hours before sunrise!

🗓️ Timing & Conditions:
Prime Imaging Window: September 7 – 15.

Moon Watch: Optimal ~20% Moon Illumination gives us pristine dark skies as the autumn deep-sky season officially begins!

💡 Ambassador Tips for September:
M15 Core: Because M15's core is extremely bright, use short exposure times or HDR layering to avoid overexposing the very center while keeping the outer stars resolved.

Bubble Framing: NGC 7635 pairs beautifully in a wide-field frame with the nearby Open Cluster M52!

Zodiacal Light Hunt: A dark sky site outside the Las Vegas valley (like Desert National Wildlife Refuge or Death Valley) is essential. Look toward the eastern horizon before dawn with a wide-angle lens.

Autumn Advantage: The fall equinox means longer nights, so get ready to collect more exposure time per session!

Clear skies and happy imaging! 🔭🌵

08/30/2026

The Roman Space Telescope lifted off this morning... and I, too, got out of bed extra early.

Coffee in hand, Mom by my side, and the TV ready to watch the launch live. What a spectacle.

Falcon Rockets returning to Earth—something that still leaves me awestruck—and a flawless ascent toward a mission that will change how we view the universe and our place on it.

Now begins the wait of about 100 days to receive the first images... and if everything goes as planned, they will be historic. The Roman is already on its way to its new home in space L2.

And as for us, we’re ready to enjoy every step of this adventure.

05/31/2026

Tonight’s Moon shining bright over the desert sky — every crater crisp and alive.