John Champion
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john-champs.bsky.social
John Champion
@john-champs.bsky.social
93 followers 130 following 53 posts
Curious about everything 💭
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Reposted by John Champion
c0nc0rdance.bsky.social
The buff-tip moth (Phalera bucephala) has mastered a very particular kind of camouflage.

When they close their wings up, they resemble a broken twig.

Native to large parts of Europe, there's regional pattern variation that reflects the local tree species. This one best resembles birch twigs?
September 17, 2025 at 12:20 PM
Reposted by John Champion
stellerarts.com
The light from those galaxies appear here as warped arcs.

📸: ESA/NASA/CSA; H. Atek, M. Zamani
May 28, 2025 at 6:19 PM
Reposted by John Champion
stellerarts.com
JWST’s newest deep-field image, collected by staring at a single area of the sky for 120 hours shows a strong gravitational lens. At the center is Abell S1063, a galaxy cluster so massive it functions like a giant cosmic magnifying glass allowing us to “zoom in” to reveal faint and distant galaxies.
Field of galaxies with a bright white center. Around this are curved glowing red streaks, which are distant background galaxies warped by gravitational lensing
May 28, 2025 at 6:19 PM
Reposted by John Champion
ddavisspaceart.bsky.social
This image of the early dawn on Mars was obtained March 1, 2025 on the 1,433rd Martian day, or Sol, of the Perseverance Rover. Simeon Schmauß did the initial highly involved processing of this dim light image, I then evened out the color response across that image and made overall tonal adjustments.
This remarkable image shows an early dawn scene on Mars. The local time is 4:27 AM, the outermost Martian moon Deimos shines in the dusty sky. Simeon Schmauß did the initial highly involved processing of this originally very grainy and low contrast image. Obtaining this photo stretched the capabilities of the rovers wide angle color Navigation camera. I worked to even out the color balance across the image, then tonally adjusted the view of the actually quite dark scene to more closely resemble to what the camera was seeing. To do this I took Simeon's result and in Photoshop made two versions of color corrections. One was done by adjusting the channels separately while looking at the color image so they didn't lean toward red etc. in wide areas of the frame, using feathered selections of wide areas of the color scene and adjusting them in 'curves' to remove red, green etc bias in different portions of the sky. Then on a second pristine version I extracted all three color channels as grayscale files and treated them separately. When doing this I applied feathered selections that were tonally adjusted as well as delicately dodged and burned obvious splotchiness etc across the sky that obviously arose from the initial processing of such marginal data. I then recombined the reworked color channels into a new color image. This ended up with two similar but subtly different results. I then combined the two to ‘average out’ the methods and ended up with a tonally and color 'smoothed' result. The final step was to adjust the luminance and contrast to bring out the presumed actual dim dramatic lighting.
May 24, 2025 at 8:28 AM
Reposted by John Champion
artistburns.bsky.social
DON’T PANIC…it’s Towel Day. In honour of Douglas Adams. #TowelDay #DouglasAdams
May 24, 2025 at 10:35 AM
Reposted by John Champion
xipteras.org
💍 The Ring Nebula (M57), is a famous planetary one located about 2300 light-years away from us 🌍 in the constellation Lyra. It represents the glowing shell of ionized gas ejected by a dying star similar to our Sun, forming a beautiful ring-like structure.

#Messier57 #Astrophotography #Vespera2 ✨🔭🤖
May 22, 2025 at 3:43 PM
Reposted by John Champion
davidbflower.bsky.social
Waxing Gibbous Moon. 2002UT 7 May 2025. 🔭 🧪 🎨 #astrophotography #SciArt #photography #StormHour #ThePhotoHour
The Moon at waxing gibbous phase on a dark background.
May 7, 2025 at 8:32 PM
Reposted by John Champion
saloplarus.bsky.social
Fantastic #atmosphericoptics in the Lincolnshire sky at the moment: dazzling upper tangent arc on a faint solar halo, surrounded by a massive colourful supralateral arc (details in ALT) #stormhour
The sun is behind the tree, 22° above it is an upper tangent arc balanced like a wobbly hat on a solar halo, and above that is a huge suprateral arc, like a wide and colour-inverted rainbow (but not opposite the sun as a true rainbow would be)
May 7, 2025 at 7:24 AM
Reposted by John Champion
davidbflower.bsky.social
I've just submitted my image from last week of "Mars and the Beehive" to Astronomy Now magazine. 🔭 🧪 🎨 #astrophotography #SciArt #photography #StormHour #ThePhotoHour
Bright orange planet mars above right of centre. The Beehive star cluster at left of centre. Many star dots on a dark background.
April 29, 2025 at 9:06 AM
Reposted by John Champion
xipteras.org
✨🔭🙂 Mars and the Beehive Cluster are easy to spot, especially with binoculars, and even small ones will perfectly work tonight.

Wanna more?

Check out my binoculars review “Stars in Your Hands: Unlocking the Wonders of the Night Sky” at com.xipteras.org/Engineering/... #stargazing
April 29, 2025 at 4:16 PM
Reposted by John Champion
saloplarus.bsky.social
Wow. Went out hoping the damp easterlies might produce a Black Tern, and found a BLACK KITE 💥 The first for #shropshirebirding hanging over Wood Lane landfill with 5 Red Kites, on view constantly for 2hrs! Absolutely awesome
Black Kite showing very well soaring over Wood Lane landfill Black Kite (centre) soaring over Wood Lane landfill with a Red Kite and a Crow Black Kite being chased by a Red Kite over Wood Lane landfill. The Black always looked smaller and more compact than the range Reds Black Kite soaring over Wood Lane landfill with constantly attendant Crows
April 19, 2025 at 1:37 PM
Reposted by John Champion
mildthing99.bsky.social
Unusual #CrepuscularRays over the #SwaleEstuary created by an #AltocumulusUndulatus veil seen from Tankerton @whitstablelive.bsky.social
@cloudappsoc.bsky.social @stormhour.bsky.social @thephotohour.bsky.social
@metoffice.bsky.social #StormHour #loveukweather
April 19, 2025 at 8:22 PM
Reposted by John Champion
xipteras.org
✨ Bootes is a prominent #constellations in the northern hemisphere's spring sky, often referred to as Shepherd. It's one of the larger constellations and is easily identified by its kite shaped pattern and its brightest star, Arcturus, see my photo below. #stars

Read: x.com/xipteras/sta...
April 17, 2025 at 8:00 PM
Reposted by John Champion
emilycurates.bsky.social
In #Okinawa, coastal fishermen now farm #coral, restoring #reefs like planting trees in a forest. With #ocean temperatures rising, half the world’s coral reefs have already vanished. These farmers are fighting back, one fragment at a time.

[Heppoko Taylor]
April 14, 2025 at 7:28 PM
Reposted by John Champion
xipteras.org
#Moon 🌓 Waxing Gibbous  (9.59 days old) in Leo ♌️ on April, 07 2025.
Image by @xipteras.org
April 7, 2025 at 6:54 PM
Reposted by John Champion
saloplarus.bsky.social
Nice bright #circumzenithalarc on this evening's walk around the fields 😍 #atmospericoptics
A brightly coloured circumzenithal arc high in the sky above the trees. Formed by light refracting through ice crystals in the high cirrus clouds
March 31, 2025 at 5:36 PM
Reposted by John Champion
saloplarus.bsky.social
The first singing Blackcap of the year at #salopobs was eclipsed by this superb male Gos returning from a breakfast meeting with a Woodpigeon, and this afternoon we had a close encounter with a day-flying bat (ID suggestions welcomed)
Adult male Goshawk with a full crop powering back to the wood Day-flying bat whipping back and forth over our heads as it hunted for insects
March 31, 2025 at 6:52 PM
Reposted by John Champion
saloplarus.bsky.social
In a butterfly bad news week, it was nice to see a lot of butterflies! (spot the odd one out) @savebutterflies.bsky.social 🦋
Holly Blue on, er, holly Peacock butterfly on flint Small Tortoiseshell on the path Dark-edged Bee-fly on the side of the road
April 5, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Reposted by John Champion
saloplarus.bsky.social
Slightest pink beams of #aurora battling the moonlight and light pollution from the back garden 20 minutes ago. Always nice to see 🧐 #Shropshire
Faint pink beams of aurora emerging from the glow of a Saturday night in Shrewsbury, taken from the back garden at 2138
April 5, 2025 at 9:03 PM
Reposted by John Champion
pepechambo.cometografia.es
🔭 New comet in the sky
Discovered in SOHO satellite images in late March, comet SWAN25F was reported by Michael Mattiazzo on April 1. It's moving rapidly through the constellation Pegasus and has already been confirmed by observers worldwide.
Image Kumagya Kimura 🧵
April 4, 2025 at 8:10 PM
Reposted by John Champion
gwenforr.bsky.social
Messier 44, the Beehive Cluster, ~600 light years away.
Can be seen unaided as a faint fuzzy patch of light in the heart of Cancer.
#astrophotography #stars #soace
Image of an open star cluster, featuring many bright stars, mostly bluish, some orangish in color, each with four small diffraction spikes. One group in the center is shaped somewhat like a tall beehive hairdo. Many more smaller stars without spikes are seen as well, all against a black background
April 4, 2025 at 11:32 PM
Reposted by John Champion
marymcintyreastro.bsky.social
#ClairObscur visible on the #Moon this weekend: Sat 5th Apr 1pm UK time: #LunarX & V, 8:55pm: #FaceInAlbategnius, 10:40pm #NessieInPtolemaeus. Sun 6th April 3am #StarsOfAristillus, 11:40pm #PlatosHook. Mon 7th Apr 2am #EyesOfClavius
April 5, 2025 at 9:26 AM
Reposted by John Champion
keycaptured.bsky.social
A monochrome shot of some acorn tops oddly out of place but ending up settled on a sandy shore. One of the caps is lightly filled with sand as the setting sun casts their elongated shadow
_ _ _
#photography #monochrome #bnw #acorns #art #sand #beach #shadow #blackandwhite #artyear #nature #outdoors
A monochrome photo of a seemingly lost and misplaced pair of acorn cupules resting softly along a sandy shore. The inside of one cap is lightly filled with sand as the setting sun casts a long shadow of them and some nearby dune grass eastward. They rest in a small indent of sand that has been blown away around them as they gradually get buried.
April 3, 2025 at 10:44 PM
Reposted by John Champion
davidbflower.bsky.social
Mars, Pollux, and Castor from last night. 3 April 2025. 🔭 🧪 🎨 #astrophotography #SciArt #photography #StormHour #ThePhotoHour
Bright orange Mars above left of bottom edge. Star dot Pollux above. Star Castor dot below middle of top edge. Many other fainter star dots.
April 4, 2025 at 10:59 AM
Reposted by John Champion
astrojaz.bsky.social
TODAY’S NEW HUBBLE IMAGE SHOWING
GALAXY NGC 4941 WHICH IS 67 MILLION LIGHT-YEARS AWAY!! 🌌
A spiral galaxy stretches diagonally across the image, from upper-left to lower-right. At its center is a bright-white, glowing orb surrounded by an inner disk of golden light that is wrapped by a broad outer disk that glows more dimly. The disk holds patchy, broken spiral arms swirling around the galaxy’s core and filled with small blue and pink star clusters. Dark, reddish threads of dust also spiral through the disk, with some strands reaching into the core.
April 4, 2025 at 5:00 PM