A low full moon made the other night a great night to do some EAA. I used SharpCap live stacking and 25 second calibrated exposures to create these images. They were post-processed in PixInsight using photometric color calibration, downsampling, arcsinh and histogram stretches, NoiseXTerminator, and some multiscale median transform for large scale luminance and chrominance correction.
NGC 7380, the Wizard Nebula, is a young open cluster and HII region in Cepheus around 8,500 light years away. 760 seconds exposure.
Messier 3 is a globular cluster 34,000 light years away in Canes Venatici. It was actually the first object discovered by Charles Messier. It consists of half a million stars. 350 seconds exposure.
NGC 5466 is a globular cluster in Boötes. It is 52,000 light years away. 400 seconds exposure.
The Draco Triplet consists of three galaxies of different morphology: an elliptical, a face-on spiral, and a merged galaxy. These are not close neighbors and lie at distances between 100 and 130 million years away. 530 seconds exposure.
Messier 12 is a globular cluster in Ophiuchus 16,440 light years away. 538 seconds exposure.
IC 5146, the Cocoon Nebula, is an open cluster and reflection, emission, and dark nebula in Cygnus. It’s about 4,000 light years away, and the central star that illuminates the nebula is about 100,000 years old, quite young in cosmological terms. The nebula is about 15 light years in diameter. 1040 seconds exposure.
Messier 10 is a globular cluster 14,300 light years distant in Ophiuchus. It’s composed of about 100,000 stars. 375 seconds exposure.
NGC 6633 is an open cluster in Ophiuchus 1,000 light years away. 630 seconds exposure.
NGC 6992, the Eastern Veil Nebula, is a supernova remnant in Cygnus. The source star was 20 times the mass of the Sun, and exploded 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. The remnants are 2400 light years away. 803 seconds exposure.
Messier 101, the Pinwheel Galaxy, is a face-on spiral galaxy in Ursa Major. It’s quite large but of low surface brightness, and contains many star forming HII regions. It’s about 20 million light years away. 633 seconds exposure.
Messier 17, the Omega Nebula, is a very bright HII region 5,000 to 6,000 light years away in Sagittarius. The gas cloud is estimated to be 800 solar masses, and it is about 15 light years in diameter. 710 seconds exposure.
