You ever have one of those projects that just gets away from you. 🙂 From the end of July to the beginning of September, I collected 11 nights’ worth of data on this target, getting almost 49 hours in total exposure, my new record for a single target. Since I… Continue Reading... "M27"
The Elephant’s Trunk nebula, IC 1396A, is a dark nebula, consisting of interstellar dust, in the larger emission nebula IC 1396. This nebula lies about 2,400 light years away in Cepheus. The Elephant’s Trunk is an active star forming region, with very young stars discovered within it in 2003. The… Continue Reading... "Elephant’s Trunk Nebula"
With all of the recent excitement over seeing a supernova happen in real time in M101, what does one look like after 10,000 years? The Veil Nebula is a supernova remnant in Cygnus, about 2,400 light years away. The star this came from was probably 20 times the mass of… Continue Reading... "Eastern Veil Nebula"
Well, it took me three years, but I finally got enough clear winter nights to image the famous Horsehead nebula! Barnard 33, commonly called the Horsehead nebula, might be the most famous nebula, M42 notwithstanding. Relatively speaking, this is a dim nebula in Orion’s belt, just south of the eastmost… Continue Reading... "The Horsehead"
This is been a long cloudy winter so far, not a single clear night since a spurt I had at the beginning of November. I decided to just go ahead and start processing what I have. I was working on three targets at once, beginning with taking data on NGC… Continue Reading... "The Pacman"
The early Ohio winter actually gave me five clear nights this week during a new Moon, can you believe it? I finally got to image a target I’ve been wanting to do for years, and my widefield refractor was the perfect equipment to image it with. Messier 45, also known… Continue Reading... "Pleiades"
The Cocoon Nebula, Caldwell 19, is a bright emission and reflection nebula in Cygnus. It is around 2,500 light years away. In addition to the Hydrogen emission and other reflections, there is a beautiful cloud of dark interstellar dust surrounding the object. This is an active star forming region. Here… Continue Reading... "Cocoon Nebula"
The Cat’s Eye Nebula, formally known as Caldwell 6 and NGC 6543, is a planetary nebula in Draco. Planetary nebula is a confusing term that has nothing to do with planets and everything to do with the life cycle of intermediate mass stars. These are stars that are not massive… Continue Reading... "Cat’s Eye Nebula"
The second target of my last imaging sequence is the Cygnus Wall, a prominent feature of NGC 7000, the North America Nebula. This is a very bright nebula at magnitude 4. It’s around 2,600 light years away in Cygnus. The “wall” of gas is about 20 light years long. I… Continue Reading... "Cygnus Wall"
A long while ago, I had purchased a 50mm lens for the Nikon D5300 to attempt to do some Milky Way shots. I’ve finally got around to trying it on the EQM-35 mount in star tracker configuration. I was able to polar align decently using the built in polar scope.… Continue Reading... "First lens wide-field"
