NGC 1499, also known as Sharpless-2 220, is a quite large emission nebula in Perseus, almost the same apparent size as the Andromeda galaxy at 2.5° in length. It is about 1,000 light years from Earth. Its size is estimated to be 60 light years, wide enough to fit 2,000… Continue Reading... "NGC 1499, California Nebula"
Messier 34 is a large open cluster of stars about 250 million years old. This cluster lies in Perseus, and it is estimated to be about 1,500 light years away. This cluster contains around 400 stars of Solar mass size and at least 19 white dwarfs. This image is composed… Continue Reading... "M34"
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"
A somewhat rare occurrence in the local universe is a supernova. A supernova is the end stage of a star, typically when the star gravitationally collapses due to exhausting the matter that it is fusing within it. Stars are quite the balancing act, as the energy released by the fusion… Continue Reading... "Supernova in M101"
I sometimes think that globular clusters don’t get the love they deserve. Many times, they are just tacked on after a primary target at the end of the night. Or they are barely given any time during bright moons. I gave the most magnificent globular cluster in the northern hemisphere,… Continue Reading... "M13"
One of my last targets for galaxy season is the Draco Triplet. This is an interesting group of galaxies of different morphologies. I was able to get 26 hours of data on these over four nights in May. The prominent spiral galaxy, NGC 5985, is 140 million light years away.… Continue Reading... "Draco Triplet"
I have written a little Javascript program to render all of my images in a scrollable, logarithmically scaled visualization of the observable universe. You can get an idea of just how far away some of the things are that I have imaged. I will plan to add new images to… Continue Reading... "The Scale of the Observable Universe"
M101 is another prominent spring galaxy that I have wanted to do properly for a few years now. It was one of the first images I took with my equatorial mount and faster Newtonian, but I was still pretty green back then. This time, I took 33 hours of data… Continue Reading... "M101"
