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The Cocoon Nebula
The Cocoon Nebula in Cygnus is a compact cloud of Hydrogen, lit up by the bright star in its center. Dust lanes can also be seen across it, obscuring the ionized Hydrogen gas behind them. This object is best imaged during the heart of Summer, which means really challenging conditions here in Florida. High humidity,…

Off to See the Wizard (again)
These past couple of nights, I revisited the Wizard Nebula – home of a star cluster about 7,000 light-years away within the constellation Cepheus. This is a false-color image in the “Hubble Palette” where red, green, and blue represent ionized Sulphur, Hydrogen, and Oxygen emissions respectively. Can you see the “wizard”? Hint: he’s lying on…

The Northern Trifid Nebula
Formally NGC1570, the “Northern Trifid” is a combination of an emission nebula (the red parts, which is ionized Hydrogen emitting its own light) and a reflection nebula (the blue parts, which is starlight reflecting off dust.) You can also see hints of the dust surrounding this area, which is difficult to capture under the light-polluted…

The Bubble Nebula, take… whatever
Every year I try and do a better job of capturing and processing the Bubble Nebula in Cassiopeia. Here’s this year’s attempt. The Bubble Nebula is one of my favorite objects. Not only is it interesting scientifically (the bubble is the stellar wind of a hot O-type star blowing away the surrounding gases,) it’s also…

The Sun is Looking Angry Today
That massive sunspot group rivals the size of the one that triggered the Carrington Event in 1859. So far it has kicked off some large coronal mass ejections heading our way, but fortunately nothing on that scale. Let’s hope we just get some pretty auroras from this, and nothing more damaging!

M17 doesn’t look like a swan to me.
M17 is commonly known as the Swan Nebula or the Omega Nebula. From this angle, I think it looks more like a crab – but “Crab Nebula” was taken! Shot over a hazy summer night, with narrowband filters for the gases of the nebula itself, and RGB natural-color filters for the stars. Presented processed with…