It doesn’t take much imagination to see a ghost leaving a trail of ectoplasm in this cloud of Hydrogen gas, lit up by the bright star Navi. To keep with a spooky and ethereal theme, I photographed this object in monochrome using only a Hydrogen-alpha filter.

The “California Nebula” (NGC1499) does actually kinda look like California, if you look at the whole thing. But the whole thing is too big in the sky to fit within the field of view of my telescope. So, here’s an interesting portion of it near one of its ends at least. From this angle, it…

Deep-sky astrophotography is the ultimate hobby for nerds; it combines endless tinkering with highly specialized technology, exploration of the cosmos, and constant challenges, achievements, and learning. But, could this hobby be automated to the point where anyone can do it? Products such as Stellina and Unistellar promise to deliver an experience where you can plop…

Here’s IC417, commonly known as the “Spider Nebula.” Just outside of the frame is a smaller one called the “Fly Nebula,” but my field of view isn’t quite big enough to capture them together! It’s about 10,000 light-years away, in the constellation Auriga. Imaged over 15 hours; narrowband nebula blended with RGB stars.

As Halloween draws closer, this seems like an appropriate object to image: the “Witch’s Broom” nebula! Although to be honest, that bright star (Cygnus 56) looks more like an eye on some sort of fantastical, cosmic creature to me. In reality, it’s part of the larger Veil Nebula, which is a huge supernova remnant 1,400…

This is IC342, located about 10 million light-years away. If it were anywhere else in the sky, it would be visible to the naked eye – but it lies behind the disk of our Milky Way galaxy, obscuring the view. This image is the result of 22 hours of total exposure time to try and…