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.
Formally IC1396, this cloud of interstellar gas and dust is thought to be an active site of new star formation. And with a little imagination, it kind of looks like an elephant’s trunk. There’s more to it than you see here, but I tried to get an interesting framing. From this angle we see a…
We’re back with our live viewing of the cosmos! Join us as we view the Veil Nebula via a camera attached to our telescope – it’s a supernova remnant from a massive star that exploded 8,000 years ago, and it’s gorgeous. We’ll also talk about tonight’s expected meteor storm as the Earth passes through a…
Our new house has plenty of land, reasonably dark skies, and a reasonable homeowner’s association… so of course I had to try building an observatory! It may sound crazy, but it does offer a lot of advantages: I no longer have to set up my telescope, wait for dark, polar align it, and run a…
A lot of things have to come together for a good image of the planets. The air needs to be as still as possible, the planet you’re imaging needs to be as directly overhead as possible, and the planet itself should be as close to the Earth as possible. And then, all your equipment has…
The larger galaxy in this image goes only by the boring name “M106”, but it’s anything but boring. About 23 million light-years away, M106 is pretty similar to Andromeda in its size and brightness. But M106 is a lot weirder. In addition to its slightly warped shape, M106 is the home of a giant water-vapor…
Sometimes called the “Cat’s Eye Galaxy,” this is M94 – about 16 million light years away in the constellation Canes Venatici. You can barely see its faint outer ring surrounding it here, as well as several very distant background galaxies. It’s notable for challenging our understanding of the universe – it appears to have very…
