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Back to the Bubble Nebula
The Bubble Nebula still has a soft spot in my heart… it’s what really got me going with astro-imaging years ago. It’s just such a fascinating, gorgeous object and it really inspired me the first time I saw it. Here’s my deepest exposure of it yet: over 20 hours of exposure time, in the “Hubble…

Another year, another Bode’s Galaxy image
Every year I try to take a better image of M81, Bode’s Galaxy. It’s located about 12 million light-years away, which is unfathomably far but close by galactic standards. Look closely, and you’ll see a faint splotchiness in the background. This is the Integrated Flux Nebula (IFN,) composed of gases that lie just outside of…

The galaxy M88 and friends
Messier 88, within the constellation Coma Berenices, is part of the nearby Virgo cluster of galaxies. And by “nearby”, I mean 50-60 million light years away! The light we’re seeing from this galaxy originated from the time of the dinosaurs. Telescopes are really time machines. There are many other galaxies surrounding M88, both smaller and…

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!

Going Deep with the Horsehead and Flame
The Horsehead and Flame nebulas, although popular, are really difficult to image together. The clouds of Hydrogen look best using narrowband filters, but the blue reflection nebula below the Horsehead only appears in wideband, color filters. Further complicating matters is the bright star Alnitak, one of the stars that makes up Orion’s belt. In narrowband,…

M94 / The “Cat’s Eye Galaxy”
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…