Technically this nebula is called IC63, but its common name “The Ghost of Cassiopeia” seems much more timely, given Halloween is just around the corner!
Imaged all night last night, mostly in true colors with some Hydrogen emissions added in to enhance it.
I trained my telescope at this pair of nebulas in Orion for a total of 10 hours. On the right is the iconic Horsehead nebula – actually a dark cloud of gas in front of the illuminated nebula behind it. To the left is the Flame Nebula. In between, in the upper-left, is the bright…
Check out our online courses, and learn the secrets behind the images on this site! Select one to learn more.
The galaxies NGC4567 and NGC4568 are colliding 60 million light-years away. This is really pushing the resolution limits here; we had good “seeing” last night meaning not a lot of turbulence to smear out the light reaching my telescope, and I carefully collimated and calibrated things prior to imaging last night. About as good as…
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…
I don’t know why the press has latched onto the name “the green comet” for C/2022 E3 (ZTF) – most comets are green, and it’s too dim to see any color at all if you’re viewing it through binoculars or a telescope. But through 2 hours of total exposure time, the colors do emerge, and…
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…
