The star next door.

This pair of galaxies gets its name from their shapes. Both are viewed edge-on, and from this perspective we can see how a past interaction between the two warped them both. About 6 hours of exposure time from the backyard observatory.

Located about 34,000 light-years away within the constellation Canes Venatici, this tight ball of half a million stars formed just outside the disk of our galaxy – and so its stars never got mixed in with it. They’ve just been sitting there for over 11 billion years. One of the prettiest globular clusters in the…

Try saying that three times fast! Fortunately, the “Silver Sliver Galaxy” has a formal name that’s easier to pronounce: NGC 891. It’s about 30 million light-years away, and is thought to be very similar to what our own Milky Way galaxy would look like when viewed edge-on. Explore the wider-field image; click on it for…

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…

This is a somewhat obscure target; at 46 million light-years distant, it’s hard to capture much detail on it from Earth. But that’s what makes it interesting and challenging! Located within the constellation Ursa Major, this is a flocculent spiral galaxy notable for its massive central core. Look around in the background, and you’ll find…

Last night I revisited M63, the Sunflower Galaxy. More formally M63, the Sunflower Galaxy is about 25 million light-years away. It’s about the same size as our Milky Way, but is classified as a “flocculent spiral” galaxy due to its poorly defined spiral arms. The more distant edge-on spiral galaxy on the right doesn’t show…