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The Eagle Nebula
A wider shot of the Eagle Nebula, with the famous “pillars of creation” in its center.

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…

Thor’s Helmet
This week’s target was Thor’s Helmet (NGC 2359), an emission nebula in Canis Major a rather distant 12,000 light-years away. It’s formed by a Wolf-Rayet star in its center, which is a crazy-hot star whose immense stellar wind is bunching up and ionizing the gases around it in these complex patterns. It’ll probably go supernova…

Boldly Going Webcast: Behind the Scenes
If you’re a fellow amateur astronomer, you might be curious as to how our “live star parties” on our Boldly Going YouTube Channel are produced. The more people doing this, the better! Here’s how it all works behind the scenes, which might give you some ideas on how to produce your own show. The Heart…

Flaming Star Nebula
Imaged in narrowband filters from my suburban driveway. This object lives up to its name with the right color mappings!

Looking back to the age of dinosaurs (NGC2336 and IC467)
Spent a couple of nights imaging these distant galaxies; the spiral in the upper-left is NGC2336, and the other is IC467. Galaxies this faint and distant generally don’t have catchy names! NGC2336 is 100 million light-years away. Think about that – you’re looking 100 million years in the past. The light we captured started its…