Revisiting the Needle Galaxy

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…

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…

If you look at the constellation Orion in the winter night’s sky, the center of Orion’s “sword” is not a star at all – it is the brightest nebula in our sky, M42 or the Great Nebula of Orion. Sitting right on top of it is technically another nebula designated M43, and above that is…

Had a couple of clear nights recently, and trained the ‘scope at the Rosette Nebula again. By combining this year’s data with last year’s, I created an image with a total 27 hours of exposure time! The Rosette Nebula is about 5,000 light-years away within the constellation Monoceros, and is the birthplace of the cluster…

Like the Bubble Nebula, and Thor’s Helmet, this is formed by the fast stellar wind of the extremely hot star at its heart – which interacts in complex ways from the wind left over from when this star was a red giant. This is roughly 5,000 light-years away. These images were taken over the span…

Imaging deep sky objects from a suburban driveway forces one to find ways to deal with light pollution. Light pollution is the enemy of astronomers – but in reality, there are ways around it. Some of the most beautiful objects in the cosmos are called emission nebula. They are clouds of gas, often where new…