Melotte 15

Formally SH2-155, the Cave Nebula lies about 2,400 light-years away within the constellation Cepheus. It’s part of a much larger region of gas and dust (called a molecular cloud). This region is mostly ionized Hydrogen, but there’s just enough Oxygen – blue in this image – to make for a pretty picture. Capturing that Oxygen…

About 2,700 light-years away within the constellation Monoceros lies the Cone and Fox Fur Nebulas, containing the “Christmas Tree Cluster” of stars as well. I’ve imaged this many times before, but have never been happy with the results. By combining data from last year with more data collected this year however, I finally got enough…

Last night was hazy, cloudy, and with an almost-full moon that would wash out anything else I could try to image. So, I imaged the Moon itself. Tried out some new techniques; usually you would use a specialized telescope with a specialized camera and specialized software for shooting the Moon, but I wanted to see…

These past couple of nights, I revisited the Wizard Nebula – home of a star cluster about 7,000 light-years away within the constellation Cepheus. This is a false-color image in the “Hubble Palette” where red, green, and blue represent ionized Sulphur, Hydrogen, and Oxygen emissions respectively. Can you see the “wizard”? Hint: he’s lying on…

The Dumbbell Nebula (M27) is what’s called a planetary nebula – but it has nothing to do with a planet. This shell of gas was blown out by a dying star; once it started to run out of Hydrogen to burn, it expanded and blew out the gases you see here. The star then collapsed…

Here we have another globular cluster: M53. You don’t see this one imaged too often, but it’s still quite pretty. I’ve never met a globular cluster I didn’t like. It’s one of the more distant globular clusters in our galaxy, about 60,000 light-years away.