Space Jellyfish!

The three galaxies in the constellation Leo (M65, M66, and NGC3628) are about 31 million light-years away. Each one is being seen from a different angle; the one viewed edge-on is also known as the “Hamburger Galaxy”. Each has been interacting with each other, and distorting the shapes of these galaxies through the complex dance…

Within the constellation Corvus, two galaxies are close to merging together into one… leaving two tails behind from the original galaxies. About 45 million light-years away. Our own galaxy may suffer a similar fate, should it collide with the Andromeda Galaxy in the distant future.

Here’s IC417, commonly known as the “Spider Nebula.” Just outside of the frame is a smaller one called the “Fly Nebula,” but my field of view isn’t quite big enough to capture them together! It’s about 10,000 light-years away, in the constellation Auriga. Imaged over 15 hours; narrowband nebula blended with RGB stars.

This was intended to just be an image of the galaxy M77 in Cetus, but quite a few other galactic photobombers showed up! The annotated image below guides you to the brighter galaxies in this image, but click on it to expand it, and you’ll find many other ones as well that are incomprehensibly distant.

This image contains a few things! At the bottom is the Cone Nebula, at the upper-right is the “Fox Fur Nebula”, and in the middle is the “Christmas Tree” star cluster… you have to flip the image upside down to see that one. It’s a gorgeous region of active star formation in the constellation Monoceros….

Highlighted here is a recently discovered supernova in the galaxy M61, over 50 million light-years away! This exploding star outshines the entire core of its own galaxy, and many of the much closer stars seen within our Milky Way. The sheer power of this stellar explosion is unfathomable. It’s 50 million light-years away, which means…