A Spooky Knot in the Veil Nebula

The Bubble Nebula still has a soft spot in my heart… it’s what really got me going with astro-imaging years ago. It’s just such a fascinating, gorgeous object and it really inspired me the first time I saw it. Here’s my deepest exposure of it yet: over 20 hours of exposure time, in the “Hubble…

That massive sunspot group rivals the size of the one that triggered the Carrington Event in 1859. So far it has kicked off some large coronal mass ejections heading our way, but fortunately nothing on that scale. Let’s hope we just get some pretty auroras from this, and nothing more damaging!

Maybe this isn’t the prettiest object in space, but it’s among the most interesting when you really look at it. The “Embryo Nebula” is a star-forming area, and you can really see it happening here. Those red streaks are Herbig-Haro objects, jets of gas shot out from spinning disks of gas that will become new…

M17 is commonly known as the Swan Nebula or the Omega Nebula. From this angle, I think it looks more like a crab – but “Crab Nebula” was taken! Shot over a hazy summer night, with narrowband filters for the gases of the nebula itself, and RGB natural-color filters for the stars. Presented processed with…

This one’s also known as the “Silver Sliver” Galaxy, or more formally NGC 891. It’s about 30 million light-years away, well beyond our own local group. It’s thought to be quite similar to our own Milky Way! What I really geek out on, though, is the wider views here – there are so many other…

This is the Tulip Nebula in Cygnus, but see that shell-like structure just above it, to the right a little? That’s the bow shock wave of Cygnus X-1, a stellar-mass black hole! It’s one of the most powerful X-ray sources in the sky – but don’t worry, our atmosphere protects you from it. 20 hours…