Hope to revisit this under better conditions in the future; but this came out OK considering a bright moon was out the night it was taken. The Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) is near the end of the handle of the Big Dipper in the sky, although physically it is tens of millions of light-years more distant.
It’s a good thing galaxies don’t have feelings; they’re just collections of billions of stars. Because NGC 2903 would need therapy. It has no cute nickname like other galaxies; it’s just NGC 2903. And it has no galactic neighbors; most galaxies are gravitationally bound to other galaxies in their local group or cluster, but NGC…
This dim nebula in the constellation Perseus has no name, apart from its catalog numbers NGC 1491 and LBN 704. I think it deserves one. It reminds me of the Bubble nebula – if you look closely, you’ll see a “bubble” at center being created from the stellar wind of the hot star that is…
This is a small part of a larger nebula called the “Baby Nebula” (also known as the Soul Nebula) in the constellation Cassiopeia. If you see a baby in the larger nebula this is part of, this image would be of the baby’s bottom đŸ™‚ There is a ton of star formation going on in…
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…
This is M27, the “Dumbbell Nebula,” about 1600 light-years away. It’s what’s called a planetary nebula – not because it has anything to do with planets, but because early observers confused them for planets. In reality it’s far more interesting. This is what’s left over when a medium-sized star runs out of Hydrogen to fuse,…
Imaging the planets requires completely different techniques and equipment than deep-sky stuff, and it’s something I’m not really good at yet. What matters the most is the seeing conditions – how stable the atmosphere is. A big part of taking good planetary images is just having the perseverance to get out there whenever the seeing…
