The Eye of Sauron

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…

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…

This is a weird little cluster of galaxies – there are four in all, and each one is completely different. There’s a weird, S-shaped one that must have been messed up by its neighbors in the past, a somewhat normal-looking spiral galaxy, and elliptical, and another one that’s viewed edge-on. Galaxies that have interacted with…

The galaxy M106 is an interesting one; it’s large and relatively bright – about the same size as Andromeda. And it’s in a busy part of the sky, within Canes Venatici, with lots of galactic neighbors. This image has been enhanced with Hydrogen emission data; that’s what the red dots and tendrils are. There’s one…

Located about 1,300 light-years away, the Iris Nebula is a reflection nebula – unlike most of the nebulas on this site, it’s not made of ionized gases emitting light of their own. It’s just starlight reflecting off clouds of dust. Reflection nebula are harder to image in light-polluted skies, since the narrowband filters we use…

It’s been awhile since I imaged the “Leo Trio” (aka Leo Triplet) of galaxies: M65, M66, and NGC 3628. I wanted to see if my latest equipment, software, and somewhat darker skies made a difference. I’d say so… this is a total of 25 hours of exposure time, including some Hydrogen-alpha filter data to pull…