The Eye of Sauron

A spiral galaxy almost 40 million light-years away, viewed edge-on. The dust lane in the center of its disk, and central bulge are clearly visible. A couple of its smaller, satellite galaxies can also be seen here.

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…

If you point your telescope outside of the Milky Way, you’re almost guaranteed to pick up very distant galaxies, because there are just so many of them out there. This patch of sky inside Cancer is a cluster of galaxies called Abell 671. If you click the image and look at it full size, you’ll…

Yeah, it’s been a couple of months since we’ve done a live star party online, or posted any new pictures. That’s just summertime in Central Florida for you – it’s been too cloudy to do any imaging or observing. The skies should start clearing up more in a couple of months, and we have every…

Formally IC1396, this cloud of interstellar gas and dust is thought to be an active site of new star formation. And with a little imagination, it kind of looks like an elephant’s trunk. There’s more to it than you see here, but I tried to get an interesting framing. From this angle we see a…

Well, it was certainly born of fire. This is planetary nebula Abell 39, one of the largest spheres in the galaxy… it’s 2.6 light-years across! It really is that color blue. You’re seeing ionized Oxygen gas blown off by the dying star in its center. Look closely for the distant galaxies in the background, including…