Thor’s Helmet

The iconic Horsehead Nebula, near Orion’s belt. Shot in narrowband over two evenings.

This is IC443, commonly known as the “Jellyfish Nebula” for obvious reasons! IC443 is a supernova remnant about 5,000 light-years away. This is a false-color, narrowband image consisting of a total of 20 hours of exposure time.

It’s been really cloudy lately in Central Florida, so instead of imaging from my driveway, I’ve tried using remote observatories. This particular image was taken using a telescope in Australia, using a service called telescope.live. This is the “Coalsack nebula”, a dark cloud of gas obscuring the Milky Way in the Southern hemisphere. We’re looking…

Had a few hours of clear skies last night, and captured a globular cluster I hadn’t imaged before: M92. It’s a pretty one, and I’m surprised it’s not more popular. It’s in the constellation Hercules, and I suspect it just gets overshadowed by its even more spectacular neighbor, M13. Globular clusters were enshrouded in mystery…

Every year I image the “Whirlpool Galaxy” (really a pair of galaxies interacting with each other,) and every year it gets a little bit better. This year it was shot from our new observatory, on a newly-tuned mount and with some more image processing experience under my belt. It’s also under slightly darker skies, which…

Imaged in narrowband filters from my suburban driveway. This object lives up to its name with the right color mappings!