Melotte 15

This gorgeous nebula, formally known as NGC281 in the constellation Cassiopeia, goes by the informal name of “The Pac-Man Nebula.” I don’t see a Pac-Man. I think it’s a case where if you look at it through a telescope with your eyes, you only see the brightest parts – and then, maybe it looks a…

This is a bright, popular nebula deep within the summer Milky Way… but it’s low in the sky, and this is the first time I’ve been able to capture it above the trees. Still, short summer nights and cloudy summer weather present its challenges. Shown processed in the “Hubble palette” and an approximation of its…

You’re looking at about 500,000 stars, balled up just outside of our galaxy. They are ancient; about 8 billion years old.

These past couple of nights, I revisited the Wizard Nebula – home of a star cluster about 7,000 light-years away within the constellation Cepheus. This is a false-color image in the “Hubble Palette” where red, green, and blue represent ionized Sulphur, Hydrogen, and Oxygen emissions respectively. Can you see the “wizard”? Hint: he’s lying on…

It’s not the title of a children’s story – it’s a pair of galaxies 30 million light-years away that look like, well, a whale and a hockey stick. Officially their names are NGC 4631 and NGC 4656.

A progression of photos taken at 15-minute intervals from 10:30 PM to 12:15 AM on the evening of Jan 20-21, 2019. Click to zoom in – there’s a lot of detail!