Horsehead Nebula

This portion of the North America Nebula in the constellation – you guessed it – Cygnus, is a giant cloud of ionized gases where new stars are being created. It’s also pretty. These are both false color images, processed a couple of different ways. The first is the classic “Hubble Palette” that maps ionized emissions…

Formally SH2-155, the Cave Nebula lies about 2,400 light-years away within the constellation Cepheus. It’s part of a much larger region of gas and dust (called a molecular cloud). This region is mostly ionized Hydrogen, but there’s just enough Oxygen – blue in this image – to make for a pretty picture. Capturing that Oxygen…

It’s been awhile since I attempted Jupiter and Saturn… years, in fact. But last night was too good to pass up. Jupiter is just past its opposition, and it’s one of its closest approaches to Earth ever. There wasn’t a lot of turbulence in the air late last night, the Great Red Spot was out,…

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

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…

The Horsehead and Flame nebulas, although popular, are really difficult to image together. The clouds of Hydrogen look best using narrowband filters, but the blue reflection nebula below the Horsehead only appears in wideband, color filters. Further complicating matters is the bright star Alnitak, one of the stars that makes up Orion’s belt. In narrowband,…