Lunar Eclipse Jan 2019

The Rosette Nebula is about 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros. It’s the birthplace of the cluster of stars it contains. While it doesn’t look much like a Rose in this view, the false-color narrowband image below brings out more of its structure. 7 1/2 hours of total exposure time, on New Year’s Eve…

The Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) appears to be sucking the life out of its companion, NGC 5195. While these galaxies are interacting, they’re not actually connected right now – it just looks that way.

This pair of galaxies gets its name from their shapes. Both are viewed edge-on, and from this perspective we can see how a past interaction between the two warped them both. About 6 hours of exposure time from the backyard observatory.

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.

This nebula goes by the unassuming name of SH2-9. It’s part of a larger complex of clouds known as the Rho Ophiuchi complex, but you don’t often see people focusing on this part of it. It’s a challenge to image from my location, as it’s very low in the sky in a light-polluted direction. There…

This morning, my cat woke me up at 3 AM, and I noticed it was clear outside. But, the sun would start rising in just a couple of hours, so doing some super-long-exposure shot of a faint nebula wasn’t in the cards. However, globular clusters don’t take long to image, as they are relatively bright…