Bode’s Galaxies (M81 & M82)

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.

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…

This object was a real challenge to image. From central Florida, it only rises 13 degrees above the horizon, deep within the light-polluted murk of my Southern sky. Omega Centauri is a Southern hemisphere object, so capturing it from the Northern hemisphere requires effort. It’s worth it though – this is one of the most…

As with any form of photography, getting a good shot is largely about being in the right place at the right time. When it comes to photographing the planets, sometimes that means getting up at a painful hour. Both Mars and Uranus are nearing “opposition” – the point where they are directly across from Earth…

The Monkey Head Nebula is located about 6400 light-years away, in the constellation Orion. It’s a gorgeous cloud of gas surrounding a cluster of young stars. I processed this data a couple of different ways; one using the “Hubble palette” and another using my own color scheme. The colors represent different kinds of ionized gases:…

Combining 25 hours of data shot over two years, here’s M64. It’s an odd one, with counter-rotating disks that seem to have funneled all that dust in the center there. They think it’s the result of a merger of two galaxies that were spinning in opposite directions. Located about 17 million light-years away, in the…