M104 is known as the “Sombrero Galaxy” due to its visual appearance – but a deep, long-exposure image reveals its true structure. It’s a lenticular galaxy about 30 million light-years away, about 30% the size of our own Milky Way galaxy.
Three nearby galaxies: M65, M66, and NGC 3628. All three are spiral galaxies, viewed from different angles. You can guess which one is called the “Hamburger Galaxy” đŸ™‚
NGC206 is an unusual object. It’s a cluster of stars, which in itself is not unusual at all… but it’s in ANOTHER GALAXY. The Andromeda Galaxy, to be precise. The fact that we can see it so clearly, two and a half million light-years away, boggles the mind. It’s that cluster of blue stars near…
One of the largest and oldest (13 billion years) globular cluster of stars near our galaxy – there are hundreds of thousands of stars in there. There are some interesting theories that globular clusters such as this are what remains of smaller galaxies that our Milky Way has consumed – this is just what’s left…
Technically this nebula is called IC63, but its common name “The Ghost of Cassiopeia” seems much more timely, given Halloween is just around the corner! Imaged all night last night, mostly in true colors with some Hydrogen emissions added in to enhance it.
If you’re serious about becoming a better astrophotographer, like with anything, it’s all about practice. With every image you produce, you’ll learn something that makes your next image a little better. But life has a habit of getting in the way. You’ve had a long, tiring day at work – do you really want to…
Hope to revisit this under better conditions in the future; but this came out OK considering a bright moon was out the night it was taken. The Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) is near the end of the handle of the Big Dipper in the sky, although physically it is tens of millions of light-years more distant.
