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.
There’s a comet in the sky! They don’t appear this bright very often, so don’t miss what could be a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see a comet with your own eyes. It’s tough to spot here in suburbia with your eyes, but it’s easy to see with binoculars. Its official name is C/2020 F3 NEOWISE. Just…
Granted this is only a portion of it, but for the life of me I don’t see a pelican in this thing. But, it’s still pretty. I processed this object two ways: using the “Hubble palette” that maps red, green, and blue to Sulfur, Hydrogen, and Oxygen emissions (that results in the pretty blue one)…
An interesting emission nebula 30 light years across. Imaged with narrowband filters.
We recently obtained a new telescope for observing the planets, and we had our first good conditions for planetary imaging this morning! This is the best image of Jupiter I’ve ever gotten, and I’m hopeful that it will be even better once it gets closer to Earth in a couple of Months. Saturn’s not looking…
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 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.
