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The Needle Galaxy
Somewhere between 30 and 50 million light-years away, within the constellation Coma Berenices, lies NGC4565 – commonly known as the “Needle Galaxy”. It’s a spiral galaxy, but viewed edge-on – so we see its central bulge and the edge of the galaxy’s disc extending from it. Clouds of dust within the galaxy obscure the middle…

M17 doesn’t look like a swan to me.
M17 is commonly known as the Swan Nebula or the Omega Nebula. From this angle, I think it looks more like a crab – but “Crab Nebula” was taken! Shot over a hazy summer night, with narrowband filters for the gases of the nebula itself, and RGB natural-color filters for the stars. Presented processed with…

The Eagle Nebula – sans stars
This image was something of a happy accident – I spent a night capturing narrowband data on M16, the Eagle Nebula (home of the famous “pillars of creation”.) Of course I had to try reproducing the iconic Hubble image as best I could, but the color palette they use results in big, ugly, magenta-colored stars….

The Lagoon Nebula (M8)
This is a bright, popular nebula deep within the summer Milky Way… but it’s low in the sky, and this is the first time I’ve been able to capture it above the trees. Still, short summer nights and cloudy summer weather present its challenges. Shown processed in the “Hubble palette” and an approximation of its…

The Jellyfish Nebula
The “Jellyfish Nebula” is a supernova remnant in the constellation Gemini, about 5,000 light-years away. It’s the gas blown off from a star that exploded, sometime between 3,000 and 30,000 years ago – we’re really not sure when it happened. But it makes for quite a spectacle! I was plagued with technical issues while capturing…

The Northern Trifid Nebula
Formally NGC1570, the “Northern Trifid” is a combination of an emission nebula (the red parts, which is ionized Hydrogen emitting its own light) and a reflection nebula (the blue parts, which is starlight reflecting off dust.) You can also see hints of the dust surrounding this area, which is difficult to capture under the light-polluted…