Globular Cluster M3

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.

A progression of photos taken at 15-minute intervals from 10:30 PM to 12:15 AM on the evening of Jan 20-21, 2019. Click to zoom in – there’s a lot of detail!

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…

Our new home has clear views of the sky down to about 15 degrees from the horizon; which means some objects that are normally considered only visible from the Southern hemisphere just peek above our trees for a few hours. One such object is the galaxy Centaurus A; it’s an odd galaxy that looks like…

It’s globular cluster season, so here’s another one! M80 is found within the constellation Scorpius, and lies a distant 32,600 light-years away – making it one the small side from our vantage point. It contains several hundred thousand stars, and is one of the denser globular clusters in our galaxy. The faint galaxy in the…

Hoag’s Object is the weirdest galaxy I know of; it is a “ring galaxy” – a very rare galaxy type that’s just a galactic core of stars, surrounded by a ring of stars that’s seemingly disconnected from its core. This galaxy has always captured my imagination. Just look at this image from the Hubble Space…