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The Hidden Galaxy
This is IC342, located about 10 million light-years away. If it were anywhere else in the sky, it would be visible to the naked eye – but it lies behind the disk of our Milky Way galaxy, obscuring the view. This image is the result of 22 hours of total exposure time to try and…

The Sun is Looking Angry Today
That massive sunspot group rivals the size of the one that triggered the Carrington Event in 1859. So far it has kicked off some large coronal mass ejections heading our way, but fortunately nothing on that scale. Let’s hope we just get some pretty auroras from this, and nothing more damaging!

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…

A bunch of obscure galaxies in Virgo (NGC5364 and friends)
There’s a big cluster of galaxies within Virgo; it’s just filthy with them. People usually image a different part of it, but I found another interesting area that’s often overlooked. The grand-design spiral at the bottom is NGC5364; it’s about 55 million light-years away. The annotated image identifies its buddies.

The Moon
Last weekend, I hosted an astrophotography workshop on lunar photography for our local astronomy club. Tonight the skies finally cleared, and I got to apply what was learned! Here’s our lunar neighbor, in hi-res glory.

A Supernova 50 million light-years away!
Highlighted here is a recently discovered supernova in the galaxy M61, over 50 million light-years away! This exploding star outshines the entire core of its own galaxy, and many of the much closer stars seen within our Milky Way. The sheer power of this stellar explosion is unfathomable. It’s 50 million light-years away, which means…