The Heart Nebula is a little too big to fit within the field of view of my telescope, but its inner “heart” is interesting in its own right.
This is star cluster Melotte 15, formed from the gases within the Heart Nebula – and some of that gas remains, forming interesting clouds and formations where the new stars haven’t blown it away yet.
Shot using narrowband filters to focus on the ionized gases emitted by those clouds.
You’re looking at about 500,000 stars, balled up just outside of our galaxy. They are ancient; about 8 billion years old.
The Helix Nebula is also known as the Eye of Sauron or the Eye of God.
This solar cycle has been quite a bit more active than forecast. It motivated me to up my game a little bit with solar imaging; this is my first image with a “double stack” setup that results in narrower filtering on the Hydrogen-alpha emissions from the sun. Lots and lots of prominences, filaments, and sunspots…
This object was a real challenge to image. From central Florida, it only rises 13 degrees above the horizon, deep within the light-polluted murk of my Southern sky. Omega Centauri is a Southern hemisphere object, so capturing it from the Northern hemisphere requires effort. It’s worth it though – this is one of the most…
If you point your telescope outside of the Milky Way, you’re almost guaranteed to pick up very distant galaxies, because there are just so many of them out there. This patch of sky inside Cancer is a cluster of galaxies called Abell 671. If you click the image and look at it full size, you’ll…
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.
