Space Jellyfish!

I’ve imaged this one before, but for whatever reason I picked up way more detail on it last night. Part of it’s a better camera and better tracking on the telescope mount, but I think conditions may have just been really awesome last night. It’s not normal to have this many good nights for astrophotography…

Here’s another galaxy with no nearby neighbors, and no catchy nicknames either: NGC 3344. It’s about 22.5 million light-years away within the constellation Leo Minor. Although it doesn’t get the love it deserves, it’s a glorious face-on barred spiral galaxy that’s about half the size of our own Milky Way. Explore the space around it,…

Like the Bubble Nebula, and Thor’s Helmet, this is formed by the fast stellar wind of the extremely hot star at its heart – which interacts in complex ways from the wind left over from when this star was a red giant. This is roughly 5,000 light-years away. These images were taken over the span…

If you look at the constellation Orion in the winter night’s sky, the center of Orion’s “sword” is not a star at all – it is the brightest nebula in our sky, M42 or the Great Nebula of Orion. Sitting right on top of it is technically another nebula designated M43, and above that is…

This is planetary nebula PK205+14.1, but its common name “The Medusa Nebula” rolls off the tongue a little better. About 1500 light-years away within the constellation Gemini, you’re seeing the gas blown off by a small star that ran out of fuel, and blew up into a red giant – later to end its life…

Hope to revisit this under better conditions in the future; but this came out OK considering a bright moon was out the night it was taken. The Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) is near the end of the handle of the Big Dipper in the sky, although physically it is tens of millions of light-years more distant.