The star next door.

About 20 hours on this one – it’s LRGB with Ha added in, so a little tricky to process. I also separated the stars from the nebula toward the end, so I could boost the contrast of the nebula, dust, and emission more. There’s a little bit of everything in this – emission nebula, dark…

I’ve imaged this one before, but I keep coming back to it because I just can’t believe its golden color is real. But even after applying all I’ve learned about color calibration – I can say pretty definitely that these are its true colors. It’s also benefited from advances in image processing software, making the…

Formally SH2-155, the Cave Nebula lies about 2,400 light-years away within the constellation Cepheus. It’s part of a much larger region of gas and dust (called a molecular cloud). This region is mostly ionized Hydrogen, but there’s just enough Oxygen – blue in this image – to make for a pretty picture. Capturing that Oxygen…

This is the Helix Nebula, sometimes also called the “Eye of God” or the “Eye of Sauron”. It’s a planetary nebula, formed by a star blowing off its outer layers of gas before collapsing into the white dwarf you can see at its center. This is thought to be the ultimate fate of our own…

Busted out the solar telescope, now that fall has finally come to central Florida and the weather’s nice again! We’re still in the midst of a solar maximum, and today’s flares did not disappoint. We kept the ‘scope out all day, and observed a smaller flare seen across from the big ones turn into a…

About 2,700 light-years away within the constellation Monoceros lies the Cone and Fox Fur Nebulas, containing the “Christmas Tree Cluster” of stars as well. I’ve imaged this many times before, but have never been happy with the results. By combining data from last year with more data collected this year however, I finally got enough…