Central Florida wasn’t on the path of the “ring of fire” annular eclipse, but we did get about 60% coverage during the peak of our partial solar eclipse today!
I was live-streaming the view at the peak, but managed to capture a quick image for myself shortly afterwards. Lots of good flares and prominences, and you can see some “beads” of sun shining through the valleys of the mountains on the moon as well I think!
Every year I try to take a better image of M81, Bode’s Galaxy. It’s located about 12 million light-years away, which is unfathomably far but close by galactic standards. Look closely, and you’ll see a faint splotchiness in the background. This is the Integrated Flux Nebula (IFN,) composed of gases that lie just outside of…
The Dumbbell Nebula (M27) is what’s called a planetary nebula – but it has nothing to do with a planet. This shell of gas was blown out by a dying star; once it started to run out of Hydrogen to burn, it expanded and blew out the gases you see here. The star then collapsed…
Formally Abell 33 or the even more catchy name PK238+34.1, the “diamond ring nebula” is a planetary nebula – that means it’s the gas blown off by a dying star, not too different from our own sun. This one’s interesting due to its almost perfectly spherical shape, its cyan color from ionized Oxygen gas, and…
11 light years away, the “bubble” itself is formed from the solar wind of the large, hot star inside of it. Imaged with narrowband filters.
Formally NGC1570, the “Northern Trifid” is a combination of an emission nebula (the red parts, which is ionized Hydrogen emitting its own light) and a reflection nebula (the blue parts, which is starlight reflecting off dust.) You can also see hints of the dust surrounding this area, which is difficult to capture under the light-polluted…
Had a couple of clear nights recently, and trained the ‘scope at the Rosette Nebula again. By combining this year’s data with last year’s, I created an image with a total 27 hours of exposure time! The Rosette Nebula is about 5,000 light-years away within the constellation Monoceros, and is the birthplace of the cluster…
