I’ve imaged the Rosette Nebula several times, but this is the first from the dark skies of Central Texas and with some better optics as well. I took a lighter touch on the processing this time, since the data was better – and it results in a smoother, more natural look than previous takes.
This is a weird little cluster of galaxies – there are four in all, and each one is completely different. There’s a weird, S-shaped one that must have been messed up by its neighbors in the past, a somewhat normal-looking spiral galaxy, and elliptical, and another one that’s viewed edge-on. Galaxies that have interacted with…
This portion of the North America Nebula in the constellation – you guessed it – Cygnus, is a giant cloud of ionized gases where new stars are being created. It’s also pretty. These are both false color images, processed a couple of different ways. The first is the classic “Hubble Palette” that maps ionized emissions…
You’re looking at about 500,000 stars, balled up just outside of our galaxy. They are ancient; about 8 billion years old.
Narrowband image of the cone-shaped absorption nebula in front of the brighter emission nebula in this interesting region of the Christmas Tree Cluster, about 2,700 light-years away.
This nebula goes by the unassuming name of SH2-9. It’s part of a larger complex of clouds known as the Rho Ophiuchi complex, but you don’t often see people focusing on this part of it. It’s a challenge to image from my location, as it’s very low in the sky in a light-polluted direction. There…
This is my first “dark nebula” – a cloud of dark dust obscuring the Milky Way behind it. You need dark skies to capture these things, which my remote setup in central Texas now provides. Well, at least when the moon isn’t up. Formally LDN1235, this is actually a much larger object that extends further…
