A Spooky Knot in the Veil Nebula

This is M27, the “Dumbbell Nebula,” about 1600 light-years away. It’s what’s called a planetary nebula – not because it has anything to do with planets, but because early observers confused them for planets. In reality it’s far more interesting. This is what’s left over when a medium-sized star runs out of Hydrogen to fuse,…

That twisted-up galaxy at the top is NGC 3718. We don’t actually know if it’s a spiral or a lenticular galaxy, because the galaxy below it, NGC 3729, appears to have warped it beyond recognition when it passed by it. Also look for the cluster of five more distant galaxies just to the right of…

On December 21, 2020, something really special happened in the sky: Jupiter and Saturn had an approach so close that it only happens every 800 years or so. They were so close in the sky that to the unaided eye, they looked like a single, bright star. This led many to proclaim it to be…

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…

Perhaps the most famous Hubble image is the “Pillars of Creation,” towers of gas where new stars are being born within the Eagle Nebula (formally M16.) My backyard telescope under the thick Florida atmosphere can’t match the resolution of Hubble, but it can still capture this object. I’ve imaged this before, but this is the…

The three galaxies in the constellation Leo (M65, M66, and NGC3628) are about 31 million light-years away. Each one is being seen from a different angle; the one viewed edge-on is also known as the “Hamburger Galaxy”. Each has been interacting with each other, and distorting the shapes of these galaxies through the complex dance…