The “Leo Trio” of galaxies

The Pelican Nebula frankly isn’t a very attractive object as a whole, but if you crop it down to its heart, there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on. Look for little puffs in the image, or areas with spikes coming out of them. Those are Herbig-Haro objects – stars that are still in the…

This is a bright, popular nebula deep within the summer Milky Way… but it’s low in the sky, and this is the first time I’ve been able to capture it above the trees. Still, short summer nights and cloudy summer weather present its challenges. Shown processed in the “Hubble palette” and an approximation of its…

Both on Earth, and in space! While we prepare for a year or two in California, I trained Scopey von Scopington on the California Nebula for a few nights. Pretty obvious how it got its name! This is a two-panel mosaic, consisting of narrowband SHO data for the nebula and broadband RGB for the stars….

Now that our new backyard observatory is up and running, and we’re under darker skies than in our previous home, I’m revisiting some galaxies I’ve imaged before to see how things compare. Galaxies are tough… any amount of light pollution or moonlight really limits your ability to capture faint, wispy details. But the less light…

This pair of galaxies gets its name from their shapes. Both are viewed edge-on, and from this perspective we can see how a past interaction between the two warped them both. About 6 hours of exposure time from the backyard observatory.

My first image from Starfront Observatories in Central Texas! They’ve been fantastic to work with so far, and I’m really stoked to be able to image remotely from anywhere, under clear, dark skies. While collecting data on M33, the “Triangulum Galaxy”, I was still fine-tuning everything and figuring things out – so there are things…