The Eye of Sauron

This is M17, the “Swan Nebula”. Everyone seems to see something different in it! To me the whole thing looks like a swan seen from the side, but my family sees different birds within it. It’s like seeing shapes in clouds, which makes sense, as this is just a really, really big cloud of gas…

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…

M13 is one of the most photogenic and popular globular clusters, and it’s pretty easy to see with nothing more than a pair of binoculars if you know where to look! But it’s even prettier with a long exposure – this is about 3 hours of exposure time. Blow it up to full size, and…

The “California Nebula” (NGC1499) does actually kinda look like California, if you look at the whole thing. But the whole thing is too big in the sky to fit within the field of view of my telescope. So, here’s an interesting portion of it near one of its ends at least. From this angle, it…

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…

The main galaxies in this image go by the unassuming names of NGC5033 and NGC5005 (5033 is the larger spiral galaxy.) They’re within a constellation named Canes Venatici, or “the hunting dogs.” Look closely, and you’ll spot a few other galaxies – some large but more distant, and some that are just really small and…