Frank's Astrophotos Archives - Frank's Astronomy

The Longhorn Nebula (LBN 251)

Frank Kane — Sun, 13 Sep 2026 14:29:06 +0000

Not much has been written about this object – I think its brighter neighbors in the Cygnus molecular cloud, such as the North American Nebula, steal attention from it. But I think it’s one of the more photogenic nebulas in the sky, and you really do see an angry-looking Longhorn pushing through the clouds if you use your imagination! Presented with and without stars, in the Hubble SHO palette. 26 hours total exposure time.

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Revisiting the Veil Nebula

Frank Kane — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 15:01:54 +0000

It’s been a long time since I targeted the Veil Nebula – it’s so bright that it’s hard to screw up, so what was the point? But it’s definitely looking a little better using newer equipment, software, and darker skies – plus my processing skills are a little better. Looking back at my original images of the Veil, they were a bit “overcooked.”

The entire Veil nebula is much larger than this; I just focused on the “Witch’s Broom” and “Pickering’s Triangle” features here.

Total exposure of 27.75 hours. The less dramatic image below is natural RGB colors, enhanced with narrowband Ha and OIII data, while the other is just narrowband HOO on the nebula, combined with RGB stars.

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LDN1228 and LBN552

Frank Kane — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 17:49:50 +0000

This pair of dark nebulas can be found in the constellation Cepheus. They are structures of dust, and in their densest parts you can see the glow of newly forming stars punching through it! There are even some red Herbig-Haro objects in LDN1228 on the left, which are jets shooting out of newly forming solar system disks.

25 hours of RGB exposure; pretty straightforward processing.

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The Flaming Skull

Frank Kane — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:02:35 +0000

The “Flaming Skull Nebula” (SH2-68) is an old, dim planetary nebula that’s about 40,000 years old. What makes it unique is its structure; it is the fastest-moving planetary nebula measured, and as it moves through the intersteller medium, its gases are getting mixed into the galaxy – leaving a trail behind.

Not to brag, but this is one of the most detailed images of this object I can find. The primary image here is in the Hubble SHO palette, but with the Hydrogen knocked down just to make it less green for aesthetic reasons. The straight-up version without any artistic tinkering follows, and then an HOO palette that’s closer to its true colors – but which loses those really interesting red Sulphur details in the SHO takes.

40+ hours of narrowband nebula exposure, plus RGB stars.

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The Garlic Nebula

Frank Kane — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 21:32:46 +0000

This notoriously dim supernova remnant in Cassiopeia is formally known as CTB1. It took 46 hours of exposure time – most of that narrowband through Hydrogen and Oxygen filters – to pull out this detail. I’m pretty proud of this one; it holds its own amongst the better captures of this object.

As usual, I processed the stars separately from the nebula, keeping natural colors for the stars but mapping Hydrogen emissions to red, and Oxygen emissions to green and blue for the nebula.

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WR-102

Frank Kane — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:54:25 +0000

This rarely imaged… thing… is the mess left behind by the hottest star in our galaxy: WR-102, one of only four known Oxygen-sequence Wolf-Rayet stars in the Milky Way. It’s already burning Helium – maybe even past that point – and is about to go supernova.

It’s located within the rich starfield of Sagittarius, looking into the heart of our galaxy, which made processing a little tricky. There are so many stars around here that they blend together into what looks like a nebula, and I really had to knock them down to showcase the gas blown off by this star instead.

Explore the full-sized, wider image for lots of interesting chunks of red Hydrogen. Many are distant planetary nebulas – other stars that are blowing out what’s left of them, like our own sun will in a few billion years. I was hoping I had discovered a new one in there, but alas – although some are recent discoveries that have not yet been confirmed as planetary nebulas, I’m not the first to notice them.

This is an “HOO” image for those gases, with Hydrogen emissions mapped to red, and Oxygen to blue and green. The stars – what I left of them – are natural RGB colors.

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Globular Cluster M15

Frank Kane — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 19:11:14 +0000

Like most globular clusters, M15 lies outside the plane of our galaxy, but is part of it – likely a remnant of the Milky Way’s original formation; a cluster of stars that just never got mixed in with the rest of the galaxy. M15 is one of the oldest, somewhere around 13 billion years old.

It’s about 35,700 light-years from Earth, and contains over 100,000 stars! It has some unique features – the first planetary nebula within a globular cluster was discovered in M15, it has lots of variable stars and pulsars within it, and it’s also one of the densest globular clusters we have. Its core collapsed at some point in its history, which astronomers believe may have led to a black hole at its heart.

What steals the show in this image is the “galactic cirrus” surrounding it – faint clouds of gas and dust lit up by the collective light of our galaxy as a whole. And since we are looking in a direction outside the plane of our galaxy, you’ll spot lots of incredibly distant background galaxies as well.

Although there is, surprisingly, a fair amount of red ionized Hydrogen here as well. I’m wondering if this isn’t IFN / galactic cirrus but actually what’s left over of the material M15 formed from – or perhaps material it has expelled.

A total of 40 hours of exposure time on this image, over the span of 25 nights.

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The Splinter Galaxy (and its buddies)

Frank Kane — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 20:03:38 +0000

About 45-50 million light-years away, the Splinter Galaxy (AKA Knife Edge Galaxy or NGC 5907) caught my attention because it has a complex stream of stars surrounding it, resulting from a dwarf galaxy spiraling into it. That stream is very faint and wasn’t even known until 1998, but I managed to capture some of it under dark skies in Texas with 300 5-minute Luminance exposures. I think capturing even more would require longer sub-exposures.

The wider field image is also interesting, as there are quite a few other galaxies in this part of the sky.

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The Squid Nebula

Frank Kane — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 16:33:41 +0000

This is a challenging and faint object, only discovered in 2011 by an amateur astronomer! The “squid” is believed to be doubly-ionized Oxygen pushed out from a hot triple-star system at its center, sitting within that larger region of red ionized Hydrogen. Whatever its nature, it’s one of the most unique objects in the night sky.

Over 53 hours of exposure time were required to unveil this image.

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Going Deep on the Whirlpool

Frank Kane — Thu, 14 May 2026 15:41:54 +0000

This year, I revisited M51, the “Whirlpool Galaxy.” Having seem some images of this with hundreds of hours of exposure time that pulled out features I never knew were there, I wanted to give it a go myself. This image incorporates over 139 hours of exposure time – but honestly, it doesn’t look much different from an image with 20 hours.

My mistake was using sub-exposures that were too short. Even with modern CMOS cameras, the read noise can drown out super-faint signals. My 10-minute and even 30-minute subs just weren’t enough to pick up the detail I was after. Live and learn!

Still, it’s a cool image. I’ve never gotten that much depth on the tidal tails of this thing, nor as much detail on the Hydrogen clouds within it.

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