This is actually only a portion of a string of galaxies that make up the Virgo supercluster of galaxies, around 50-60 million light-years away.
M104 is known as the “Sombrero Galaxy” due to its visual appearance – but a deep, long-exposure image reveals its true structure. It’s a lenticular galaxy about 30 million light-years away, about 30% the size of our own Milky Way galaxy.
It’s not the title of a children’s story – it’s a pair of galaxies 30 million light-years away that look like, well, a whale and a hockey stick. Officially their names are NGC 4631 and NGC 4656.
A spiral galaxy almost 40 million light-years away, viewed edge-on. The dust lane in the center of its disk, and central bulge are clearly visible. A couple of its smaller, satellite galaxies can also be seen here.
AKA Abell 1656. There are tens of thousands of galaxies in this portion of the sky; almost everything in this image is an entire galaxy filled with hundreds of millions of stars. Whoah. And they’re hundreds of millions of light-years away. Click and zoom in to explore them all.
Three nearby galaxies: M65, M66, and NGC 3628. All three are spiral galaxies, viewed from different angles. You can guess which one is called the “Hamburger Galaxy” đŸ™‚
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.
Johan Bode discovered both Bode’s Galaxy (M81, on the left) and the Cigar Galaxy (M82, on the right.) Look closely and you’ll see many other, more distant galaxies in the background as well.
Imaged in narrowband filters from my suburban driveway. This object lives up to its name with the right color mappings!
A progression of photos taken at 15-minute intervals from 10:30 PM to 12:15 AM on the evening of Jan 20-21, 2019. Click to zoom in – there’s a lot of detail!
The iconic Horsehead Nebula, near Orion’s belt. Shot in narrowband over two evenings.
Part of our Local Group of galaxies, the Triangulum Galaxy (M33) is about 3 million light years away and the most distant object visible to the naked eye under dark skies.
This young star cluster inside the Heart Nebula is lighting up the clouds of gas from which it formed. 3 hours of narrowband exposure from my suburban driveway.
11 light years away, the “bubble” itself is formed from the solar wind of the large, hot star inside of it. Imaged with narrowband filters.
Hope to revisit this under better conditions in the future; but this came out OK considering a bright moon was out the night it was taken. The Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) is near the end of the handle of the Big Dipper in the sky, although physically it is tens of millions of light-years more distant.
The Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) appears to be sucking the life out of its companion, NGC 5195. While these galaxies are interacting, they’re not actually connected right now – it just looks that way.
An interesting emission nebula 30 light years across. Imaged with narrowband filters.
A full moon captured with a Canon T6i DSLR.
A wider shot of the Eagle Nebula, with the famous “pillars of creation” in its center.
The Helix Nebula is also known as the Eye of Sauron or the Eye of God.
Taken just prior to Halloween in 2018, the southeastern knot of the Eastern Veil Nebula takes on a ghostly appearance when imaged in the Hubble palette with narrowband filters.
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