The Eagle Nebula

About 10 million light-years away within the constellation Camelopardalis lies NGC2403. It doesn’t get much love, but it was really an oversight in the famous Messier catalog that defines the most popular deep-sky objects. So let’s give it a little attention, and reflect on the fact that the light we’re seeing from this galaxy started…

The Horsehead and Flame nebulas, although popular, are really difficult to image together. The clouds of Hydrogen look best using narrowband filters, but the blue reflection nebula below the Horsehead only appears in wideband, color filters. Further complicating matters is the bright star Alnitak, one of the stars that makes up Orion’s belt. In narrowband,…

Seems I revisit this pair of galaxies, 12 million light-years distant, every year. Although they are close and bright as galaxies go, they are challenging targets for imaging – especially if you are trying to pull out the faint jets spewing out of the Cigar Galaxy on the right. This image represents over 25 hours…

This galaxy is only known as M74. At 32 million light-years away, it’s about as far as you can get for a halfway decent image taken from Earth. It is a “grand design” face-on spiral galaxy. Look closely and you’ll see a few more galaxies in the background that are much more distant, and therefore…

About 2,700 light-years away within the constellation Monoceros lies the Cone and Fox Fur Nebulas, containing the “Christmas Tree Cluster” of stars as well. I’ve imaged this many times before, but have never been happy with the results. By combining data from last year with more data collected this year however, I finally got enough…

Jupiter and Saturn both reached “opposition” over the summer, meaning they had their closest approach to Earth for the year. Florida’s summer weather conspired against photographing the planets at that time, but the skies finally cleared last night. They’re not at their closest, but… they’re close enough. I think this is my best Jupiter image…