The Bubble Nebula

This comet will reach its brightest point a couple of weeks from now, but the skies were clear this morning so I figured I should go for it while I can! The tail’s not as pronounced as I hoped, and processing is a bit sloppy in a couple of spots. But hey, it’s a comet….

It’s been awhile since I attempted Jupiter and Saturn… years, in fact. But last night was too good to pass up. Jupiter is just past its opposition, and it’s one of its closest approaches to Earth ever. There wasn’t a lot of turbulence in the air late last night, the Great Red Spot was out,…

This nebula goes by the unassuming name of SH2-9. It’s part of a larger complex of clouds known as the Rho Ophiuchi complex, but you don’t often see people focusing on this part of it. It’s a challenge to image from my location, as it’s very low in the sky in a light-polluted direction. There…

Imaging the planets requires completely different techniques and equipment than deep-sky stuff, and it’s something I’m not really good at yet. What matters the most is the seeing conditions – how stable the atmosphere is. A big part of taking good planetary images is just having the perseverance to get out there whenever the seeing…

There are a lot of stars in this picture; the gases of the Wizard Nebula (formally SH2-142) are the birthplace of those stars, and more are being created even now. It’s located about 7,200 light-years away, and is extremely dim – it took over 9 hours of exposure time to capture this image. Your ability…

This is my first attempt at a mosaic… basically stitching together three views of an object that’s normally too large in the sky to fit within the field of view of my telescope. It came out alright! We’ve had a great run of clear nights the past few weeks in Florida, and I’ve invested just…