Learn Astrophotography with Frank!

Another revisit of an old target, with better gear and better conditions. This is the Pelican Nebula in the constellation Cygnus. Shot in narrowband over one night, and presented in the “Hubble palette”. Two takes – one wider field, and one close-up with the stars removed. In both cases the image is rotated and mirrored…

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.

I’ve wanted to image the “Fox Fur Nebula” for awhile now – it’s pretty obvious where it is in this image! Within the same field of view is the Cone Nebula (near the bottom.) It’s all an area of gas within the Christmas Tree Cluster, which is an open cluster of stars that kind of…

These past couple of nights, I revisited the Wizard Nebula – home of a star cluster about 7,000 light-years away within the constellation Cepheus. This is a false-color image in the “Hubble Palette” where red, green, and blue represent ionized Sulphur, Hydrogen, and Oxygen emissions respectively. Can you see the “wizard”? Hint: he’s lying on…

This image really blows my mind – this is the reflection nebula NGC1333 in Perseus. The blue part is reflected gas and dust from the star that’s lighting up – that’s nothing too unusual. But check out the little red blobs above it. Many of those are “Herbig-Haro” objects, formed by jets spewing out from…

Last night was hazy, cloudy, and with an almost-full moon that would wash out anything else I could try to image. So, I imaged the Moon itself. Tried out some new techniques; usually you would use a specialized telescope with a specialized camera and specialized software for shooting the Moon, but I wanted to see…