The Sunflower Galaxy, M 63, is a so-called flocculent spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici (hunting dogs). It is about 29 million lightyears away and belongs to the M 51 galaxy group, named after the brightest galaxy in the pack. Although it is a spiral galaxy, there is are […]
DeepSky Images
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The Whirlpool Galaxy, M 51, is one of the prettiest galaxies in the northern sky in the unremarkable constellation Canes Venatici (hunting dogs). It is about 31 million lightyears away and has a diameter of about 76 000 lightyears. Actually, it is not one galaxy but two galaxies whose gravitational […]
The most famous supernova remnant and number 1 in the Messier catalog – this is the Crab Nebula, M1. Its origin is the supernova, now cataloged as SN1054, which was observed in Juli 1054 by Chinese and other astronomers. The supernova was brighter than Venus and visible on the day-time […]
One of the most impressive and pretty galaxies, the Sculptor Galaxy, NGC253, in the constellation Sculptor. It is about 11 million lightyears away and has a diameter of about 90 000 lightyears. It is a spiral galaxy, although the spiral arm are not obvious because of the prominent dark nebulae […]
This is the Helix Nebula, NGC7293, a large planetary nebula located in the constellation Aquarius. It is just 650 light-years away and thus one of the closest planetary nebulae. It has been expanding for about 50000 years and has reached a diameter of about 2.9 light-years. The small dot in […]
This is one of the first light images with our new setup at the TURMX Observatory, hosted at the e-EyE Astronomical Complex in Extremadura, Spain. It is only a quick snapshot with a total of 6 hours of exposure time with the Baader CMOS-optimized ultra-narrowband filters as a first test […]
After installing our new Planewave CDK17, the first galaxy we aimed at is the Triangulum Galaxy, M33. This telescope with a focal length of almost 3 meters in combination with the QHY600M CMOS camera gives an unbinned pixel scale of 0.26 arcsec/pixel. Only during nights with exceptional seeing conditions, we […]
Not too far from the famous Orion Nebula and situated around the star Alnitak, the leftmost of the three stars making up the belt of Orion is an ensemble of bright and dark nebulae. It contains the well-known horsehead nebula, which is a dark dust cloud in front of an […]
One of the absolute highlights of the winter season, the Great Orion Nebula, M42, located in the constellation Orion. You can see it by naked eye in sword of Orion from a reasonably dark location. Because of its brightness and size, it is a very popular target for entry-level astrophotography. […]
This is NGC1333, a blue reflection nebula surrounded by a dramatic scenery of dark and dusty nebulosity and colorful stars. The red specks of light below the main reflection nebula are Herbig-Haro objects that are produced when jets of gas ejected from newly formed stars hits the surrounding gas and dust […]
Bode’s Galaxy, also known as Messier 81, is a grand design spiral galaxy ind the constellation Ursa Major. It was discover in 1774 by Johann Elert Bode, who also determined the orbit of the planet Uranus and actually proposed the name. The galaxy is about half the size of the […]
The Bubble Nebula, NGC7635, part of a larger HII could, Sh2-162, in the constellation Cassiopeia with the open cluster M52 in its neighbourhood (top left corner of the image). The “bubble” is produced by the stellar winds from a massive young and hot star, SAO20575, in its center. The bubble […]
The Helix Nebula, NGC7293, is one of the largest and brightest planetary nebulae in the sky – only 650 light years from earth in the constellation Aquarius. For the expansion velocity one ca estimate that the Helix Nebula was born 10000 years ago. It was formed by a low-mass star, […]
Time for another wide-field image using the Samyang telephoto lens that rides piggy-back on the main scope at our TURMX setup. This is the heart and soul nebula, IC1805 and IC1848, in the constellation Cassiopeia. They are part of a vast star-forming complex about 6000 light years away in the […]
We shot Triangulum Galaxy (M33) already as one of the first-light targets at the TURMX setup. Well, this beautiful spiral galaxy deserves a little more attention, so we added a couple of hours of extra exposure time and reprocessed the combined data set. With more than double the exposure time, […]