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. […]
DeepSky Images
21 posts
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, […]
The Heart Nebula (IC1805, Sh2-190) is an emission nebula located in the constellation Cassiopeia. It its about 7500 light years from earth in the Perseus Arm of our Milky Way galaxy. It has a diameter of about 165 light years. This image shows the hear of the Heart Nebula, the […]
After the first-light version of Pickering’s Triangle we collected a few hours more data of this fascinating part of the Cygnus Loop. This combined set of 15 hours of H-alpha and OIII narrowband data allows to bring out all the intricate structure in this supernova remnant. To emphasize the nebulosity […]
The Pacman Nebula (NGC281, IC11, Sh2-184) is a nice combination of an emission nebula and some dust clouds. It is located in the constellation Cassiopeia at a distance of about 9000 light years. The false-color images below are composed of narrowband exposure using Ha, OIII, and SII filters. The way […]
Among the more mysterious deep-sky objects are dark nebulae – clouds of interstellar dust that do not emit light themselves, but absorb the light from background stars. Hidden the denser regions of these dust clouds new stars are formed, new stars from the ashes of previous generations. Observing them requires […]
The Andromeda Galaxy, M31, a truly magnificent sight. It is the sister of our own galaxy and the closest major galaxy with a distance of only 250 million light years. Our Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy, and the Triangulum Galaxy, M33, are members of the Local Group, which also hosts […]
The Crescent Nebula, NGC6888, is one of the prominent emission nebulae in Cygnus, about 5000 light years away from Earth. It is associated with the Wolf-Rayet star WR136. When this star turned into a red giant about 100,000 years ago, it expelled its outer layers of gas, which slowly expanded […]
The Elephant’s Trunk is one these mysterious combinations of dark dust clouds embedded into bright emission nebulae. The elephant’s trunk itself is the dark horizontal column left of the center in the image below. It is embedded into a much larger emission nebula IC1396 in the constellation Cepheus at a […]