2022

The Pelican Nebula

The Pelican Nebula is an emission nebula whose outlines somewhat resemble the namesake bird. The nebula’s appearance is defined by dark dust clouds that outline the pelican’s long bill and eye, and by bright clouds of ionized gas that form the curved shape of the pelican’s head and neck. The pelican’s body and wing are formed by a complex mixture of bright nebulosity intermixed with dark dust clouds, as is the pouch hanging down from the bill.

The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula

The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula (IC 1396A) is a twisted sinuous structure of interstellar gas and dust that we see back-lit and ionized by intense radiation coming from a nearby massive star. Red light from ionized hydrogen makes it stand out amid the other streams and swirls of dark nebulae.

The Iris Nebula

The Iris Nebula NGC 7023 looks like a celestial blossom. It is a bright reflection nebula whose trademark glowing blue color results from the scattered light of its central star.

The Cocoon Nebula

The Cocoon Nebula, IC 5146, is a cluster of stars involved in a bright emission/reflection nebula riddled by filaments of dark nebula.

The Orion Nebula and the Running Man

Here’s a fresh look at the wonderful Orion Nebula complex (M42 and M43) and the neighboring Running Man. Although I have shown both before, this new view shows how they are related to each other. This is also a longer exposure than before and has been processed to reveal additional subtle detail.

A facelift for our second anniversary

It has been two years since I started this blog. My first post (click here to see it) showed the famous Orion Nebula. It seemed to be about time for a little facelift.

The Horsehead and Flame - the big picture

Here’s a fresh view showing both the Horsehead Nebula and the Flame Nebula, two celestial showpieces that are located quite close to each other in the constellation Orion. This past week we had a night with exceptionally clear and transparent skies. I was able to image a couple of new objects as well as take a fresh look at some old favorites. Among my old favorites, I can’t resist reshowing the Horsehead and the Flame.

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2021

The Veil Nebula - the big picture

The entire Veil Nebula (also known as the Cygnus Loop) is BIG - it covers over five times the size of the full Moon. My previous three posts were recent images of the three brightest parts of the complex. Here I have mosaicked together five separate older images so you can see the individual parts in relation to each other.

More Veil Nebula - Pickering’s Triangle

The Veil Nebula is the wispy wreckage of a supernova that exploded some eight thousand years ago. Here we see Pickering’s Triangle, yet another portion of the Veil complex, which is located between the east and west portions that we saw previously.

The Western Veil Nebula

The large and extensive Veil Nebula deserves another look. Here we see another separate portion, the western part of the nebula.

The Eastern Veil Nebula

The Veil Nebula is a portion of the wispy wreckage of a supernova that exploded some eight thousand years ago. Here we see the eastern portion.

The Crescent Nebula

Finally, a new object worth sharing: The Crescent Nebula is a faint, loop-shaped nebula forming a partial squashed circle.

The Running Man Nebula

Following a stretch of poor weather, I got a chance to take the telescope out again the other night and got a good look at a somewhat whimsical space ghost - the Running Man Nebula.

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2020

The Christmas Tree Cluster

Merry Christmas! In keeping with the holiday, here is a fresh look at one of my favorite objects, the Christmas Tree Cluster, NGC 2264.

Three More Spiral Galaxies

Here are three attractive galaxies that I was able to observe in the past week or so. You will notice that even though they are all spiral galaxies, they exhibit strikingly different appearance.

The Pelican Nebula

The Pelican Nebula (also known as IC 5070) is an emission nebula whose outlines bear a resemblance to a pelican, giving rise to its name.

The North American Nebula

The North American Nebula, also known as NGC 7000, is a large emission nebula in the constellation of Cygnus. The name is obvious because the shape of this nebula looks a lot like the continent it was named after.

The Planet Mars at Its Closest and Finest

The planet Mars was closer to earth on October 6 than it will be anytime in the next 15 years. The closer it is, the larger it appears and the more detail can be seen. Close also means bright – if you go out in the evening just after dark these days, you will see Mars as the really bright red object in the southeast, brighter and redder than any other star or planet,

The Planet Jupiter

Now for something completely different! Normally I spend my time observing “faint fuzzies” as amateur astronomers call dim distant objects. But today I decided to share some images of the planet Jupiter, its Great Red Spot and its equatorial belts that I made on Labor Day weekend.

The Dumbbell Nebula

The Dumbbell Nebula M27 (also known as Apple Core Nebula) is a typical planetary nebula about 1300 light-years from us. It was the first such object to be discovered – by Charles Messier in 1764.

The Trifid Nebula

The Trifid Nebula, M20, is a beautiful gaseous cloud within which new stars are being born. It is one of several spectacular telescopic sights embedded in the summertime Milky Way.

The M61 Supernova - postmortem

I previously posted about this supernova on May 16 and on June 16. Here are pictures taken at three additional dates showing how the supernova has faded back to invisibility.

Comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE

Now rapidly moving away from both the sun and the earth, Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) was only discovered on March 27 and turned out to be the brightest comet visible from the northern hemisphere since Comet Hale–Bopp in 1997. A week ago it was easily visible to the naked eye, but it has dimmed greatly since then.

The Lagoon Nebula

The Lagoon Nebula, M8, is another remarkable region where new stars are being formed. It is a giant glowing cloud of interstellar gas lit up by nearby stars. It is divided by a dark lane of dust and it also contains an embedded cluster NGC 6530 whose stars have been newly formed from the nebular material.

The Eagle Nebula

M16, the Eagle Nebula, is one of several spectacular objects now coming into view in the summer evening sky. It has been made famous by the Hubble Space Telescope “Pillars of Creation” photograph - easily the most ubiquitous of all Hubble images.

Changes and Improvements

I’d like to call your attention to some changes and improvements to this blog in the past week or so as I try to make the site more enjoyable to browse.

The Pleiades

The Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters and Messier 45, are an open star cluster containing hot middle-aged stars in the constellation Taurus. It is among the star clusters nearest to Earth and is the cluster most obvious to the naked eye in the night sky. Most people can see the 6 or 7 brightest stars that form a smallish “dipper” – NOT to be confused with the Little Dipper (Ursa Minor constellation).

The Supernova in Galaxy M61 is Hanging in There

This is an update to my May 16 post. The sky was clear and moonless last Friday night, so I was able to check back in on the M61 supernova. A month later, it has faded only a little bit. I’m happy to report that the “seeing” was better this night, so this image shows somewhat more detail in the galaxy compared to my earlier images.

A field of galaxies near M49

Here is an interesting field of galaxies in the constellation Virgo. The brightest is Messier 49, an elliptical galaxy. It is perhaps five times larger than our Milky Way galaxy and about 60 million light years distant. Since elliptical galaxies have no discernable structure, they just appear as fuzzy blobs.

The Needle Galaxy

NGC 4565, the Needle Galaxy, is one of the most prominent and famous edge-on spiral galaxies in the sky.

The Perseus Double Cluster

Two for the price of one! The Double Cluster consists of two open star clusters, known as H and Chi Persei (also called NGC 884 and 869).

The Andromeda Galaxy

If you’ve ever seen a picture of another galaxy, odds are that it was of this one, the Andromeda galaxy, also known as M31. At a distance of 2.54 million light years from us, it is closer and hence appears larger than any other galaxy (apart from the two Magellanic Clouds in the southern hemisphere that are small satellites of our Milky Way). And it is on a collision course with us and will collide with our Milky Way in about four billion years.

Open Clusters

Scattered mostly along the Milky Way are stellar groupings called open clusters, randomly shaped families of mostly young, hot stars that are all gravitationally bound to each other. Most stars are born in such clusters, containing anything between perhaps twenty to a few thousand stars. All of the stars in a given cluster are about the same age, having formed together from the same nebula.

Globular Clusters

Here are four representative Globular clusters. Globular Clusters are gigantic spherical agglomerations of stars that surround the nucleus of our Milky Way galaxy. Each globular cluster from hundreds of thousands to several million stars, and astronomers believe that the stars is most globular clusters are among the oldest stars in existance, perhaps as much as 10 billion years old.

A New Supernova in Nearby Galaxy M61

This supernova was discovered on May 6. It is expected to continue to brighten for several days before fading away over several weeks.

Two Face-on Spiral Galaxies - A Study in Contrasts

M94 is a face-on spiral galaxy whose spiral arms hug the middle and wind very tightly into the core. It is sometimes called the Cat’s Eye galaxy or the or Croc’s Eye Galaxy. It is about 16 million light years from the Earth. Around the brilliant circular disk is a ring of active star-forming regions, revealed in astrophotography as blue young star clusters. This artifact delineates it from the faded outer ring of an older yellowish stellar population.

Comet C/2019 Y4 ATLAS

Comet C/2019 Y4 ATLAS has been a big disappointment. It was discovered just four months ago, on December 28, 2019. Initially it brightened much more quickly than expected, and there were hopes that it might reach naked-eye visibility in late May when it will pass closest to the sun and to the earth. However its nucleus was observed to fragment by early April, and as a result it started getting dimmer instead of brighter. You can see pictures of the fragments taken by the Hubble Space Telescope by clicking on this link.

The Sombrero Galaxy

The Sombrero Galaxy (also known as M104) is a lenticular galaxy about 31.1 million light-years) from Earth. The galaxy has a diameter of approximately 30% the size of the Milky Way. It has a bright nucleus, an unusually large central bulge, and a prominent dust lane in its inclined disk. The dark dust lane and the bulge give this galaxy the appearance of a sombrero hat. Its large bulge, its central supermassive black hole, and its dust lane all attract the attention of professional astronomers.

The Leo Triplet - Three Galaxies

The Leo Triplet is an interesting group of three mutually interacting galaxies that are often observed and photographed within a single field of view. The Leo Triplet includes spiral galaxies M65 (lower right), M66 (lower left), and NGC 3628 (upper left). This group of galaxies is found in the constellation Leo, all of them are about 35 million light years from the earth.

Galaxy M83

Here is a face-on view of the barred spiral galaxy Messier 83, the southern pinwheel galaxy. (It is believed that our own Milky Way galaxy would look very much like M83 if we could view it from outside, although the Milky Way is about twice as large as M83 is.) Notice the bright central nucleus, the well-formed spiral arms, the central bar, and the dark dust lanes.

The Horsehead Nebula

The Horsehead Nebula consists of a cloud of ionized gas lit from within by young, hot stars; a dark cloud containing interstellar dust lies immediately in front. The dust absorbs the light from part of the ionized cloud. A portion of this dark cloud has a shape somewhat resembling a horse’s head. The nebula is located 1,300 light-years from the Sun.

The Christmas Tree Star Cluster

The Christmas Tree Cluster was named for its triangular shape, formed by a cluster of very young stars, that looks like a tree in visible light. The bright variable star S Monocerotis (near the bottom) marks the base of the Christmas tree and lights up the nearby nebulosity.

The Flame Nebula

The Flame Nebula, designated as NGC 2024, is an emission nebula in the constellation Orion. It is about 900 to 1,500 light-years away.

The Owl Nebula and Surfboard Galaxy

The Owl Nebula (also known Messier 97) is a planetary nebula located approximately 2,030 light years away in the constellation Ursa Major. When William Parsons observed the nebula in 1848, his hand-drawn illustration resembled an owl’s head. It has been known as the Owl Nebula ever since. The nebula is approximately 8,000 years old. It is approximately circular in cross-section with a little visible internal structure. The nebula is arranged in three concentric shells, with the outermost shell being about 20–30% larger than the inner shell. The owl-like appearance of the nebula is the result of an inner shell that is not circularly symmetric, but instead forms a barrel-like structure aligned at an angle of 45° to the line of sight.

Galaxies M81 and M82

Here are two nearby galaxies taken from my back yard with my new astrograph telescope. M81 is face-on and its neighbor M82 is edge-on. Dust clouds in the latter are especially noticeable.

The Whirlpool Galaxy

M51, better known as the Whirlpool Galaxy, is a magnificent face-on spiral galaxy. The Whirlpool Galaxy is interacting with a smaller companion, NGC 5195, a dwarf galaxy connected to its larger neighbour by a tidal bridge of dust. The bridge is visible in images of the pair silhouetted against the central region of the smaller galaxy. It lies at an approximate distance of 35 million light years from Earth.

The Rosette Nebula

The Rosette Nebula is a large spherical H II region (circular in appearance) located near one end of a giant molecular cloud in the Monoceros region of the Milky Way Galaxy. The open cluster NGC 2244 is closely associated with the nebulosity, the stars of the cluster having been formed from the nebula’s matter.

The Crab Nebula

M1, the Crab Nebula, is the remnant of the spectacular supernova of 1054.

The Orion Nebula

The Orion Nebula M42 is the most spectacular deep-sky object visible through almost any telescope. Other than the moon, there is no other object in the night sky that reveals as much detail as M42. It is visible to the naked eye as the fuzzy central star in Orion’s sword.

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