April 13th was a  good clear and dark sky which found the Sunflower Galaxy beckoning me.  I had a good run with nice tracking that produced 35 select frames at 300 second each for nearly 3 hours of integration time. 

“it appears to have an indeterminate number of spiral arms bound closely together, and is what’s known as a flocculent spiral galaxy. 

In fact, the Sunflower Galaxy only really has two spiral arms, but they are wound tightly round and round the galactic core, giving the impression of numerous arms.

The galaxy’s tightly-wound arms and bright center are what give the Sunflower Galaxy its floral appearance.”

A classic image from June 26th with a great night running from full dark till the sky started to get morning dawn. Perhaps my largest stack to date with 36 frames or 3 hours total integration time.

“The Pinwheel Galaxy is a face-on spiral galaxy 21 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1781 and was communicated that year to Charles Messier, who verified its position for inclusion in the Messier Catalogue as one of its final entries.”

Back to the Eagle Nebula on June 24th with 18 frames for a stack of 1 hour 30 minutes. A young open cluster of stars in the constellation Serpens.

Below this image is one from 2018

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From 2018….

From June 21st I captured only 10 good frames for a 50 minute stack. The nebula is in the lower left quadrant.

“The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula is over 20 lightyears long and can be found running through IC 1396, a young star cluster embedded within a cloud of glowing, ionised gas in the Cepheus constellation.
The Elephant’s Trunk is composed of cool interstellar dust and gas, which blocks out light on its way to Earth and leaves behind a long, thin silhouette that gives the nebula its name”

From April first I was able to run for a good while on this area which I last ran in 2018. I included the old image for comparison since my techniques have improved over the years but using the same gear. 28 frames with a total of 2 hours 20 minutes. I like some of the detail in the old image better so I should try processing this one again!