Category: Deep Sky Images
My Pictures
A cold but clear and still night was a great opportunity to find an unexplored target. This little nebula was in a favorable position to allow a nice long run. With 29 frames of 330 seconds each, this is the integrated image I obtained. A small object with limited detail, I was happy to be challenged processing this result from my second try.
Click on the image and zoom in for a good look as usual.
My first try at this nebula on a less than ideal evening sky. It was dropping below freezing which is a good thing but there was a good bit of moisture in the air and dew on everything. The individual subs varied a lot in quality, so it may be worth another try at compiling an image stack with just the better subs.
This image stacked 28 frames of 300 seconds each for a total of 2 hours 20 minutes integration. Not a lot of color in this nebula but this image does show a large region of dark cloud in the area.
A wonderful Fall evening found me once again finding Triangulum in a favorable location to get a good run of imaging. This is compiled from 50 frames at 180 seconds each for a total time of 2 hours 30 minutes. Perhaps should have gone with a bit longer exposures but I wanted to avoid blowing out this dense galaxy.
During a smoky and stormy summer it can be hard to find a decent night at the telescope. This night the moon was low in the southern sky and my target was high in the northern sky so the best area I could work with. The Cat’s Eye Nebula is small and not very bright so even with almost three hours of 300 second subs it was difficult to pull out of the noise, but it is there. A very interesting target for those with better gear than I run. Perhaps one day….
From the Web:
“The Cat’s Eye Nebula (also known as NGC 6543 and Caldwell 6) is a planetary nebula in the northern constellation of Draco, discovered by William Herschel on February 15, 1786. It was the first planetary nebula whose spectrum was investigated by the English amateur astronomer William Huggins, demonstrating that planetary nebulae were gaseous and not stellar in nature.”
NGC 7789 was discovered by Caroline Herschel in 1783 and is known as Caroline’s Rose in her honor. Her brother William Herschel included it in his catalog as H VI.30.
This image was compiled from 54 frames at 120 seconds each. Perhaps should have gone with longer exposures but was concerned of overloading the starfield.
“Caroline’s Rose is an example of an open star cluster. Unlike globular clusters, which are ancient objects, open star clusters are groups of up to a few thousand younger stars that are loosely bound together by gravity. Caroline’s Rose is about 8,000 lightyears away and is a much older open star cluster, potentially about 1.6 billion years old.”
“The brightest stars in the cluster are orange giants. Most other bright members are also evolved stars – giants and subgiants. More than a dozen blue stragglers have been identified in the cluster. These are stars that appear younger and bluer than expected for their evolutionary stage. They are hotter than main sequence stars in the cluster that are about to evolve into red giants. Blue stragglers are believed to be the result of stars colliding and producing higher-mass stars with higher temperatures.”
Omega Nebula is an Emission Nebula in the southern sky and at a distance of 5,500 light-years away. On this very warm July night with reasonably stable and clear air, the moon is just a sliver and was down before this run started. I went with 240 second subs and used 34 out of the 45 frames taken for an integrated time of 2 hours 16 minutes.
“also known as the Swan Nebula, Checkmark Nebula, Lobster Nebula, and the Horseshoe Nebula is an H II region in the constellation Sagittarius.”
“M17 contains one of our galaxy’s youngest star clusters, at only 1 million years old. However, many of the young stars in this cluster are impossible to see because of the gas and dust that surrounds them. The powerful radiation from the young stars evaporates and erodes the dense clouds of cold gas in which new stars form. One such pocket of gas is seen at the center of the brightest region of the nebula and is about 10 times larger than our solar system. Other dense pockets of gas have formed the remarkable dark features jutting inward”
Had a nice night with a waxing quarter moon in the sky but otherwise good seeing conditions. Was annoyed at the ever increasing satellites making streaks on the early subs but not so much after midnight. Set up with 120 second subs and this the result of 1 hour and 20 minutes stacked.
“The Gumball Globular contains about 200,000 stars. In 2006, M12 was discovered to contain a surprisingly low number of low mass stars. Scientists believe that these stars were stripped from M12 by the gravitational pull of the Milky Way Galaxy and that the cluster lost four times as many members as it still has over its lifetime. In other words, as the cluster’s orbit took it through the denser regions of the Milky Way plane, M12 ejected about a million stars into the galaxy’s halo. This explains why there are hardly any M-class (red) dwarfs in the cluster. It will take another 4.5 billion years before M12 dissociates completely.”
Last night I was able to get out to the telescope and while the atmospheric conditions were less than ideal I chose the Ring Nebula for a session. This image is compiled of 150 second subs with 2 hours and 22 minutes stacked. This is a small but bright target. My focal length does not bring up a lot of detail on this scale but it is such a dramatic jewel in this field of view.
This target is designated Messier 57 and is thought to be a white dwarf remnant of a star once similar to our Sun.
Another great night for imaging and a classic target! The moon at first quarter was bright but my target was across the sky to the North East in the dark. I had very nice tracking and a long run of 240 second exposures. 54 frames used for a total of 3 hours 36 minutes compiled in this image. Pushed some more detail for sure compared to my last run on this one in 2021.
Just off the Big Dipper handle, this is such a phenomenal galaxy to explore, and was the first galaxy to be classified as a spiral galaxy. The entangled dwarf galaxy is of great interest to astronomers who study the complex interaction.
Finally had a nice clear, dark and cold night perfect for astrophotography. I found M106 in the eastern sky and this image is composed of 38 frames at 300 seconds each making an integrated total of 3 hours and 10 minutes. This was a very good long run with some nice tracking.
This galaxy is 24 million light years away and it is one of the closest galaxies with a super massive black hole at the core. It became an important object for calibrating distances in space because of unique properties. This gets way to technical for me to follow but it has a rich history in astrophysics and deep space research.
From the net:
“Today, astronomers know that the power source is a disk of hot gas around a supermassive black hole. And one of the nearest of these “Seyfert galaxies” is M106, at a distance of just 24 million light-years.
Astronomers have used radio telescopes to draw a detailed map of the galaxy’s accretion disk. Water molecules at the edge of the disk are pumped up by the disk’s energy, creating bright spots known as masers. The masers trace the disk’s size (about two light-years in diameter) and its motion around the central black hole (speeds of about one million miles per hour at the outer edge of the disk). The masers also show that the disk is warped like the brim of a hat, which one side turned up a little, and the other turned down.
From the masers and the motions of stars near the core, astronomers have measured the mass of the black hole at roughly 24 million to 38 million times the mass of the Sun.
Magnetic fields generated by the rapidly spinning disk accelerate some of its hot gas to almost the speed of light and shoot it back into space in the form of two jets, which produce radio waves and other forms of energy. The disks shoot out into space from the black hole’s poles, so they are perpendicular to the plane of the disk.”
Prior image from 2020
