Astrophotography

The Running Man Nebula is an HII region and bright nebulae that includes a reflection nebula located in the constellation Orion. It is the northernmost part of the asterism known as Orion’s Sword.

The Running Man Nebula is a popular target for amateur astrophotographers, as it lies close to the Orion Nebula and has many nearby guide stars. The outline of the running man shows up primarily in photographs; it is difficult to perceive visually through telescopes, though the reflection nebula itself is visible in small to medium apertures in dark skies.

The Heart Nebula also known as the Running dog nebula is an emission nebula, 7500 light years away from Earth and located in the Perseus Arm of the Galaxy in the constellation Cassiopeia. It displays glowing ionized hydrogen gas and darker dust lanes.

The brightest part of the nebula (a knot at its western edge) is separately classified as NGC 896, because it was the first part of the nebula to be discovered. The nebula’s intense red output and its morphology are driven by the radiation emanating from a small group of stars near the nebula’s center.

The Heart Nebula is made up of ionized oxygen and sulfur gasses, responsible for the rich blue and orange colors seen in narrowband images of Ha, Siii and Oii

The Orion Nebula is a diffused nebula situated in the Milky Way, being south of Orion’s Belt in the constellation of Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae and is visible to the naked. The nebula is so bright in the core, I had to blend two exposures, one of 30 seconds, and the others at 300 seconds to preserve the detail.

Orion is 1,344 light-years away and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. The Orion Nebula is one of the most photographed objects in the night sky and is among the most intensely studied celestial features.

The Horsehead and Flame nebulas imaged with a Hydrogen Alpha filter and displayed in Black and White emphasizes all the gases around this iconic nebula.

Located in the constellation of Orion which is visible in the evenings during the winter.

The Pelican Nebula (also known as IC 5070 and IC 5067) is an H II region associated with the North America Nebula in the constellation Cygnus. The gaseous contortions of this emission nebula bear a resemblance to a pelican, thus giving rise to its name.

The Pelican is much studied because it has a particularly active mix of star formation and evolving gas clouds. The light from young energetic stars is slowly transforming cold gas to hot and causing an ionization front gradually to advance outward.

The Horsehead Nebula is a beautiful small dark nebula in the constellation of Orion. The nebula is located just to the south of Alnitak, the easternmost star of Orion’s Belt, and is part of the much larger Orion molecular cloud complex.

It appears within the southern region of the dense dust cloud known as Lynds 1630, along the edge of the much larger, active star-forming H II region called IC 434. The Horsehead Nebula is approximately 1,375 light-years from Earth and is one of the most identifiable nebulae because of its resemblance to a horse’s head.

The Andromeda Galaxy, or M31, is a large barred spiral galaxy located about 2.5 million light-years away from Earth. and the nearest large galaxy to the Milky Way. Andromeda contains over 1 trillion stars and has a radius as wide as 11,000 light years. The Andromeda Galaxy is six times larger than the moon.

Cataloged as Messier 31 or NGC 224, this deep sky object is observable for much of the year in the northern hemisphere, lying in the constellation Andromeda, next to Cassiopeia.

The Andromeda Galaxy is the brightest galaxy you can see with your naked eye appearing as a smudge of light in the Andromeda constellation. What you are seeing visually is its extremely bright core. With a telescope, you will see the detail and the dust lanes between the spiral arms of the galaxy.

The Rosette Nebula cluster lies 5,000 light-years from Earth and is roughly 130 light years in diameter. The radiation from the young stars in this nebula excites the atoms in the nebula causing them to emit radiation that produces the nebula we see today.

I decided to image the nebula in the palette of SHO (Sulphur II, Hydrogen Alpha and Oxygen II) to showcase the different emissions of this beautiful nebula. The channels SHO were assigned to RGB channels.

Recent surveys of the nebula have revealed the presence of numerous new-born stars inside the Rosette Nebula and its dense molecular cloud.

The nine brightest stars of the Pleiades are named for the Seven Sisters of Greek mythology: Sterope, Merope, Electra, Maia, Taygeta, Celaeno, and Alcyone, along with their parents Atlas and Pleione.

These beautiful blue stars are visible with the naked eye, and you see them daily on the road is they are the symbol for Subaru.

The Veil Nebula, an astrophotographers dream, is a cloud of heated and ionized gas and dust in the constellation Cygnus.

It constitutes the visible portions of the Cygnus Loop which is a supernova remnant, many portions of which have acquired their own individual names and catalogue identifiers.

The source supernova was a star 20 times more massive than our Sun which exploded between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago. At the time of the explosion, the supernova would have appeared brighter than Venus in the sky, and visible in daytime. The remnants have since expanded to cover an area of the sky roughly 3 degrees in diameter (about 6 times the diameter, and 36 times the area, of the full Moon)

A mere 4,000-6,000 light years away, the Lagoon Nebula contains many Bok globules (dark collapsing clouds). At the nebulas center is a structure known as the Hourglass Nebula named by John Herschel, which provides direct evidence of active star formation.

Photographed in LRGB and Hydrogen-Alpha, this target never exceeded 27 degrees on the horizon, thus making it a difficult subject to be photographed from Colorado.

Bode’s Galaxy (M81) and the Cigar Galaxy (M82) are a pair of galaxies located in the constellation, Ursa Major. Bode’s is a spiral galaxy while the Cigar Galaxy is an irregular galaxy , both approximately 11.8 milion light-years away from earth.

Bode’s Galaxy has a diameter of 90,000 light-years, which is half the size of our own Milky Way Galaxy, and both galaxies are rich in hydrogen-alpha gases.

These two galaxies have a gravitational lock on each other which affects their shape and composition on each other. One of the interesting parts of this image is the Integrated Flux Nebulal (IFN) that is an extremely faint and difficult to photograph nebula.

The Leo Trio, includes 3 spiral galaxies, M65, M66, and NGC 3627 and gets its iconic name from being located in the Leo constellation.

Each of these galaxies are in a gravitational tug of war and titled at a different angles, making each of their appearances different.

Located 30 million lightyears from Earth, we are observing these three galaxies as they were in the past. They might not even be there now.

Markarian’s Chain is a stretch of galaxies that forms part of the Virgo Cluster. When viewed from Earth, the galaxies lie along a smoothly curved line. Charles Messier first discovered two of the galaxies, M84 and M86, in 1781. The bright members of the chain are visible through small telescopes. Larger telescopes can be used to view the fainter galaxies. Near the center there appear the pair of interacting galaxies NGC 4438 and NGC 4435, about 50 million light-years away, …

The Pinwheel Galaxy (also known as Messier 101, M101 or NGC 5457) is approximately 21 million light-years away from Earth. It is a face-on spiral galaxy 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.

On February 28, 2006, NASA and the European Space Agency released a very detailed image of the Pinwheel Galaxy, which was the largest and most-detailed image of a galaxy by Hubble Space Telescope at the time. I am looking forward to when the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) images this beautiful galaxy.

In November of 2020 I started to build my own backyard observatory. I found a dome that was imported from Australia and purchased it. It took 8 movers to take off the top so I could disassemble it. I then proceeded to dismantle the observatory and go through it with a fine tooth comb, fixing and adjusting all the parts.

In June of 2021 I designed the concrete pad, and had it poured so I could run all my cables under the floor. As I slowly gathered parts to complete the telescope, camera, filters, mount, etc, (during the Covid-19 pandemic and global shortage crisis). I was able to have first light in December of 2021.