Cosmos – Page 2 – Semper Iuvenis Photography

M 81 Galaxy Group

The M81 galaxy group is a group of over 40 galaxies located in the constellations Ursa Major and Camelopardalis. The group includes the galaxies Messier 81, Messier 82, and NGC 3077 which are found in this image. The M81 group is one of the closest galaxy groups to the Local Group, which includes the Milky Way, Andromeda, and Triangulum galaxies. The M81 group is about 12 million light-years from Earth.

This image consists of 215 3 minute exposures captured using APT with guiding by PHD2 from the end of January 2024. I imaged this when the moon loomed high in my sky. SkyWatcher Esprit 120ED telescope paired with the ZWO ASI2600MC camera and the Antlia quadband light pollution filter. An annotated version is available on my Astrobin page here.

Bode’s Galaxy, or Messier 81 (M 81), is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major. It’s about 11.8 million light-years away from Earth and has an apparent magnitude of 6.94. M81 is one of the brightest galaxies in the night sky and is visible with binoculars or a telescope. Its size and well-defined spiral arms make it an enjoyable sight. M81 is nicknamed “Bode’s Galaxy” after it was discovered by German astronomer Johann Elert Bode in 1774.

Messier 82 (M82) is a spiral galaxy located in the constellation Ursa Major, about 12 million light-years away from Earth. It’s also known as the Cigar Galaxy because it’s undergoing a burst of star formation in its core.
M82 is the second-largest member of the M81 Group, with a mean radius of 18,500 light-years. The galaxy’s center is forming stars 10 times faster than the Milky Way due to gravitational interactions with its neighbor galaxy, M81.
M82’s star formation powers a bipolar superwind that originates near the core of the galaxy. The superwind compresses enough gas to trigger the ignition of millions more stars. The galaxy also expels violent winds that blow gas and dust out of the galaxy. In visible light, the only hint of M82’s star formation is fountains of hot hydrogen gas streaming out of its disk.

NGC 3077 is a small, disrupted elliptical galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major. It is a member of the M81 group of galaxies and is located about 13 million light-years away from Earth. At first glance NGC 3077 looks like a typical, relatively peaceful elliptical galaxy. However, it is actually a hotbed of very energetic star formation and the whole galaxy is laced with dusty tendrils. Despite being similar to an elliptical galaxy in appearance, it is peculiar for two reasons. First, it shows wispy edges and scattered dust clouds that are probably a result of gravitational interaction with its larger neighbors, similar to the galaxy M 82. Second, this galaxy has an active nucleus.

vdB 27 – a Reflection in Taurus

Sometimes you are pleasantly surprised by what comes from these reflection nebula. Other times not so much. This image was centered on VdB 27 (catalogued also as Ced 31) – a small reflection nebula in the constellation Taurus. The nebula is illuminated by the radiation of the variable star RY Tauri.

All the image acquisition info, along with an annotated version of this image, is here in my Astrobin page. A dark nebula (B 214) and a bright nebula (LBN 785) along with a few stars.

This small reflection nebula is usually captured as part of a wide field image of this part of the Taurus Molecular cloud. From my driveway here in the hills of NC, I chose to narrow that view a bit and image it with a RC8 at a focal length of 1628mm using the ASI071MC Pro camera with a Antlia Quadband light pollution filter.

This is 110 3 minute exposures taken Feb 13 and 14, 2024 for 5.5 hours of total exposure.

Bode’s Galaxy – Messier 81

M 81 is a spiral galaxy with long thin faint dust trails extending from its arms in the constellation Ursa Major. It’s about 11.8 million light-years away from Earth and has an apparent magnitude of 6.94. M81 is one of the brightest galaxies in the night sky and is visible with binoculars or a telescope.

Its size and well-defined spiral arms make it an enjoyable sight through almost any telescope or even a pair of binoculars. A telescope with an aperture of 8″ or more will show more detail under dark skies.

This image consists of a little over 9 hours of exposure taken with a RC8 telescope at 1625mm, the ASI071MC Pro cooled astro camera, all riding on an EQ6r Pro German Equatorial Mount. Image acquisition was controlled by APT with long exposure guiding by PHD2. The image was processed manually in PIxinsight.

M81 is nicknamed “Bode’s Galaxy” after it was discovered by German astronomer Johann Elert Bode in 1774.

M 51 – Whirlpool Galaxy

M51, also known as Messier 51a or NGC 5194, is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici. It’s located 31 million light-years from Earth. M51’s arms are made of long lanes of stars, dust, and gas, and appear like a staircase. Sometimes the designation M51 is used to refer to the pair of galaxies, in which case the individual galaxies may be referred to as M51a (NGC 5194) and M51b (NGC 5195).

The Whirlpool Galaxy has two, very prominent spiral arms that wind clockwise. One arm deviates from a constant angle significantly. The pronounced spiral structure of the Whirlpool Galaxy is believed to be the result of the close interaction between it and its companion galaxy NGC 5195.

As a result of the Whirlpool Galaxy’s interaction with NGC 5195, a variety of tidal features have been created. The largest of these features is the so-called Northwest plume, which extends out to 43 kiloparsecs (140,000 light-years) from the galaxy’s center. This plume is uniform in color and likely originated from the Whirlpool Galaxy itself due to having diffuse gas. Adjacent to it are two other plumes that have a slightly bluer color, referred to as the Western plumes due to their location. These plumes are what I was trying to capture and highlight in my image. Very faint trailing dust.

NGC 5195 (also known as Messier 51b or M51b) is a dwarf galaxy that is interacting with the Whirlpool Galaxy (also known as M51a or NGC 5194). Both galaxies are located approximately 31 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici. Together, the two galaxies are one of the most widely studied interacting galaxy pairs.

A plate-solved and annotated version is available on my Astrobin page.

NGC 2170 – The Angel Nebula

NGC 2170, also known as the Angel Nebula

The Angel Nebula is a reflection nebula and stellar nursery in the Monoceros constellation. It is located about 2,400 light-years away at the edge of the star-forming molecular cloud Monoceros R2.

In this classic celestial still life created with a digital paintbrush the Angel Nebula shines near the image center. Reflecting the light of nearby hot stars, NGC 2170 is joined by other bluish reflection nebulae, a red emission region, many dark absorption nebulae, and a backdrop of colorful stars.

I’ve presented this in a portrait mode to highlight the angel appearance.

Sh2-232 “Great Pumpkin” of Auriga

Sh2-232, Sharpless 232, referred to as the Great Pumpkin Nebula.

Sh2-232 is a faint, small, and diffused nebula ball in the constellation Auriga. It is located in the pentagon of Auriga, about 3 degrees northeast of IC405.

Sh2-232 is the largest and faintest of a group of diffuse nebulae in Auriga. It is ionized by two giant stars, the O9.5 III HD 37737 and an anonymous B0 II class star.

A unique feature of this target is the Planetary Nebula found in the middle of those three central stars (blue dot) – it’s named PK173+03.1. LDN1525 also features prominently as a black vein. SH2-235 looks like a companion ball of gases.

The Little Pinwheel Galaxy

NGC 3180, also catalogued as NGC 3184, is a small, relatively faint face-on symmetrical spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major located just east of Tania Australis (μ-UMa), which is one of the hind paws of the Great Bear (using the convention of the Big Dipper’s handle as the tail). It is located about 40 million light years away, north of the celestial equator at a declination of +41 degrees. The faintness of the galaxy caused me to shoot 5 minutes exposures for four nights, collecting 17.75 hours of usable data. I was counting on the big variable star GP UMa shining brightly in my image. At mag 6.5 it is a bright, but manageable, yellow star.

NGC 3180 is sometimes referred to as the Little Pinwheel Galaxy. The Little Pinwheel has two prominent spiral arms that have constant pitch angles, which makes them both symmetrical. Being a face-on spiral galaxy with a diameter of about 119,000 light-years, which is roughly the same diameter as the Milky Way galaxy it somewhat resembles Messier 101, a closer and thus brighter galaxy of similar appearance. Some sources list NGC 3184 as the galaxy and refer to NGC 3180 and 3181 as HII regions of ionized hydrogen gas. Seems someone got their bits flipped somewhere, sometime. Stellarium lists it as NGC 3180, so I’ve gone with that. The catalogue in APT has the galaxy as NGC 3180 as well.

I used a GSO 8″ Ritchie-Creighton design f8 telescope at 1626mm and a ZWO ASI071MC Pro astrophotography camera riding a Sky Watcher EQ6r Pro German equatorial mount to photograph this galaxy. To overcome the faintness caused by distance, I used 213 300″ exposures captured used Astro Photography Tool (APT) and integrated them using PixInsight 1x Drizzle Integration.

Galaxies of Canes Venatici

NGC 4232

This image is taken from within the constellation Canes Venatici. My intention was to capture as many galaxies as I could within an image and have them resolvable at a focal length of 840mm.

NGC 4231 and NGC 4232 are the two galaxies at the center of this image. NGC 4232 is a Spiral Galaxy in the Canes Venatici constellation. NGC 4232 and NGC 4231 are situated north of the celestial equator and, as such, are more easily visible from the northern hemisphere. NGC 4231 is a Lenticular Galaxy.

NGC 4218 is an intermediate spiral galaxy between NGC 4232 and M 106. It is 57 million light-years from Earth.

The giant in the image is Messier 106. It is an intermediate spiral galaxy about 23 million light-years from earth. It is one of the largest and brightest nearby galaxies, similar in size and luminosity to the Andromeda Galaxy.

NGC 4217 is an edge-on spiral galaxy at the top of the image, which lies approximately 60 million light-years away. It is a possible companion galaxy to Messier 106. One supernova, SN 2022myz (type I, mag. 19), was discovered in NGC 4217 on 19 June 2022.

To the bottom left is the spiral galaxy, NGC 4220. Estimated at 63.8 million light-years away.

M 82 – The Cigar Galaxy

A bright Starburst galaxy located in the constellation Ursa Major, about 12 million light-years away. It’s also known as the Cigar Galaxy because of its elliptical shape.

M 82 is generally photographed with M 81, Bode’s Galaxy. I pointed the 8″ RC telescope at it to get as much detail as I could on just this galaxy.

M82 is a spiral galaxy that’s undergoing a starburst, a massive burst of star formation in its core. It has a gravitatioonal interaction with its nearby galaxy, M81, which causes it to have an extremely high rate of star formation.

M82 is a prototype starburst galaxy and the second-largest member of the M81 group. It’s bright at infrared wavelength and has over 30 billion stars.

M82 can be found in the northern skies in the direction of Ursa Major, also known as the Great Bear.

LDN 1622 – The Boogeyman Nebula

A molecular cloud within a hydrogen cloud

Astronomers like to name things, based upon resemblance if possible, to make them easier to remember. LDN 1622 is called the “Boogeyman Nebula”.

I chose to image it because of the dense dark molecular cloud structure against the hydrogen rich background. I chose the wider field of the SkyWatcher Esprit 120ED triplet refractor telescope to capture the space behind the huge Barnards Loop hydrogen cloud that is home for the Boogeyman. A cloud within a cloud within a cloud, if you will.

LDN 1622 is close to the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy, close to Barnard’s Loop, a large cloud surrounding the Belt and Sword of Orion. It is a fairly dim target, at 1,300 light-years away, requiring long exposure photography to illuminate its beauty. My image consists of 20.5 hours of exposure using an Antlia quadband light pollution filter with a ZWO 2600MC pro camera on a Skywatcher Eq6r Pro mount.

I hope you enjoy this unique image from the Orion Constellation.