Lower’s nebula (Sh2-261) is found on the outermost edge of our Milky Way between the Orion and Perseus arm. Sh2-261 is a large faint region of predominantly ionized hydrogen. The nebula is named after Harold and Charles Lower who discovered this nebula in 1939.
I took 300 4 minute exposures over the course of 5 nights in October 2024. I used APT, Astro Photography Tool, from my driveway here in the hills of western North Carolina.
As a predominantly ionized hydrogen (Hii) gas cloud, Lower’s Nebula takes on a distinct reddish hue in long exposure astrophotography. I applied an HOO color map to the final image to help highlight structures and dark nebula within.
The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula in the constellation Cepheus is a popular object for Astro photographers. It is ideal for imaging during late summer and early fall. The trunk itself is a dark, dense, and elongated globule cloud. It consists of interstellar gas and dust within the much larger ionized gas region IC 1396.
This globule is commonly called the Elephant’s Trunk nebula. The name comes from its appearance at visible light wavelengths. It is the dark, dense globule IC 1396A. This globule features a dark patch with a bright, sinuous rim. The bright rim is the surface of the dense cloud. A very bright, massive star (HD 206267) just to the east of IC 1396A illuminates and ionizes it.
The massive blue star is in the center of the image. This star ionizes the entire IC 1396 region. Dense globules can protect themselves from the star’s harsh ultraviolet rays.
I chose to photograph this with the Skywatcher Esprit 120 telescope. I used an ASI2600MC Pro Astro camera. Additionally, I used a Radian Ultra Quad-band Narrow band filter. My session management software is APT 4.56. Running on a mini-pc mounted on the telescope it controls everything, coordinating the activities of several pieces of technology. This photograph contains 248 subs for a total exposure of 13.88 hours. Two entire nights, Sept 8 & 9, 2024.
I’m presenting the image in two color palettes. The first is its natural color, with no color mapping applied. IC 1396 is a large cloud of faintly glowing gas, composed mainly of hydrogen which appears very red in long exposure photography. The second palette is known as the Hubble palette, HOO. In this the Ha and Oiii channels are blended to achieve a more pleasing optical presentation of the image. Very common approach.
I used the star cluster as the central focus for this image. 112 3 minute exposures with an 840mm Skywatcher Esprit 120ED refractor telescope paired with a ZWO ASI2600MC astro camera.
NGC6530 is a young, open cluster of stars. It is in the southern constellation of Sagittarius. It is located some 4,300 light years from the Sun. The cluster exists within the H II region known as the Lagoon Nebula, or Messier 8. More than two dozen stars are visible.
Like many nebulae, M8 appears reddish in time-exposure color photos. However, it looks gray to the eye peering through binoculars or a telescope. This is because human vision has poor color sensitivity at low light levels.
The nebula contains a number of Bok globules. These are dark, collapsing clouds of protostellar material. The most prominent globules have been catalogued. The platesolved and annotated version in this astrobin link shows everything within the frame. https://astrob.in/y6m8f5/0/
The Lagoon Nebula also contains at its centre a structure known as the Hourglass Nebula.
Caldwell 3 is located just north of the Big Dipper. It is one of at least 34 gravitationally bound galaxies in the Ursa Major galaxy group. This barred spiral galaxy, also known as NGC 4236, sits 11.7 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Draco and has an apparent magnitude of 9.6. Although faint, Caldwell 3 can be spotted using a small telescope from a dark-sky site. The best views are seen through large telescopes. They show the galaxy as a large, diffuse glow that’s brighter toward the center. It appears highest during the spring in the Northern Hemisphere.
As far as galaxies go, this is by far the faintest I have tried to image. This image consists of 115 5 minute subframes, for a total of 9.5 hours of exposure. Colorful dust lanes did appear. Imaged the evenings of May 12th, 27th and 28th, 2024.
In the foothills of North Carolina, our dark skies began to brighten a little after 9pm. It was a night with little to no moon. I was also beginning to image galaxy NGC 4725 with my RC8. I noticed that my third image had a weird gradient. The next image had a red hue.
I went outside and realized what was happening. I grabbed my DSLR and a tripod. I took a few photos over the course of the next 45 minutes.
They had forecast a slight possibility that we could see this around midnight if we had a view to our north. No one forecast what we saw. It was awesome – at 35 degrees latitude!
These images were taken with my canon 1Ds Mark III and a 28mm lens on a tripod. 3″ timer delay, 4″ exposures.
It’s funny because my astro imaging continued – guiding wasn’t the best but it did continue. The red gradient looked a lot like the sky glow during a full moon
A barred spiral galaxy located in the constellation Coma Berenices, about 40 million light-years away. It is an intermediate galaxy. It has a prominent ring structure. It is roughly the size of the Milky Way at over 100,000 light-years across. NGC 4725 is unique in that it only has one spiral arm, while most spiral galaxies have two or more. The galaxy’s center has a bar of stars. It is surrounded by a ring of stars. Astronomers call this formation a ringed barred spiral galaxy.
In this sharp color composite image, the solo spira mirabilis seems to wind from a prominent ring of bluish, newborn star clusters. It appears to originate from a distinct ring. The ring consists of bluish, newborn star clusters. It also appears to wind from red tinted star forming regions. The odd galaxy also sports obscuring dust lanes a yellowish central bar structure composed of an older population of stars. Also included in the frame is NGC 4712. It sports a noticeably more traditional spiral galaxy look. NGC 4712 is a more distant background galaxy.
Imaged 5/1, 5/10 and 5/11. The night of 5/10 was our Aurora Borealis event. Imaged from 21:30 to 02:00 each of these evenings. 136 4 minute subs were included, or 9 hours of exposure. Gear includes an f8 GSO RC8 telescope at 1625mm, an ASI071MC astro camera cooled to 15f, and an EQ6r Pro mount.
I continue my efforts in imaging reflection nebula from the vdB catalog. IC 4601, or vdB 103, is a bluish reflection nebula. It is located in the constellation Scorpius, about 420 light-years away from Earth.
It’s part of a larger area called the Blue Horsehead. Reflection nebulae are clouds of gas and dust. They shine by reflecting light from nearby stars. They do not create their own light. vdB 103’s blue color comes from the blue light reflected by the nebula’s gas and dust. This light is from two bright blue giant stars on the right. A double star on the left also contributes. The nebula’s brightness depends on the density and size of the reflecting grains. It also depends on the color and brightness of nearby stars.
Another of the globular cluster targets on my list, M12 is bright and colorful. This image consists of 137 60 second subs taken with a GSO RC8 and a ZWO ASI071MC Pro camera cooled to 15f, riding an EQ6r Pro munt. Certainly a challenging night for imaging as we experienced a very rare Aurora this night here in the hills of NC. Seeing and transparency were poor and the wind was present so guiding was not the best. Still, I’m happy with it!
Messier 12 (M12), also known as the Gumball Cluster, is a globular cluster of stars in the constellation Ophiuchus. It’s located about 15,700–23,000 light-years from Earth and has a diameter of 75 light-years. M12 is one of the brightest of the seven Messier globulars in Ophiuchus, and it’s approaching our solar system at a speed of 16 kilometers per second.
M12 has fewer low-mass stars than expected, and astronomers believe that gravity has stripped many of them from the cluster as it passed through denser areas of the Milky Way. It’s thought that M12 may have lost up to one million stars in this way.
M101 – The Pinwheel Galaxy – is a face-on spiral galaxy 21 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major (Big Dipper). Located just west of the last star in the handle.
M101 is a large galaxy containing approx 1 trillion stars, with a diameter of 170,000 light-years. By comparison, the Milky Way has a diameter of between 100,000 and 120,000 light-years.
M101 has a high population of H II regions, many of which are very large and bright. H II regions usually accompany the enormous clouds of high density molecular hydrogen gas contracting under their own gravitational force where stars form. H II regions are ionized by large numbers of extremely bright and hot young stars; those in M101 are capable of creating hot superbubbles. In a 1990 study, 1,264 H II regions were cataloged in the galaxy. Three are prominent enough to receive New General Catalogue numbers—NGC 5461, NGC 5462, and NGC 5471.
There are at least 4 different galaxies resolved within this image. M101 is the largest and closest. NGC5474 is at the lower left. NGC5477 is above the bottom arm of M101 and appears equally distant between the two yellow stars. NGC5473 is at the far left of the image in the middle.
Image acquisition via APT using a SW Esprit120ED, ASI2600MC Pro, OPT L-Pro filter, & EQ6r Pro mount from my backyard in the hills of western NC.
The focus of this image are NGC 4567 and NGC 4568, a pair of unbarred spiral galaxies in the constellation Virgo, about 60 million light-years away. They are known as “The Siamese Twins” or “The Butterfly Galaxies”.
While there are four galaxies in this photo, the focus of this image are NGC 4567 and NGC 4568, a pair of unbarred spiral galaxies in the constellation Virgo, about 60 million light-years away. They are known as “The Siamese Twins” or “The Butterfly Galaxies”. Both galaxies have small bright nuclei, many knotty arms, and arm segments, and a hint of an inner ring.
I find these “interacting” galaxies to be most interesting. They both have nearly the same red shift so they may well be very close or in actual contact. However, other than a dim general x-ray glow involving both galaxies there is no indication of interaction. Neither galaxy is distorted nor are there any tidal tails. NGC4568 has hosted two recent supernova, 1990B and 2004cc.
NGC 4564, the galaxy to the right, is an elliptical galaxy in the Virgo constellation, about 57 million light-years away.
This image was taken from my driveway in the hills of western North Carolina over two nights in April 2024 and consists of 209 3 minute subs from an RC8 scope at 1627mm. An ASI071MC camera cooled to 20f using an ANTLIA quad-band light pollution filter riding an EQ6r Pro mount collected the photons. Image acquisition was done using APT and processed manually using PixInsight.
