Barnard 145 (HaRGB)

After months of galaxies with a few star clusters thrown in, it is nice to get some nebulae! Thesis Barnard 145, a dark nebula in Cygnus. A dark nebulae is region of space where dust blocks the light behind it making a dark spot in the sky. Normally we would do these as a purely…

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Abell 1367 (LRGB)

This is Abell 1367, another galaxy cluster. This is also informally known as the Leo Cluster since it’s in the constellation Leo. This cluster averages about 321 million light years away and along with the nearby Coma Cluster, is part of the Coma Supercluster (along with other clusters). This cluster is smaller than the Coma…

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SN2023ixf in Messier 101 (RGB)

On May 20th, a supernova was detected in M100 and on the night of the 21st it was clear in Virginia though wildfire smoke had a major negative effect on transparency. I didn’t think it would be a good night for trying to do detailed, faint imaging but when someone suggested the supernova I thought…

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Coma Cluster (RGB)

The Coma Cluster is a very large cluster of galaxies in Coma Bereneces. The center of the cluster contains two supergiant eliptical galaxies, NGC 4874 and NGC 4889 but the entire cluster consists of over 1,000 galaxies. The average distance of the galaxies in the cluster is 321 million light years though being a huge…

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Messier 5 (LRGB)

No, this isn’t a repeat of M92. We’ve shifted 87 down the Messier catalog to another globular, This time we’re in the constellation of Sepeens, near the celestial equator so much farther south than M92. This cluster is about 24,500 light years away ind is about ⅔ the diameter of the full moon. It is…

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Messier 92 (RGB)

This is the globular cluster in Hercules that isn’t M13. Actually to be fair, there are others but this is the only other globular in the Messier catalog that is in Hercules. This one gets a lot less attention from amateurs than its more famous cousin but it is still worth a peek. The cluster…

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Messier 99 (LRGB)

Messier 99 is a grand design spiral galaxy in Coma Berenices. Unlike our Milky Way, it does not have a bar structure across the center. It is about 45 million light years away and is part of the large Virgo Cluster of galaxies Its apparent size is fairly small, only around 5 arc minutes in…

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Antennae Galaxies (LRGB)

The Antennae Galaxies (NGC 4038 & 4039) are merging galaxies in Corvus. This is one of the places in the universe where you can see the steps in the gravitational dance all celestial bodies are performing. Granted we can only see this one step and it’s not likely we’ll see any visible change in our…

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Needle Galaxy (RGB)

The Needle Galaxy (NGC 4565) is an edge-on spiral galaxy in Coma Berenices. According to Wikipedia it is 30 to 50 million light years away The smaller galaxy to the upper left might be a satellite galaxy or just a more distant background galaxy. It isn’t obvious from the image and the reference material I…

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Aurora In Virginia on 23/24 April 2023

On the night of April 23rd, the northern hemisphere experienced an aurora that reached all the way down to at least Virginia. That doesn’t happen very often. I’ve been lucky enough to see them twice before (sadly it was cloudy for the one that happened just a couple of weeks ago). In both of those…

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Messier 37 (LRGB)

It’s hard to believe that this is the first image from the California telescope in four months. The weather there has been so bad that the team was beginning to wonder if we would ever get to image in 2023. However, we finally got a couple of good nights though they were, of course, near…

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NGC 188 (RGB)

NGC 188 is an open cluster in Cepheus. It is about 5,000 light years away and a bit further from the center of the galaxy than we are. It’s also above the disc of the galaxy. What makes NGC 188 unusual is that is an ancient cluster. It is 6.8 billion years old where most…

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