Summer's Greatest Hits

Well, it's Labor Day. Summer is officially over and the fall semester has begun. I got in a lot of telescope time over the summer, so I thought I would post a few of my favorite images taken during my break.

Comet 3I/ATLAS, the third ever interstellar object known to pass through our Solar System was discovered in early July. It is faint, but the Unistellar / SETI Institute citizen science program was interested in seeing if people could detect it with their telescopes. 

 

The image above shows 3I/ATLAS (circled). The individual frames were aligned on the comet, which means that the stars in the image appear as streaks. At that time the comet was about 17th magnitude, (translation: very faint!) but detectable. I am happy to be contributing to the science being collected on this mysterious visitor which, despite some claims, is indeed just a comet.

Of course, I continue to image some celestial objects just because they look pretty. Probably my favorite of the summer was this beautiful mix of stars, gas and dust known as the Elephant Trunk Nebula. 

It is located some 2,400 light years away in the direction of the constellation of Cepheus, the King. Like many nebulae, it is a region of space where new stars are forming. This was a 2-hour exposure taken with my Celestron Origin telescope. I honestly never imagined that I would someday be able to take images like this one and the others below, but I am happy to be living in the age of the smart telescope.

Much farther afield is the spiral galaxy known as Messier 33.

This is a 2-hour exposure of M33 which, at a distance of 2.7 million light years, is the second closest spiral galaxy to our Milky Way Galaxy. It is a galaxy that always challenged me when I tried to see it visually with a traditional telescope, so being able to capture it this way is wonderful.

Earlier in the summer I posted images of other nebulae, one of which was the fabulous Lagoon Nebula in Sagittarius. After further review, I thought that maybe the image I posted there, which was a 1-hour exposure, was perhaps overexposed. So, I decided to try something much shorter and I am even happier with the result. 

This image was just a 2-minute exposure! Even with this short exposure the nebula still reveals brilliant color, dark globules of dust and the young star cluster that has formed from the nebula.  

Just last night I pointed my Origin telescope at NGC 6729, a target that was new to me. It is located so far south that it never gets even 20-degrees above my horizon. Still, I managed to get a 70-minute exposure and am happy with how it came out. 

What you are seeing here are some stars that are embedded within opaque clouds of gas and just. A pair of bright, young stars are shining forth just above center while other fainter ones struggle to be seen at all. The nebula very much reminds me of the much more famous Messier 78.

At practically the other end of the sky is the more famous Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635):

The bubble at the center of the image is not a thin film of soapy water but rather of gas that has been blown off a massive supergiant star located thousands of light years away in the direction of the constellation of Cassiopeia, the Queen. Some day this star will explode forming a supernova.

Ten to twenty thousand of years ago there was a supernova explosion in the constellation of Cygnus, the Swan. It produced the Veil Nebula (a part of which is in my nebula post linked above), which is just a piece of the much larger supernova remnant known as the Cygnus Loop. 

The Cygnus Loop is about five full moons across, which means it is much, much larger than the field of view in my Origin telescope. Yet, I decided I wanted to capture it all. To do so I had to make a mosaic of 15 images. Here it is:

To me, it resembles a bubble that has just burst, but it is an expanding cloud of 'star guts' from the supernova explosion. 

I mentioned the size of the nebula above, but wanted to illustrate that with a correctly scaled image of the full Moon, so here it is: 

These were just a few of the many objects observed this summer. There's a whole lot of sky still to observe and I'll be back later with more.

The Age of Origin - Star Clusters

After taking a look at galaxies and then nebulae, it is time now to see some of the star clusters that I have photographed in the last few months with my Celestron Origin telescope.

I'll start off with the closest of the bunch, the wonderful Pleiades (also known as The Seven Sisters and Messier 45):

At at distance of just over 400 light years, the Pleiades is the second closest star cluster to Earth. It is easily seen in the night sky and is a part of many sky myths from across the globe. The cluster looks good the the unaided eye, as well as through binoculars and telescopes. 

It is an open star cluster. Open clusters typically have a few hundred to a few thousand stars. 

In addition to the many stars seen here, there is also a prominent reflection nebula--essentially dust that is illuminated by the light of the stars in the cluster. When I was a kid it was widely thought that the dust was left over from the formation of the cluster, but now we know that it is unrelated to it.

The cluster's apparent diameter is too large for me to capture all of it in a single image, so I will return to build a mosaic hopefully later this year. 

The open star cluster known as Messier 46 is ten times farther away than the Pleiades:

This cluster also features an added treat. Just on the left edge of the cluster is a small planetary nebula. Like the dust in the Pleiades it is unrelated to the cluster itself, but makes for an added bonus when observing in this part of the sky.

Further out is the famous Double Cluster in Perseus:

The two clusters are NGC 866 (at top) and NGC 884 (lower middle) lie some 7,500 light years from Earth.

At a distance of just 6,000 light years, Messier 4 in Scorpius is clearly an all together different type of star cluster:

It is a globular star cluster. These clusters contain hundreds of thousands of stars. Many of these clusters are the remnant cores of small galaxies that have been/are being consumed by our Milky Way galaxy. 

Messier 4 can be easily seen with binoculars just west of the red supergiant star Antares, in the heart of Scorpius.

Further out lies Messier 13, the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules:

Messier 13 is about 22,000 light years from Earth. M13 is the finest globular star cluster in the northern sky. The Southern Hemisphere has some finer ones, but they are too far south for me to be able to photograph them.

Also in this image (near the lower left) is NGC 6207, a spiral galaxy located some 30 million light years from our Milky Way galaxy. 

Finally, here's another globular star cluster, though it is so far away it hardly even looks like one.

 NGC 2419 is sometimes called the Intergalactic Wanderer, though it does indeed orbit the center of the Milky Way galaxy. It is located 275,000 light years from Earth. That puts is 12.5 times farther away than M13!

It has been unusually cloudy of late, but I will be posting more astrophotos in the near future. 

The Age of Origin - Nebulae

Here's the second of my three initial posts looking at some of my astrophotograpy from the Celestron Origin smart telescope. Today, its nebulae. Star clusters will be next.

Let's start off with a popular target from the Northern Hemisphere's winter skies: the Horsehead Nebula. 

That's the Horsehead Nebula, also known as Barnard 33, at center. It's a dark cloud that's in front of a red cloud of hydrogen gas that lies some 1,300 light years from Earth. To the left of it is a blue-white reflection nebula known as NGC 2023. In the upper left is the Flame Nebula (NGC 2024) and immediately to the right of that is the star known as Alnitak. Alnitak is the left-most star of Orion's Belt.  

Almost three degrees to the east of the Horsehead is Messier 78, an amazing complex of both dark and reflection nebulae located at about the same distance from Earth as the Horsehead Nebula.

M78 is at center and NGC 2071 to the left, but clearly they are part of the same region of space. Both have stars embedded within clouds of gas and dust.

The Rosette Nebula in Monoceros is much larger than the Origin's field of view but I shot a series of overlapping images to create this mosaic. 

This is a region of star formation that has an open star cluster (NGC 2244) at center that's surrounded by a ring of glowing hydrogen gas that's leftover from its formation.

No visit to the winter skies would be complete without a look at Messier 42, the Great Nebula in Orion. 

M42 is almost too bright, but I think that this image captures it nicely. You can see clouds of dark nebulae, blue reflection nebulae and red hydrogen gas. 

Planetary nebulae are created when a Sun-like star that has evolved into a red giant sheds its outer layers into space. 

Messier 27, the Apple Core Nebula is one of the brighter planetary nebulae:

It's located about 1,200 light years from Earth in the direction of the constellation of Vulpecula, the Fox. 

Unlike any of the previous images in this post, this image was taken using the nebula filter that Celestron sells to go along with the Origin. The remaining images here also make use of the nebula filter, including the Helix Nebula below:

The Helix another planetary nebula and is about half as far away as M27, which is why it is larger in the sky. 

Great targets for summer evenings include Messier 16, the famous Eagle Nebula:

At the center of the Eagle nebula lies the famous "Pillars of Creation" that has been photographed by both the Hubble and Webb Space Telescopes. The pillar-shaped dark features at center within this nebula are a part of this nebula which is creating a new cluster of stars.

At the end of their lives massive stars explode as creating supernovae. A supernova is an expanding cloud of star guts. The Veil Nebula is a part of the Cygnus Loop supernova remnant. The western part of the Veil shown here is also sometimes called the Witch's Broom Nebula:

The supernova that created the Veil Nebula exploded between ten and twenty thousand years ago.

A star that has not yet exploded, but someday will, is Wolf-Rayet 136, a massive star that has shed some of its gas creating what is known as the Crescent Nebula (NGC 6888):

That's WR 136 at center. It lies some 5,000 light years from Earth and when it explodes it will be bright enough to be seen in the daytime. Alas, we don't expect this to happen anytime soon.

Finally, here's perhaps my favorite nebula, Messier 8, the Lagoon Nebula in Sagittarius:

Like M42 above, if you are observing in an area free from light pollution the Lagoon Nebula is just visible to the eye. Through a telescope its a grayish cloud associated with an open star cluster. 

There's a famous image of the Lagoon Nebula that was one of the first color images of space. It taken before I was born with the 200-inch Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory. You can see it on my old Palomar Skies blog from when I worked at the observatory.
 

The Age of Origin - Galaxies

It's no secret that I am a big fan of smart telescopes, so I was quite interested when Celestron introduced their new Origin smart telescope last year. I was able to get one in November and I thought I would use this post to show off some of the images that I have taken with it. This post will focus just on images of galaxies.

Most of the images here are less than an hour of observing time and have minimal post processing by me, showing off how impressive the Origin is at capturing the cosmos. 

One of my first targets was Messier 31, the Andromeda Galaxy. 

Two of its satellite galaxies are visible. M32 on the right and M110 in the upper left. 

The Origin has a wider field of view than the Unistellar telescopes that I have been using, but its not big enough to catch all of M31. Later this year I'll try a mosaic to try to capture the full view.

Also located within the constellation of Andromeda is the edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 891. At a distance of 32 million light years its 14.5 times farther away than M31, so it looks somewhat lonely in space.

NGC 891 has a nice dust lane that cuts across it and may be somewhat similar to our own Milky Way galaxy.

NGC 253, the Sculptor Galaxy, is located 12 million light years away and is a nice target:

Located at about the same distance, but in different part of the sky is a great pair of galaxies Messier 82 and Messier 81 in Ursa Major.

That's M82 on the left. M82 is classified as a "starburst" galaxy due to a period of rapid star formation, which is likely the result gravitational interactions with M81 at right.

Two galaxies at once is nice, but how about three?

 Here are the three galaxies of the Leo Triplet.

That's NGC 3628 (the Hamburger Galaxy) at left, Messier 66 in the lower right and Messier 65 is above that. At a distance of 42 million light years M65 is the furthest of the three, while NGC 3628 is the closest with a distance of "only" 35 million light years.

Looking further out into space and you can take in many galaxies at once. Here's a portion of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies known as Markarian's Chain.

The view is dominated by two giant elliptical galaxies: Messier 84 near the top right and Messier 86 near the center. Respectively they are 66 and 57 million light years away. Numerous other galaxies of the Virgo Cluster can be seen as well.

I have yet to shoot even more distant galaxy clusters, so I'll end with two galaxies that just look good.

 

That's Messier 51, the Whirlpool Galaxy, at right. Its spiral arms spin out to the left to a smaller galaxy, NGC 5195. The two galaxies are interacting and located some 28 and 25 million light years away respectively. M51 was the first galaxy discovered to have a spiral shape is a beautiful target.

My next post will show off some of the nebulae I have photographed using the Celestron Origin.