Recent Shots of the Cosmos

I've  got a few projects that I am working on right now that I will eventually blog about, but they're not quite finished, so I thought I would just drop some of my recent astrophotos here instead.

Last weekend I was at Joshua Tree National Park for their Night Sky Festival. I was running a telescope for Unistellar and showing off the coolest astronomical objects of the night sky. I was also on a secret mission to show a few objects that were part of a theme that led up to a successful marriage proposal. The final object just before the question was popped was NGC 6781, the Little Ring Nebula:

The Little Ring Nebula is a planetary nebula which is a bubble of gas that is being given off by a dying star. It is located a few thousand light years from our Solar System in the constellation of Aquila, the Eagle.

Also, located in Aquila is the dark nebula known as Barnard 143, which, along with Barnard 142, makes up what is sometimes called Barnard's E. 

Like with the other dark nebulae I've blogged about it is a dense cloud of cosmic dust that is blocking the light of the stars behind it. 

Our Milky Way galaxy is dusty, which is typical of spiral galaxies. We can see these dust clouds in our own galaxy and we can see them in other galaxies too, such as this one:

NGC 891 is a spiral galaxy that we are seeing from the side, which make its dust lanes easy to spot. It is located nearly 30 million light years away in the direction of the constellation of Andromeda. 

Here's another galaxy located in Andromeda. It is both closer and smaller than NGC 891.

The really bright thing is a red giant star in our own galaxy known as Mirach (aka Beta Andromedae). It's about 200 light years from us. The galaxy in this image is the fuzzy smudge that is up and left from Mirach. It is cataloged as NGC 404 and often referred to as Mirach's Ghost, because it almost looks like a reflection of the brighter star. Mirach's Ghost is a dwarf galaxy that's around 3 times closer to us than NGC 891 is. 

That's all for now. I've got an elusive object to try to hunt down. 

Going Dark

It all began back in early June when I took a look at the globular star cluster known as Messier 9 in Ophiuchus. I didn’t realize it until I pointed my Unistellar eVscope there, but in the sky very near to M9 is a dark nebula, specifically the dark nebula known as Barnard 64 (The name comes from its entry into a catalog of dark nebulae compiled by Yerkes Observatory astronomer E.E. Barnard in 1919.).

Messier 9 (left) and Barnard 64 (upper right)

Sure, I realized that dark nebulae where out there. You can see them when you look at photos of the Triffid Nebula or the Lagoon Nebula (see my post on Messier Nebulae). The most famous dark nebula of them all is the Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33)—a dark cloud that is silhouetted against a faintly glowing red emission nebula near the Belt of Orion.

B33, the Horsehead Nebula in Orion

 But to me Barnard 64 is something different than those examples. It’s a dark cloud that is blotting out the light of stars behind it and not a dark cloud seen in front of a bright one. Seeing Barnard 64 started me on a journey to look for more dark nebulae, so I thought I would share a few of the dark things that I’ve recently been looking at.

Also in the constellation of Ophiuchus is Barnard 72, commonly known as The Snake.

The photo above is a mosaic of images that I made with my Unistellar eVscope of The Snake (the big "S"), but also visible in the image are other dark nebulae. To the right of The Snake is Barnard 68 and below that is Barnard 69.

There are plenty of dark nebulae in other constellations too. The center of our Milky Way Galaxy lies in the direction of the constellation of Sagittarius where more members of Barnard's catalog can be found. 

The image above shows dark nebula Barnard 86 next to a small, brilliant open star cluster (NGC 6520). They make a striking contrast. That's a red giant star visible on the upper edge of the nebula. 

Finally, (for now) let me show you three more dark nebulae in Sagittarius.

There's a lot in this image. I made it by taking 11 different exposures to produce this mosaic that covers about 1.3 degrees x 0.9 degrees. 

The amazingly dense field of stars seen here on the left half of the image forms Messier 24, the Sagittarius "Star Cloud."  

In the lower left you'll notice a trio of bright stars. The topmost of those is a red giant star. To the right of the red giant is a hot blue star that is vastly more luminous than our Sun. Above the red giant is the open star cluster known as NGC 6603. Near the center there's another little cluster of stars known as Collinder 469. To the right of Collinder 469 is the dark nebula known as Barnard 92. Up and left from Barnard 92 is the somewhat squid-shaped Barnard 93. In the upper left of the image is the smaller Barnard 307. Barnard 307 is one of the many dark nebulae in Barnard's catalog that were added to an expanded version to the catalog that was published in 1927, several years after his death. 

I've got more dark nebulae on my list. Hopefully in the not too distant future I'll post images of some of them here.