M82 - The Exploding Galaxy?

This is a pretty commonly imaged galaxy. It is also somewhat of a mystery. Nobody quite knows exactly what is happening with this galaxy. It emits massive amounts of radiation and energy, and for many years Astronomers thought it was "exploding" through some largely unknown process. Now that we can see it better with more advanced telescopes and imaging systems, the mystery only deepens. Visibly, it appears to be a very distorted spiral, seen edge-wise, but the center is almost obscured by vast clouds of Hydrogen gas that appear to be streaming out of it. On closer inspection (like, with the Hubble), it becomes debatable whether these clouds are in fact coming from the galaxy, and are simply situated in between us and M82. The fact remains that this galaxy is highly distorted by it's larger neighbor, Messier 81, and whatever is taking place is more than likely because of this distortion.

This galaxy has another close cousin, NGC 1275, which appears to be doing almost the very same thing, but is located in another region of the sky - however, it has no larger neighbor to distort it.

Image taken with my Canon DSLR using a Celestron 9.25" schmidt-cassegrain telescope at F6.3.
Eight 11 minute sub-exposures.

Arp 94 - Intergalactic Hunger Pangs or Something Else Entirely...

These two galaxies, NGC 3226 and 3227, are cataloged together as Arp 94. They are interacting, and one appears to be devouring the other. Halton Arp included this pair in his Catalogue of Peculiar Galaxies, due to this interaction. This catalog is a running record of all major galaxies known to be unusual, odd, or breaking the rules in some way. As always, there is controversy attached to it, as is typical of most things stemming from Mr. Arp.

The larger spiral galaxy is known to harbor an active nucleus, thought to be a Black Hole by most scientists. Most agree the larger spiral is slowly consuming it's smaller dwarf neighbor, the elliptical (round) galaxy. Mr. Arp has pointed out that this combination of Spiral Galaxy with an active nucleus paired with a smaller Dwarf Elliptical occurs very frequently in his catalog. He feels something else is taking place other than one galaxy consuming the other, in most of these cases.

While Mr. Arp is considered somewhat of a crank amongst his peers, he is a very astute observer. Maybe there is more to the story than we can really see, then again maybe not.

NGC 936 - A source of some controversy...

OK, here is an interesting one, at least in an astrophysics sense. NGC 936, the big ugly blob with a bar through it, is a very unusual spiral galaxy with an active radio source in it's nucleus. It is surrounded by no less than four Quasars, and a whole host of smaller objects. The controversy lies in the fact that according to the standard model of astrophysics, these objects should not be influencing each other. Quasars should be well in the very distant reaches of deep space, out near the big bang someplace.

As the notorious Halton Arp points out this galaxy appears to have EJECTED a quasar, and it shows physical signs of still being connected. Supporters of the Plasma Universe theory, and others like it use this galaxy as a test case. It is all very odd, and points to the fact that one or all of these theories is not correct, and the universe still is not truly understood by man.

Note: I do not really subscribe to any one theory over the others, as I am not a Cosmologist, but I do love controversy. Nothing like a good fight to stir things up. That and the fact that this galaxy is basically an ugly blob no matter how you take it's picture, so it needs an interesting back-story.

Stephan's Quintet

Here is another C9.25 image shot under VERY windy conditions. I am shocked it actually came out. The seeing conditions were also atrocious, with the stars furiously twinkling.

This is a stack of 6 ten minute images shot with the old Orion Starshoot at F6.3

This is a colliding galaxy cluster, with a slightly controversial nature. All of the galaxies have a similar red-shift except for one. This one seems to be interacting with the others, and seems to be part of the same group, but the red-shift says it is not. The astronomy world is divided as to whether this disproves the use of red shifts as a measure for distance. This cluster is also near to NGC 7331, and it shows signs of being connected to this group as well. This group also has a different red-shift, however.