Six hours of NGC-772

I spent last night making adjustments to my guidance system, with the imaging session running late into the night. I ran out of good targets to image for the time available, and decided to go back to a galaxy I have imaged twice in the past. This makes at least 3 years worth of two hour images to stack of this particular galaxy. At this level of detail, you can plainly begin to see the halo of small galaxies surrounding the lopsided NGC-772. Also visible is the distorted spiral arm which has been torn apart by tidal forces.

I hope to get some color to add later.

First Image of the New Season

Here is NGC 6888, the Crescent Nebula, shot last night after I worked out the bugs from my new computer and software upgrade. It's not the greatest pic in the world, but far better than most of my other attempts at this elusive, wispy, nebula.

This nebula is a cloud of dust blown off by the star in the lower middle, called a Wolf-Rayet Star. These stars burn at a very high temperature, much higher than a regular star, and they blow off an unusual dusty shell.

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.

M101 - Distorted Spiral in Ursa Major

I shot this photo of Messier 101 last night using the big 9.25" scope. M101 is a large spiral, with a distorted arm. To the upper left, out of the frame, is a smaller galaxy that is more than likely the cause of this distortion. M101 can be seen with the naked eye on a good dark night. The photo came out pretty good even though a stiff breeze was blowing and bumping the camera all around. It was shot using my Canon 300D and a .63 focal reducer. 13 images of 8 minute duration median stacked.

M100 - Two Armed Spiral in Coma Cluster.

M100 is a spiral galaxy near Coma Berenices. It sits amongst a vast cloud of nearby galaxies, in a very rich section of the sky. It is considered a classic spiral, and has a very bright core. In a telescope, it almost looks like a star with a hazy patch around it. It known for producing at least two well known Supernovae over the last decade or so.

I took this with my Canon 300D DSLR using my big C9 and a .63 reducer. It is 7 eight minute images, more or less. The wind was giving me problems, so the stars are not perfect. I eventually gave up and went inside. Wind is awful to fight against - you can't win.

NGC 3627 - The Cheeseburger Galaxy

This galaxy is part of the "Leo Trio" of Spring galaxies situated in close proximity to one another. This is a close up with my Orion CCD, shot throught the C9.25 telescope. It is 6 ten minute images shot at F 6.3.

This galaxy is also known as the "Cheeseburger Galaxy" due to the slight resemblance. It is actually a spiral galaxy with a vast dusty halo seen edgewise.

M74 with the ST7 CCD

Here is spiral galaxy M74 with the ST7 ccd taken through the 6 inch SCT. It is a stack of 16 six minute images shot guided at F6.3.