Tagged: NGC - Adam Lundie - Eatons Hill Observatory

Almost everyone has a go at imaging the Trifid nebula, which is composed of 3 different type of nebulae; emission, reflection, and absorption. When I noticed some faint red glow in the background, I decided to try integrating some long hydrogen emission line frames to see if I could get any structure out of it. I'm quite happy with the resulting background structures!

Caldwell 101 is a spiral galaxy about 31 million light-years away, tilted towards our line of sight. It is thought to be one of the most Milky Way-like spiral galaxies in our immediate vicinity. It also has at least one distorted companion galaxy similar to the Magellanic Clouds.

The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy is a barred spiral galaxy approximately 15 million light-years away. It is one of the closest and brightest barred spiral galaxies in the sky.

The Sombrero Galaxy is an unbarred spiral galaxy 28 million light-years from Earth. The galaxy has a diameter of approximately 50,000 light-years, 30% the size of the Milky Way.

Shot over four consecutive nights, the Spanish Dancer is a spiral galaxy ~38 million light years distant in the southern sky.

I was playing around with my camera binning modes in preparation for a dark sky trip next weekend, and ended up with this. Even though it's just a test shot, I think it turned out pretty well. New lesson learned; don't overexpose the stars.

My original target was the Helix Nebula, but after spending most of Saturday night trying to work out how to use off axis guiding, I gave up and noticed Orion was rising. A nice bright target to use the drift aligned mount on.

Stars such as our Sun do not contain enough mass to finish their lives in the glorious explosions known as supernovae. However, they are still able to salute their imminent demise into dense, Earth-sized embers called white dwarfs by first expelling colourful shells of gas known as planetary nebulae.

NGC5710 is a rarely photographed spiral galaxy approximately 96 million light years distant. The core is comprised of old yellow stars, with young blue stars in its spiral arms, obscured by prominent dust lanes.

The Saturn Nebula is a tiny but complex planetary nebula, ~4000 light years away in Aquarius. The Saturn Nebula gets its name from its resemblance to the planet Saturn to the observer.

NGC 3717 is a large spiral galaxy 60 million light years from Earth. Although 100,000 light years across, seen side-on, the galactic disk appears thin with prominent dust lanes.

M68 is a globular cluster at a distance of about 33,000 light-years away from Earth.

The Fornax Cluster is a cluster of 58 galaxies centered around 62 million light years distant.

This southern sky barred spiral galaxy shines bright in the southern skies, from about 45 million light-years away.

Messier 15 is a very old and tightly packed home to over 100,000 stars. It is 33,600 light years from Earth, and is visible to the naked eye in areas with little light pollution.