Whale Galaxy
The Whale Galaxy (NGC 4631). It’s a spiral galaxy viewed edge on. The common names for deep sky objects are often fanciful, but doesn’t this really look like a humpback whale (with tiny baby galaxy swimming below it)?
[20″ CDK f/6.8 with FLI PL09000 camera @ Mt. Teide Observatory, Canary Islands, Spain]
The Snake Nebula. This one is interesting because it’s defined not by its brightness, but by its *darkness*. Western cultures tended to name only the bright things in the sky, but other cultures such as the Incas also named the dark regions in the sky. Positive space and Negative space. Both equally important.
The black is clouds of dust and gas blocking the light from the stars behind them. It may stay black for billions of years until a star comes nearby it; then it would glow pink and blue from reflected and emitted light.
The Incas believed the bright constellations represented animals, but inanimate ones; they believed the dark regions represented *living* animals.
[3″ APO refractor f/7 with ST-2000XM 2 megapixel camera @ Mt. Teide, Canary Islands, Spain]
My first comet shot!
[20″ CDK f/6.8 with FLI PL09000 camera @ Mt. Teide Observatory, Canary Islands, Spain]
1st Quarter Moon
Quick moon shot. Many people assumed I used a telescope for this; I didn’t. I just used a regular camera!
[Panasonic LUMIX DMC-FZ70]
Pinwheel Galaxy – M101
The Pinwheel Galaxy (M101 or NGC 5457) is a face-on spiral galaxy about 21 million light years away.
[Takahashi 150mm APO at f/7.3 with SBIG ST-8300C 8.3 megapixel color CCD @ New Mexico]
Whirlpool Galaxy M51
A better image of Whirlpool Galaxy (Messier 51, also known as NGC 5194). Ten 1 minute exposures stacked and summed. This is one of the prettiest galaxies out there; being seen face-on, the spiral arms are well defined and symmetrical. It’s also an interacting pair, with the main galaxy in the process of devouring the smaller one (known as M51B or NGC 5195). The little fuzzy blob on the left is another galaxy IC 4283.
[Takahashi 150mm APO at f/7.3 with SBIG ST-8300C 8.3 megapixel color CCD @ New Mexico]
Compare with previous image of M51 taken with a different scope.
Whirlpool Galaxy (Messier 51, also known as NGC 5194)
Quick & dirty image of Whirlpool Galaxy (Messier 51, also known as NGC 5194) in black & white. It deserves a better treatment; I plan to revisit M51 sometime later to do a better job.
[Takahashi Epsilon 250 Astrograph at f/3.4 with SBIG ST-10XME 3.2 megapixel CCD @ New Mexico]
IC 405 [Joint credit with Adam Block/Mt. Lemmon Skycenter, December 9, 2012]
IC 405 – also known as the “Flaming Star” nebula in the constellation Auriga.
What is a nebula?
A nebula is a giant cloud of dust and gas. IC 405 is an emission/reflection nebula which means the gaseous part (mostly hydrogen) is glowing due to being heated up by the nearby star (brightest star in the image) — this is the red part; and the bluish parts are the dust reflecting the starlight. It’s 1500 light years away and is 5 light years (about 30 trillion miles) in size.
There is an interesting fact about the star that’s lighting up the nebula. It wasn’t always there; it actually came from the region of Orion’s belt and was part of a binary star system there. Something happened to make the pair unstable and both stars shot off at high speed in opposite directions (and still going today). One of them happens to be passing through this nebula (which is why we can even see it) and the other is exactly the same distance away from Orion’s belt in the opposite direction.
Technical details: telescope: 32″ ritchey-chretien design at f/7; SBIG CCD camera at 4096×4096 pixel resolution; exposure was 8 sets of 15 minute exposures for each of the color channels R,G,B binned 1×1 giving a total of 6 hours of exposure time (object was bright enough that a separate Luminance channel was not necessary). Of the 8 sets, 3 had to be rejected due to poor seeing conditions (there was some high altitude turbulence in the atmosphere that night), so this image is not as perfectly sharp as it could be.
