I call this picture The Giant Space Comma. It’s generally called the Eastern Veil Nebula and cataloged as Caldwell 33. It is one side of a supernova remnant called the Cygnus Loop. The supernova occurred 10,000 – 20,000 years ago, and our distant ancestors would have been able to see it in the daytime. It is 2400 light years away from us, and the whole loop has a radius of 65 light years and is expanding.
Part of the nebula looks like a cow’s head to me. Can you see it? I call it the Space Cow.
The images above show what happened as I added data to the image. The first one is my favorite version, with 3 nights and 12.1 hours of data, followed by the results from 1 night and 3.2 hours of data, the results from 2 nights and 7.45 hours of data, and 4 nights and 16.1 hours of data. Which do you like best?
I think of all the astroimages I have made so far, this one is the most amazing.
I’m looking forward to finding more cool things in the sky!
Camera geek info:
Canon EOS 60D in manual mode, 1 minute exposure, ISO 800
This is a portion of IC1318 the Gamma Cygni Nebula nicknamed the Butterfly Nebula. It’s in the constellation Cygnus beyond the star Gamma Cygni from which it gets its name. IC1318 is an emission nebula and consists of three bright areas labeled A, B, and C – the butterfly is formed by B and C (A is not in this picture). It is 3700 light years away from us and has apparent dimensions of 50 (B) and 40 (C) arcmin.
In the lower right corner of the picture is NGC6910, a cluster of stars made in this nebula. The cluster is 13 million years old.
This is 13.7 hours of data take over three nights.
As you may note from my run numbers starting at 3, my first two runs did not align well with the rest or with the nebula, so I ended up not using them. This is a tricky bit about imaging objects that are large compared to the total imaging area – the orientation of the camera and how well the imaging runs align with one another makes a difference.
For this particular image, I tried processing the nebula and stars separately, but I was not happy with the results, so I ended up processing them together.
I think the Butterfly Nebula really looks like a butterfly. How about you? But I also think I see … a dark chicken? What do you think?
Camera geek info:
Canon EOS 60D in manual mode, 1 minute exposure, ISO 800
I call this image “Rising Phoenix, Curious Robin.” The bright nebula to the right of the image looks to me like a phoenix opening up its wings to take flight. The bright red nebula to the left looks to me like a red bird flying over to see what’s up.
These two nebulae are parts of the larger NGC 7000/C20 North America Nebula in the constellation Cygnus. Generally, it’s shown rotated clockwise from this image, with the dark nebula on the top of this image forming the Gulf of Mexico. The nebula I see as a phoenix is also called the Cygnus Wall.
Here is another view, rotated to look more like North America.
Nebulae, like clouds, are a great place to let your imagination run free. What do you see in this image?
The North America Nebula is an emission nebula of ionized hydrogen gas where star formation is taking place. It is lit up by a hot star that is hidden by the dark nebula next to it. It is 2590 light years away from us, and it has apparent dimensions of 2.5 degrees by 3.3 degrees.
Its large size makes it a fitting subject for my small telescope with its relatively wide field of view. But it’s quite dim and I can’t see it at all in a single frame. I made an early attempt to image it on a trip to the fabulous Bortle 2-3 dark skies of Dell City, Texas about two years ago, but I hadn’t realized then the huge effect of image processing stacks of images. Even after learning that lesson, it is still a leap of faith to collect hours of images when you can’t see the real subject you’re trying to capture! It’s also a challenge to keep the framing consistent so that everything overlays and can stack up. I used the asterism of the upside-down “T” shape in the upper left corner and the bright star ksi Cygnus (cropped out of the first image, visible in the second) to make sure I stayed in alignment.
I collected the data for this image from my driveway in Friendswood, Texas, under Bortle 7-8 skies. In order to separate the signal (the nebula) from the noise (our light pollution), I ended up taking data over eight nights, then had to throw out the data from one night (the first one) because it didn’t overlay well with the rest. And I had to throw out other data because I had a dust spot move between the data and the calibration frames on one night, and I had to throw out more data on another night because I hadn’t set up my tracking mount well enough so it drifted. But I ended up using a whopping 27.8 hours of data to make this one image.
We’ve been under a high pressure heat dome here in Texas for over a month, which means it’s been meltingly hot and lawn-destroyingly dry, but the silver lining is I’ve gotten to enjoy a lot of cloud-free telescope nights. Even in the middle of the night, though, it has been hot – around 80 deg F – which means I sweat setting up/adjusting/checking on the telescope. And it’s the Gulf Coast, which means it’s still muggy and I have to put a heater on the telescope so dew doesn’t collect. How crazy is that?
Camera geek info:
Canon EOS 60D in manual mode, 1 minute exposure, ISO 800
This is M16 the Eagle Nebula from the constellation Serpens. It’s the home of the famous “Pillars of Creation” picture from the Hubble Space Telescope. If you zoom in … you can see the Pillars of Creation in this image. Pretty cool I could capture it with my small telescope with a little over 5 hours of data. Pretty amazing to think that these star forming regions are all around us … our galaxy is still under construction! And so, so beautiful.
M16 is an emission nebula of ionized hydrogen gas where star formation is taking place. It is 5700 light years away from us, has apparent dimensions of 70 x 50 arcmin, and has an apparent magnitude of 6.4. It’s a great target for a small telescope!
Camera geek info:
Canon EOS 60D in manual mode, 2 minute exposure, ISO 2000, custom white balance 3500K
Williams Optics Zenith Star 73 III APO telescope
Williams Optics Flat 73A
iOptron CEM40
Dell City, Texas Bortle 2-3 dark skies
Frames:
June 11, 2023
Run 1
6 2 minute lights
31 0.02 second flats
30 0.02 second flat darks
31 2 minute darks
June 11, 2023
Run 2
88 2 minute lights
30 0.02 second flats
31 0.02 second flat darks
Run 3
83 2 minute lights
31 0.02 second flats
30 0.02 second flat darks
31 2 minute darks
17 frames rejected for a total of 5 hours and 20 minutes of data
Red and blue in the sky seems right for the 4th of July!
This is another image from the fabulous dark skies of Dell City, Texas. This is two nebulae – M8 Lagoon and M20 Trifid – from the constellation Sagittarius. M8 is an emission nebula of ionized hydrogen gas where star formation is taking place. It is 5200 light years away from us, has apparent dimensions of 90 x 40 arcmin, and has an apparent magnitude of 4.6. M20 is a combination of three types of nebulas: the red side is an emission nebula of ionized hydrogen gas where star formation is taking place, the blue side is a reflection nebula of a cloud of dust reflecting light from a nearby star, and the black lines are a dark nebula of an interstellar cloud dense enough to block the light from behind it. It is 4100 light years away from us, has an apparent dimension of 28 arcmin, and an apparent magnitude of 6.3.
Although they’re in the same direction from us, imagine living at the midpoint between them! They’d be much larger and brighter since they’d only be 550 light years away, but they’d be in opposite directions in the sky.
Given their size, brightness, and proximity to one another, this pair is a great target for a small telescope.
This image was generated from about 3.8 hours of data.
On my first round of processing, I messed up the color processing and switched colors, making everything look purple instead of red and blue. An interesting effect, even if “wrong”. Isn’t the universe beautiful?
Happy 4th of July!
Camera geek info:
Canon EOS 60D in manual mode, 2 minute exposure, ISO 2000, custom white balance 3500K
NGC 2359, also called Thor’s Helmet, is an emission nebula that is 15,000 light years away. It is a bubble of ionized gas around a hot central star, Wolf-Rayet WR7. It is 16 x 8 arc min in size, and I was pleasantly surprised that I could capture it with my small telescope. These pictures were made by stacking 64 3 minute images (and cropping).
I’ve been learning PixInsight, and I had some fun with playing with CurvesTransformation on this one. So, in addition to a standard view of the nebula, I created one I call “Thor in a Snowstorm”.
Which do you like better?
Camera geek info:
Canon EOS 60D in manual mode, 179 second exposure, ISO 2000, custom white balance 3500K
Space&Aliens 