Tag Archives: Deep Sky West

Boogie Man Nebula – Lynd’s Dark Nebula 1622

This Dark Nebula is located in the Constellation of Orion.  It is about 500 light years distant, versus about 1300 light years for the Orion Nebula.  This was taken through a 4 inch Takahashi refractor.  A total of 49 RGB filtered images were stacked with 21 H-Alpha images for a total of 22.8 hours ofContinue reading “Boogie Man Nebula – Lynd’s Dark Nebula 1622”

Pacman Nebula – NGC 281

“NGC 281 is known informally as the “Pacman Nebula” because of its appearance in optical images. In optical images the “mouth” of the Pacman character appears dark because of obsuration by dust and gas…” NASA Administrator 7/30/2015 This was imaged through the Takahashi 4 inch refractor. It is a stacked composite of 52 thirty minuteContinue reading “Pacman Nebula – NGC 281”

Flaming Star Nebula

“The Flaming Star Nebula (IC 405) is a diffuse emission/reflection nebula in Auriga constellation. It surrounds the irregular variable star AE Aurigae, a runaway star believed to originate in the Orion’s Belt area in Orion constellation. The nebula is approximately 1,500 light years distant. It has an apparent magnitude of 6.0 and measures about 37’x19′Continue reading “Flaming Star Nebula”

Jellyfish Nebula – IC 443

“IC 443 (also known as the Jellyfish Nebula and Sharpless 248 (Sh2-248)) is a Galactic supernova remnant (SNR) in the constellation Gemini. On the plan of the sky, it is located near the star Eta Geminorum. Its distance is roughly 5,000 light years from Earth. IC 443 may be the remains of a supernova thatContinue reading “Jellyfish Nebula – IC 443”

Andromeda – M31

Andromeda is a spiral galaxy that is 2.5 million light years distant and 220,000 light years across. It is the nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way. Be forewarned, our Milky Way and Andromeda are expected to collide in 3.75 billion years. “Outside the zodiacal group of constellations, and with the possible exception of Orion,Continue reading “Andromeda – M31”

VDB 149 in Monochrome

This is van den Bergh 149, a dark nebula in Cepheus. It was taken with the Takahashi FSQ106EDIII and is comprised of 38 Luminance stacked luminance images with an exposure time of 900 seconds each. Total exposure time was 9.5 hours.

Pleiades – M45

Though people sometimes refer to this open star cluster in the Constellation Taurus as the Seven Sisters, there are actually only six stars that are readily visible to most observers. Charles Messier chose it as one of his Messier objects (M45). I find it interesting that Subaru chose this grouping of stars to serve asContinue reading “Pleiades – M45”

Elephant Trunk Nebula – Wide

Last year I did a few pictures of the Elephant Trunk Nebula that had a smaller field of view.  This is a has a wider field of view via the Takahashi 106 mm telescope.  It represents 25 hours of exposures through narrowband filters.