Tag Archives: Williamson Valley

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.

VDB 126

Another day, another catalog… This time we have an object that is listed in the “VDB” catalog of 159 reflection nebulae that was published in 1966 by Sidney van den Bergh. Considering the beauty of this object, further study is needed. Sixty eight five minute LRGB images from the Takahashi FSQ106EDIII telescope were stacked and processed in MaximContinue reading “VDB 126”

Pelican Nebula – Enhanced Detail

According to Wikipedia: “The Pelican is much studied because it has a particularly active mix of star formation and evolving gas clouds. The light from young energetic stars is slowly transforming cold gas to hot and causing an ionization front gradually to advance outward.” “Millions of years from now this nebula may no longer beContinue reading “Pelican Nebula – Enhanced Detail”

Lynds Dark Nebula 1251

Lynds original catalog of dark nebulae was published in 1962. The catalog contains dark nebulae that were identified by Lynds’ visual inspection of the Palomar-Schmidt photographs. The clouds had to be visible on the red and blue photographs to be recorded. The original catalog contained 1802 objects. LDN 1251 is a Dark Nebula in theContinue reading “Lynds Dark Nebula 1251”

The Vulture Head or Baby Eagle Nebula take your pick…

This nebula is at a distance of about 400 light years and is fairly difficult for astrophotographers to capture. It is difficult to tease the eagle out of the background stars. This was taken through a Takahashi 106mm telescope through RGB filters. The imaging time was 24 hours.

Bubble Nebula – Wide Angle View

With clouds hanging over the observatory, there is another option. You can process raw images from a remote observatory. Raw images for this project were taken last September from a remote imaging observatory that is located in New Mexico at an elevation of 7400 feet. The telescope was a 106mm Takahashi FSQ 106EDXIII telescope. AContinue reading “Bubble Nebula – Wide Angle View”

Tadpoles – Color

The clouds are moving in, so imaging on this nebula has ended. Three narrow band filters were used and were assigned RGB colors based on what is called the Hubble palette. This was tweaked by removing some of the green coloration while emphasizing blue. A total of 35 thirty minute images were stacked, for aContinue reading “Tadpoles – Color”