Starship Asterisk*

The Helix Galaxy. KG Observatory, Julian CA. It took a little patience to capture enough subs in the unsteady winter skies to reproduce the Helix Galaxy with the quality I was aiming for. (-: The 24 stacked lumuinance subs measured 2.62" FWHM. A 200 interation deconvolution got that down to 1.7...

NGC 3486. KG Observatory, Julian, CA. The Julian California skies during January and February weren't great. I could only capture 2 objects during a handful of nights with clear and steady skies. For NGC3486 I was able to gather 3 hours of each color channel (good!) but only 4 hours of luminance wit...

M77. KG Observatory, Julian, CA. Object 2 of 2 from my October/November dark cycle. Here I used 5-minute L subs to help expose more of the very bright core. The spirals emminating from the core looked to be a bit stronger in the R channel. 45 minutes of screened Ha helped highlight that. All proces...

NGC 7678 in Pegasus. KG Observatory, Julian CA. NGC 7678, with one particularly prominent arm, is located approximately 164 million light-years away in the constellation of Pegasus (the Winged Horse). With a diameter of around 115,000 light-years, this bright spiral galaxy is a similar size to our ...

Merope. KG Observatory, Julian, CA. I was curious on how the 24" might capture Pleiades. We'll here's one of the sisters. "In Greek mythology, Merope is one of the seven Pleiades, daughters of Atlas and Pleione. Pleione, their mother, is the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys and is the protec...

Starship Enterprise (NGC 1055). KG Observatory, Julian CA. When my artistic wife first saw this image, she thought it looked like the Starship Enterprise. So I'll call it that here. I quickly visited this distant galaxy several years ago after being inspired by the APOD image taken with the 8.2m Sub...

Comet Leonard, 12/4/2021, 5-minute subs. KG Observatory, Julian, CA So I'm comfortably setup with the PL16803 CCD for a lengthy December galaxy session and my wife says "Do you know about the comet?". We'll, I did not know about the comet. )-: The PL16803 CCD needs at least 5-minute subs f...

M77. KG Observatory, Julian, CA. Object 2 of 2 from my October/November dark cycle. Here I used 5-minute L subs to help expose more of the very bright core. The spirals emminating from the core looked to be a bit stronger in the R channel. 45 minutes of screened Ha helped highlight that. All process...

NGC 660. KG Observatory, Julian, CA. "NGC 660 is a peculiar and unique polar-ring galaxy located approximately 45 million light-years from Earth in the Pisces constellation. It is the only such galaxy having, as its host, a "late-type lenticular galaxy".It was probably formed when two...

A Trio of Interacting Galaxies in Pegasus. KG Observatory, Julian, CA It was mostly cloudy during this October dark cycle. The first 2 nights were clear, dark and steady. During these two evenings I was able to capture over 10 hours of luminance with 2" average FWHM. Little did I know that it w...

NGC 7678 in Pegasus. KG Observatory, Julian CA. NGC 7678, with one particularly prominent arm, is located approximately 164 million light-years away in the constellation of Pegasus (the Winged Horse). With a diameter of around 115,000 light-years, this bright spiral galaxy is a similar size to our o...

NGC 7640 in Andromeda. KG Observatory, Julian, CA. Discovered on October 17, 1786 by the English astronomer William Herschel, NGC 7640 is an 11th magnitude barred spiral galaxy. Also known as LEDA 71220, UGC 12554 and IRAS 23197+4034, this galaxy is located in the constellation Andromeda, 38.8 milli...

The Wizard Nebula. KG Observatory, Julian CA.

https://www.astrobin.com/rlfwyx/

A Star Factory. KG Observatory, Julian, CA. NGC 7538 is a stellar nursery for massive stars. Located around 9,000 light-years away, this is one of the few regions of massive-star formation that are relatively close to us, allowing astronomers to investigate this process in great detail. Star factori...

Galaxies in Lacerta. KG Observatory, Julian CA. It's not often that we think of galaxies in the small constellation of Lacerta because it lies in the Milky Way region between Cygnus and Cassiopeia. There is however a section of the constellation that lies outside the Milky Way’s boundaries and appro...

Jewels in a Red Sea. KG Observatory, Julian CA.

Star Cluster IC1311 is located approximately 4,000 light years from Earth. The cluster is embedded in a giant emission nebula. The nebula is glowing from the ultraviolet light from hot, massive blue stars in the nebula.

https://www.astrobin.com/e2ymo0/

The Lagoon Nebula. KG Observatory, Julian, CA.

https://www.astrobin.com/q2mhpk/

The Blinking Planetary (Caldwell 15). KG Observatory, Julian CA. 1st of 3 objects for the July Dark cycle. This object got my attention from a 58 hour multiple-exposure capture by Mark Stiles using a Skywatcher MN190... www.astrobin.com/359794/ I was curious if I could get similar results in just a ...

NGC 3718. KG Observatory, Julian, CA.

Complete reprocess of my prior submission using PI Photometric Color Calibration (PCC) followed by white balance on both galaxies. This should be more "realistic" color without the red hue often introduced by PCC due to the intervening Milky Way dust.

NGC 3718 My third and final object for the June dark cycle with skies at 21.5+ SQM. This object was a particular challenge because I could only capture it from 9:30 to 11:30 PM. After that is was too low to get the 2" average FWHM I was aiming for. Because I could only capture 2 hours each even...

The Little Cocoon Nebula (SH2-82) Image 2 of 3 from my 21.5+ SQM June dark cycle. "Sh2-82 is a beautiful cloud of gas and dust consisting of an emission nebula enveloped by a hazy reflection nebula. It is embedded in the dark nebula LDN 727 and is the site of some star formation and young stell...

June is always a great month for imaging with the ocean marine layer covering the lower altitude city light. Skies at 4,200' in Julian, CA are then 21.5+ SQM nearly every day. This is the first of three objects I acquired over 12 days. Only 4 days were overcast when the wind blew the marine layer ea...

The Coma Cluster. KG Observatory, Julian, CA.

https://www.astrobin.com/boaxo5/

"M63 - Au Naturale and Deep Version". A simpler re-process of my prior version. KG Observatory, Julian, CA.

https://www.astrobin.com/x8gn7t/

A steady M94 after an unsteady winter. KG Observatory, Julian, CA. https://www.astrobin.com/a9jzyw/ I have been completely lazy (and tired) recently, so I haven't commented on any images in many weeks. But this one is stunning. The colors, the details, plus the fact that I can't help loving this ga...