Finally, once again I am able to do more astrophotography. The last three nights have been pretty good, tonight the jet stream is directly overhead so the atmosphere is very unstable. I think I will catch up on sleep.
M74, also known as the Phantom Galaxy. Due to its low surface brightness, it has a reputation for being hard to see in a telescope. Thirty-two million light years distant, this galaxy is located the constellation Pisces. It contains an estimated 100,000,000,000 stars. And here is NGC 772, the Fiddlehead Galaxy, again. I’ve added about 3 more hours of exposure to this. Very faint and distant, about 130 million light years, but it is twice the size of our Milky Way Galaxy. NGC 770 is a dwarf galaxy, seen to the upper right of NGC 772, and its gravity is probably responsible for the odd shape of the larger galaxy. NGC 1514 is a planetary nebula in the constellation of Taurus. It is very small and I am pretty happy with how this turned out. I tried this last winter before I started guiding the C8, but had to throw out half of my subs. Now that I’m guiding, I only lost 4 subs out of 70, all ninety second exposures. This is my latest project photographing a very faint object. This is NGC 1555, also known as Hind’s Variable Nebula. This is a variable nebula, illuminated by the star T Tauri, in the constellation Taurus. Both star and nebula vary significantly in brightness but not necessarily at the same time, adding to the mystery of the intriguing region. Struve’s Lost Nebula, visible for only a few decades in the 19th century, was in this area but has not been seen since. It was probably illuminated by another star that is now obscured by dust. I’ve only got about an hour on this so far and it already looks pretty good.
