The Monkey Head Nebula

This image of the Monkey Head nebula has 7 hours of integration (20- and 30-second exposures). Stacking and initial processing in Siril, tweaks in Affinity. The nebula is being rapidly eroded by the high stellar winds from the young stars it contains.

IC 410--The Tadpoles

Located in the constellation of Auriga, IC 410 looks like a pair of tadpoles swimming through space. This 100 light year across nebula of ionized hydrogen is shaped by the stellar winds from the hot, young stars of the open cluster NGC 1893. This image consists of 3.8 hours of integration, processed in Siril and Affinity Photo.

M 78

Messier 78 (NGC 2068) is a reflection nebula in the constellation of Orion and is the brightest visible reflection nebula. Charles Messier added it to his famous Catalog in 1780. This area if part of the Orion B molecular cloud complex, which contains adjacent nebulae NGC 2064, 2067, and 2071. In the 19th Century, Lord Rosse, with his massive telescope in Birr Castle, Ireland, thought he saw evidence of a spiral structure in the nebula. The nebula is energized by young, hot stars which give it its distinctive blue color. This image is a small stack of 442 x 10s integrations with the Seestar. I plan on capturing more data.

Lunar Occultation of Mars

On the 13th of January, the Wolf Moon occulted (moved in front of) Mars for observers here in the US. This event is hard to image due to the brightness of the moon and the relative faintness of Mars. These images are very close crops and follow the event right to the points at which Mars vanishes behind the moon.

The Horsehead Nebula

This image of the Horsehead Nebula consists of just over 4 hours of total integration time. Stacked and processed in Siril, GraXpert, Affinity, and Topaz.

M 45

M 45 has several names in different cultures: the Pleiades (Greece), the Seven Sisters (Europe), Subaru Japan--(they can famously be seen in the car maker's logo, where there are only 6), the Seven Star Girls/the Orphan Boys (Native American cutures, Yunggarmurra Water Girls (Australian Aboriginal culture), the "Netted Star" in Tolkein's Middle Earth, etc. They were an importantherald to the navigation season in the Meditarranean Sea in classical Greek times, and they have great significance in many other cultures. The cluster is dominated by young, hot, blue stars. The nebula surrounding them is not thought to be related to the cluster, but is an interstellar nebula through which the cluster is passing. This image was created from a 10s stack, with a total integration time of about 8 hours. My Bortle 8/9 skies made managing gradients problematic, but the overall image is not too bad, and some decent detial is visible in the nebula. The rainbow nebulosity appears to be an artifact created by the star removal process during processing.