The Elephant's Trunk Nebula. Originally Posted Sept. 15, 2021.

 Continuing this series of images captured with narrowband filters, here is the Elephant's Trunk Nebula. This is part of a much larger complex of interstellar gas and dust. The nebula appears to be a site of star formation as a number of very young stars have been detected in it. The bright rim of the trunk is a region ionized by a massive star, HD 206267, which is hidden in the cloud. This image was captured at the CSO on September 14, 2021.

The RASA Arrives! The North America Nebula. Originally Posted August 30, 2021

Close to Deneb in the sky is the large North America Nebula. Part of this nebula complex is the Pelican Nebula. The Pelican is a star forming region here new stars are being born in large numbers. This image was taken with a Rowe-Ackerman-Schmidt- Astrograph (RASA) telescope (as was the earlier image of the Western Veil). The RASA is a very fast scope that can only be used for imaging. Note that this and some other images to be posted here were made with the Optolong L-eNhance filter. This filter is unsuitable for superfast optics like those in the RASA (f/2). Despite the fact that the filter dramatically attenuates hydrogen alpha light, images with the RASA turned out quite well.
 

A Cosmic Witch's Broom! Originally Posted August 30, 2021

 This is one of my favorite objects: the supernova remnant know as the West Veil Nebula, or sometimes, the Witch's Broom Nebula. The supernoa took place before recorded history, but the blast wave continues to ripple through space. The red gas is hydrogen, the blue green is oxygen. Above the lower streamer, you can see Pickering's Triangle, which is part of the Cygnus Loop. The Cygnus Loop is the supernova remnant of which the West Veil is just a part.

The Horsehead Nebula--Originally Posted February 8, 2021

 One of my very favorite objects is a difficult one to image without filters--the Horsehead Nebula in Orion. Here are two images taken from CSO. One is with a William Optics 61 mm refractor, the other with an 8 inch Newtonian astrograph. As you can see, the WO scope has a much wider field and captures other nebulas in the same area of sky, like the Flame. The Newt has a nice focus on the Horsehead and its environs. These images were captured with an Optolong L-eNhance filter.

Mars!--Originally Posted October 27, 2020

 We had excellent seeing here in Charlotte last night--here is an image of Mars captured with the little 125mm Mak. The images all look a little different as I experiment with various degrees of processing. It's a great tribute to the quality of Mak scopes, which are, in my opinion, unbeatable for small-aperture lunar and planetary imaging.

We're Coming Back!

 Some folks have contacted me and told me they would like to see the Blog restart as they do not use Facebook and cannot access the Carolina Skies Observatory page. With that in mind, I've decided to re open the blog and double post here and on the CSO page. I'm going to begin by moving over some of the CSO posts. Stay tuned :)

The Move

 Although I have moved most things to the Carolina Skies Observatory Facebook Page, I'm thinking of reposting some things here as I like the format here, too. Not sure, but at the least this is a post to keep activity going here.