Good Astronomy

A classic of the winter sky, here’s a view of the great nebula in Orion from our 70 and I installed in Chile this summer! Amazing what dark skies will do… hope you enjoy!

Hey all, I’ll once again be out at Deep Sky Vineyard on December 2 for an art show! Come by, check out my latest stuff, and buy a calendar and bottle of wine as gifts!

Revisiting another pano from the Chile trip, wishing I could be there again. This is a piece of valle de Luna outside San Pedro de Atacama.

Hanging out in the northern skies are a beautiful pair of nebulae, the heart and soul. Situated 7500 light years away in the constellation of Cassiopeia, these nebulae were formed by massive stars in the center of each.

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Details: 20 hours SHO, shot with 2600mm, am5 and Redcat51 from my backyard

As the milkyway sets, I wanted to finish this 2 panel mosaic of the Swan/Omega nebula (M17) shot with the cdk14! I feel most images focus on the “body” of the swan and so I wanted to open up the entire area to see the neck of the swan. Hope you enjoy!

100 years ago today, Edwin Hubble realized that the “andromeda nebula” was actually the Andromeda Galaxy, by spying a variable star within, as notated in the second image “VAR!”. This realization vastly expanded our understanding of the cosmos, as before this, the popular understanding was the milkyway was the entire universe. Now, we know even a galaxy as large as ours is just one of several billion (that we can see!). Blows my mind, and makes you wonder, what will we know in the next 100 years?

The beautiful region of Corona Australis contains seveal interesting objects, including the globular cluster NGC 6723 (much more distant than the rest of the objects in the photo), the blue reflection nebula known as NGC 6726 that is actually a variable nebula and changes brightness, and the dark dust that is currently forming new stars.

This is the first light for the SV70t and I installed in Chile last month!

Discover the mesmerizing beauty of the Large Magellanic Cloud! This stunning galaxy is one of our Milky Way's closest neighbors, located just 163,000 light-years away. It's a celestial masterpiece, a swirling tapestry of stars, nebulae, and cosmic wonders.

The LMC boasts vibrant regions like the Tarantula Nebula, a stellar nursery where new stars are born, and the breathtaking LMC Bar.

Whether you're gazing at it through a telescope or simply admiring its beauty in images, the Large Magellanic Cloud is a true celestial gem and a pleasure to see with my own eyes!

From the Coalsack to Carina, this shot of the southern tip of the milkyway was done with my 40mm lens and the 2600mc one night at with ! It was so cool to look up every night and see these objects naked eye, I already want to go back. Also in the center of the frame is the running chicken nebula, which I’ve never understood, do you see it?!

One night in Chile, I decided to just point the 40mm art strait up on the star tracker for 2 hours to see what it got, this is the result! You can see several famous messier
Nebulae, Rho Ophiuchi, the dark river, and the blue horsehead amongst others!

The conclusion of an epic trip is always bitter sweet. It’s been a great 10 days in Chile, shooting every single night across the Atacama, but I’m happy to be heading home to my family. It was great to meet up with , , and and meet new friends and the guys at , then later , and in San Pedro de Atacama!

My hard drive is full with epic photos to show y’all in the weeks to come… stay tuned!

Back to our regularly scheduled programming: deep sky objects! Here’s the large and small Magellanic Clouds from the Chile trip, shot with a 40mm lens and 2600mc, roughly 4 hours of exposure. It’s crazy to look up and see these with your own eyes every nice, definitely a view I will miss…

Drove out to the middle of the barren Atacama to see the core of our home galaxy arcing overhead. This whole trip has been a surreal experience

“Little planet”

Hanging out in the Atacama, decided to try a little planet shot surrounded by observatories. What do you think?

Ra, 20mm f2.8, 30 panel 360 mosaic

Hanging out at and Rodrigo hiked us down to this lone tree in the middle of the desert, had to get a shot of it with the milkyway core setting behind it. Slight light halo behind the tree from the city of La Serena that we flew into.

Single shot 6d and 20mm /2.8

NGC 6559: A Stellar Marvel!
Discover the breathtaking beauty of NGC 6559, a celestial wonder nestled within the Sagittarius constellation. This dazzling nebula, comprised of gas and dust, gives birth to new stars, illuminating the cosmos in a mesmerizing dance of light and color.

A fairly famous galaxy pairing, M81 and M82 (left to right) are two galaxies going through a merger 12 million light years away in the constellation Ursa Major. The interaction resulted in a perturbed starburst galaxy in M82, with hydrogen filaments extending across the galaxy.

©️ and Steve Timmons

This close up view shows off the otherwise faint emission nebula IC410, in the constellation of Auriga. It also features two remarkable inhabitants of the cosmic pond of gas and dust below and left of center, the tadpoles! Composed of denser cooler gas and dust, the tadpoles are around 10 liht years long and are likely the sites of ongoing star formation.

Imaging System: CDK14, Paramount Mx+, FLIP PL16803 Chroma filters

Exposure – SHO, 30 hours

Processing – Pixinsight

These dark pillars may look destructive, but they are creating stars. This pillar-capturing image of the inside of the Eagle Nebula, made famous by the Hubble Space, shows evaporating gaseous globules (EGGs) emerging from pillars of molecular hydrogen gas and dust. The giant pillars are light years in length and are so dense that interior gas contracts gravitationally to form stars. At each pillars' end, the intense radiation of bright young stars causes low density material to boil away, leaving stellar nurseries exposed. The Eagle Nebula, associated with the open star cluster M16, lies about 7000 light years away.

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Supernova! If you haven’t heard, a star exploded earlier this week which in reality was 23,000,000 years ago, we’re just seeing it now!! This is an image shot in a single night, May 23, 2023, to capture the star as it was exploding. Swipe right for the annotation and comparison to the same area from a shot in 2021!

Nearby and bright, spiral galaxies M65 (top right) and M66 stand out in this cosmic snapshot. The pair are just 35 million light-years distant and around 100,000 light-years across, about the size of our own spiral Milky Way. While both exhibit prominent dust lanes sweeping along their broad spiral arms, M66 in particular is a striking contrast in red and blue hues; the telltale pinkish glow of hydrogen gas in star forming regions and young blue star clusters. M65 and M66 make up two thirds of the well-known Leo Triplet of galaxies with warps and tidal tails that offer evidence of the group's past close encounters. The larger M66 has been host to four supernovae discovered since 1973.

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The Antennae Galaxies are undergoing a galactic collision. Located in the NGC 4038 group with five other galaxies, these two galaxies are known as the Antennae Galaxies because the two long tails of stars, gas and dust ejected from the galaxies as a result of the collision resemble an insect's antennae. The nuclei of the two galaxies are joining to become one giant galaxy. Most galaxies probably undergo at least one significant collision in their lifetimes. This is likely the future of our Milky Way when it collides with the Andromeda Galaxy.

©️ and with our CDK17 at

The Colorful Clouds of Scorpius

Just outside the milkyway core is (in my opinion) the most beautiful area of the sky. These two objects, known as Rho Ophiuchus and the blue horsehead, exhibit most types of nebula in the sky; blue and yellow reflection, red emissions, and dark dusty nebulae.

This is an image I’ve wanted to shoot for many years, but just finally got around to doing it justice in my eyes.

Shot with my travel rig; 135mm f/2.8, 2600mc and AM5. 2 panel mosaic, each 20x300” for just over 3 hours of total exposure.

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Southern Arizona friends! Come down to Deep Sky Vineyard this Saturday to talk space and have a glass of wine with me! I’ll have the solar telescope out and my entire personal print collection up for sale!

I wanted to test the new Ra I picked up so went to my dark sky site in southeast Arizona! Needless to say… this is gonna be fun!

30x90” tracked exposure with a 24mm f/4

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A super wide field view of the Auriga constellation! I shot this last fall with my 135 and 2600mm from the backyard! Had to do a 2 panel mosaic to capture the Flying Spaghetti Monster in the lower left and the flaming star and tadpoles in the upper right. Hope you enjoy!

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Swipe for detail! >>>

M8 The Lagoon Nebula is a giant interstellar cloud in the constellation of Sagittarius, or part of the summer Milky Way. Discovered in 1654, this nebula is actually visible with your naked eye or binoculars! It’s a star forming region composed of mostly hydrogen gas, at a distance of ~5,000 light years from earth.

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I love revisiting older targets after learning new processes, especially ones as cool as Messier 51!

Perhaps the original spiral nebula, the large galaxy with well defined spiral structure is also cataloged as NGC 5194. Its spiral arms and dust lanes clearly sweep in front of its companion galaxy (right), NGC 5195. The pair are about 31 million light-years distant and officially lie within the angular boundaries of the small constellation Canes Venatici. Though M51 looks faint and fuzzy to the eye, deep images like this one can reveal striking colors and the faint tidal debris around the smaller galaxy

Imaging System: Planewave CDK14, Paramount ME2, FLI 16803/Chroma filters

Exposure – HaLRGB, 18.9 hours

©️ and Steve Timmons

The famous Horsehead Nebula in Orion is not alone. A deep exposure shows that the dark familiar shaped indentation, visible just right of center, is part of a vast complex of absorbing dust and glowing gas. The featured spectacular picture details an intricate tapestry of gaseous wisps and dust-laden filaments that were created and sculpted over eons by stellar winds and ancient supernovas. The Horsehead Nebula lies 1,500 light years distant towards the constellation of Orion.

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Flying through the night sky is a broad expanse of glowing gas and dust suggesting its popular moniker - The Seagull Nebula. This portrait of the cosmic bird covers a wide swath across the plane of the Milky Way, near the direction of Sirius, alpha star of the constellation Canis Major. Dominated by the reddish glow of atomic hydrogen, the complex of gas and dust clouds with bright young stars spans over 100 light-years at an estimated 3,800 light-year distance.

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