Monday, September 17, 2007
I tried to image Barnard's Galaxy in a strong breeze a few nights ago. I only managed a few shots. Here is the result.
Barnard's Galaxy is a very small member of our local group of galaxies. It is obscured by lot's of gas and dust near our galaxy's center, making it very hard to see.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
This galaxy is known as the Pinwheel Galaxy due to it's general "pinwheel" shape. It is located in Ursa Major and is quite easy to see using a good pair of binoculars. It is listed in the Arp Catalogue of Peculiar Galaxies because of it's lop-sided arm.
M31, or the Andromeda Galaxy is the nearest large spiral galaxy to our own. In fact, it is believed that our galaxy and this galaxy will collide in the near future (several thousand years from now). Don't worry, none of us will be around to see it. Our Milky Way galaxy is a similar shaped spiral, but scientists believe it to have a barred structure with more arms. The small elliptical galaxy M110 is visible in the lower right.
This strange and difficult to find nebula in the constellation Cygnus, is highly unusual in many ways. It was formed in a manner similar to that which formed most planetary nebulas, but only a little different. The brighter star towards the center is what is known as a Wolf-Rayette star. There are fewer than 150 of these stars known. These stars are young hot supergiants that continually blow off their gaseous mass in a form of continual Nova. The reasons behind this are not totally known, as most stars do this sort of thing towards the end of their existence.
M16 or the Eagle Nebula is a large cloud of gas and dust that lies in the general region of the sky near the Trifid and Lagoon Nebulas. It is very similar in many respects to the Lagoon Nebula, being another region forming stars. However, the solar winds of these stars have blown the dust into a shape resembling an eagle. The combination of Nebula and cluster is very striking visually in a telescope.