Although William Henry Pickering was official credited with its discovery in 1889, the Horsehead Nebula was first recorded on a photographic plate taken by Williamina Paton Fleming at the Harvard College Observatory in 1888. The first published description of the Horsehead Nebula was given by E. E. Barnard in 1913, and it was first cataloged by him in 1919.

Barnard 33 is the most interesting feature of a huge region of gas and dust situated 1,600 light years away in the constellation Orion. It is a dark globule of dust and non-luminous gas, obscuring the light coming from the moderately bright nebula IC 434 behind it. The red glow of IC 434 originates from ionized hydrogen gas. The bright, bluish reflection nebula near the Horsehead is NGC 2023.

The underside of the "neck" of the Horsehead is especially dark, and actually casts a shadow on the field below the "muzzle". The entire region is illuminated by the bright OB star Sigma Orionis, which is also responsible for ionizing the emission nebula IC 434. The much brighter Zeta Orionis is a foreground star, not related to the nebulosity.    Sky Safari pro 6

I shot this with a TEC140 scope with AP QTCC reducer/corrector to bring the scope to F5.   The camera is an ASI6200 mono with Chroma filters.  I shot the image in an RGB+Ha palette and did not do any color modification or saturation as the colors seemed perfect after Pixinsight SPCC.

Clear Skies,

Terri

Sh 2-155 (also designated Caldwell 9, Sharpless 155 or S155, or LBN529) is a diffuse nebula in the constellation Cepheus, within a larger nebula complex containing emission, reflection, and dark nebulosity. It is widely known as the Cave Nebula, though that name was applied earlier to Ced 201, a different nebula in Cepheus. Sh 2-155 is an ionized H II region with ongoing star formation activity,at an estimated distance of 725 parsecs (2400 light-years) from Earth.

Sh 2-155 was first noted as a galactic emission nebula in 1959 in the extended second edition of the Sharpless catalogue, being a part of the much larger Cep OB3 Association. Although Sh 2-155 is relatively faint for amateur observation, some of its structure may be seen visually through a moderately sized telescope under dark skies.

I've taken a total of 15 hours of exposures to make this image through a TEC140 with 0.7 focal reducer and ASI6200MM camera and Chroma SHO and RGB filters.  Except for 30 minutes each for R,G and B, most of the exposure is in narrowband.    The palette I used is OHS versus the normal SHO.     I just like it better in this image.

NGC 4244, also known as Caldwell 26, is an edge-on loose spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici, and is part of the M94 Group or Canes Venatici I Group, a galaxy group relatively close to the Local Group containing the Milky Way. In the sky, it is located near the yellow naked-eye star, Beta Canum Venaticorum, but also near the barred spiral galaxy NGC 4151 and irregular galaxy NGC 4214.

With an apparent V-band magnitude of 10.18, NGC 4244 lies approximately 4.3 megaparsecs (14 million light years) away. A nuclear star cluster and halo is located near the centre of this galaxy.  (Wikipedia)    

What is a nuclear star cluster you might ask:

A nuclear star cluster (NSC) or compact stellar nucleus (sometimes called young stellar nucleus) is a star cluster with high density and high luminosity near the center of mass of most galaxies.

NSCs are the central massive objects of fainter, low-mass galaxies where supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are not present or are of negligible mass. In the most massive galaxies, NSCs are entirely absent. Some galaxies, including the Milky Way, are known to contain both a NSC and a SMBH of comparable mass.

^(wikipedia)

I imaged this object with my TEC180 refractor with 0.9x flattener installed.   The Camera is a QHY600PH-M with Chroma RGB filters.   I've been playing around with doing just RGB instead of mostly luminance with a little RGB.    The RGB only has given me better colors but I know an L is must more efficient in photon capture, so it's all a tradeoff.    I wish we had more clear skies as I'm data starved.    I captured a total of 9.5 hours of exposures, each 8 minutes long using an extended well depth exposure mode on the camera.    

First detected 6/12/2025 astronomers from the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae at Ohio State University, it started with a magnitude of +8.4, as of 6/16 it was +5.7.

Star formation is one of the most important processes in shaping the universe. In addition to birthing new stars, it gives rise to planetary systems and plays a pivotal role in the evolution of galaxies. Yet there is still much that astronomers do not understand about this fundamental process. The driving force behind star formation is particularly unclear for a type of galaxy called a flocculent spiral. Unlike grand-design spiral galaxies, flocculent spiral galaxies do not have well defined spiral arms. Instead, they appear to have many discontinuous arms.

M63, also known as the Sunflower galaxy, is one such flocculent spiral galaxy. Although it only has two arms, many appear to be winding around its yellow core in this image captured by Hubble. The arms shine with the radiation from recently formed blue stars and can be more clearly seen in infrared observations. By imaging flocculent spiral galaxies like M63, astronomers hope to gain a better understanding of how stars form in such systems.

The Sunflower galaxy was discovered in 1779 by the French astronomer Pierre Méchain and was the first of 24 objects that Méchain would contribute to Charles Messier’s catalog. The galaxy is located roughly 27 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici. It has an apparent magnitude of 9.3 and appears as a faint patch of light in small telescopes. The best time to observe M63 is during May.

I shot M63 with a TEC180Fl refractor and ZWO ASI6200MM monochrome camera through Chroma LRGB plus Ha filters.   I have around 16 hours of exposure, 5 of them being in Ha.    M62 has star cloud that it's interacting with in the structures you see passing over the arms as well as the cloud that surrounds it.  It will take much more exposure for me to capture a deeper image of the surrounding area.     

The wide field of M63 includes 100's of other galaxies.   It's fun to search through and find all of the little pearls.

Wide field:

M42 is a combination of emission and reflection nebula.     from Wikipedia:

The Orion Nebula is visible with the naked eye even from areas affected by light pollution. It is seen as the middle "star" in the "sword" of Orion, which are the three stars located south of Orion's Belt. The "star" appears fuzzy to sharp-eyed observers, and the nebulosity is obvious through binoculars or a small telescope. The peak surface brightness of the central region of M42 is about 17 Mag/arcsec² and the outer bluish glow has a peak surface brightness of 21.3 Mag/arcsec².

The Orion Nebula contains a very young open cluster, known as the Trapezium Clusterdue to the asterism of its primary four stars within a diameter of 1.5 light years. Two of these can be resolved into their component binary systems on nights with good seeing, giving a total of six stars. The stars of the Trapezium Cluster, along with many other stars, are still in their early years. The Trapezium Cluster is a component of the much larger Orion Nebula cluster, an association of about 2,800 stars within a diameter of 20 light years. The Orion Nebula is in turn surrounded by the much larger Orion molecular cloud complex, which is hundreds of light years across, spanning the whole Orion Constellation. Two million years ago the Orion Nebula cluster may have been the home of the runaway stars AE Aurigae, 53 Arietis, and Mu Columbae, which are currently moving away from the nebula at speeds greater than 100 km/s (62 mi/s).

Enjoy   

Looks to me as if it's because there hasn't been any posts in months.

Despite its name, many consider this to be the closest PN to Earth.  (The Helix Nebula, NGC 7293, which is sometimes cited as the closest PN to the Earth, lies about 650 ly away.)

The predominant signals from Sh2-216 are Ha with a minor amount of OIII (and some SII).  The red areas in this HOO image represent the Ha, while the blue represents the OIII.  (SII was not collected for this target.)

Capture Dates (2024): 3/11,3/12,12/25,12/26

Rig 1:
Stellarvue SVX90T Apochromatic Refractor @native fl = 540mm , f/6.0 (1.44”/px)
Guidescope/Cam: SV106 with ASI120mm mini
ASIAir Plus, ASI2600MM, ZWO AM5 mount, ZWO 7-position 2” filter wheel

Rig 2:
Askar 107PHQ with 0.7x reducer at fL = 524mm, f/4.9 (1.47”/px)
Guidescope/Cam: SV106 with ASI178mm
ASIAir Plus, ASI2600MM, ZWO AM5 mount, ZWO 7-position 2” filter wheel

Filters:
Antlia 3nm Narrowband H-alpha 2": 75×300″
Antlia 3nm Narrowband OIII 2": 43×300″
Antlia Pro V RGB 2”: 166x180”

Total Integration Time: 18:08

Processed in PixInsight and Adobe Photoshop

The reflection nebula IC59 and IC63 show blueish in the images due to illumination by Gamma Cas, while the entire region is suffused by SH2-185, a large cloud of hydrogen gas.    The intense radiation from Gamma Cas, a bright variable star in our skies has a magnitude ranging from 1.6 to 3.0, and currently shining at magnitude 2.2.   Gamma Cas is a sub-giant star which is nearing the end of the hydrogen fusing portion of its life, after which it will become a giant star, when inward pressure moves it's outer layers to a new point of equilibrium where it will fuse helium.  Gamma Cas has 17 times the mass of the Sun and radiates 34,000 times the Sun's energy!  Gamma Cas is completing this main sequence phase of its lifetime in only 8 million years!   At 25,000K at its outer layers, Gamma Cas shines blue.  Gamma Cas, along with IC59 and IC63 are approximately 550 light years from our solar system.   The two emission + reflection nebula, IC59 and IC63, are approximately 10 ly across.    Both the primary image and an annotated version are below.

I shot these with TEC140 scope with ASI6200 mono camera with Chroma broadband and 3nm Ha filters.    I have about 3 hours in Ha and an hour each in R,G and B.   I could use more time, maybe in out years, with the R,G, and B to boost the reflection components.   

This is probably 40 minutes or so.    Just a simple image and much easier to process these OSC comet images versus the mono.     I still have a couple of mono images that one day I'll get to, but they take a lot of work.