Imaging during a near full moon is not really a good idea, certainly not for galaxies. This is nearly 3 hours of integration time and I had to process away some of the noise but I’m still happy with the result.

Distance to earth: 12 million light-years.

After my fiasco with the Iris Nebula a couple days ago (using the wrong filter) I had another try yesterday. Yet again this reflection nebula in Cepheus was proving to be a hard nut to crack. This time I had multiple issues: guiding errors, coma, camera tilt and what I believe was probably some collimation issue.

Although I did manage to get the beautiful deep blue color of the nebula, there is a lot of noise in the dust and the stars are all over the place. Let’s hope third time is the charm.

I had two consecutive clear nights, something that didn’t happen since last summer. Managed to get 4 hours on M101 but my image suffered some weird streaks in one of the corners, below is the cropped image which turned out still very good.

Next on I got 2 hours on the Crescent, which was on my target list for this year. Additionaly I did a bit of EAA on the Owl Nebula and Hercules Globular cluster. Finally I also captured 2 hours on the Iris Nebula but I quickly discovered during post processing that I should have removed my duoband filter.

With our galactic plane becoming more prominent again I think my next big target will be the Eagle Nebula.

The milky way is slowly coming back into our night skies and this was a good moment for me to test the ZWO duoband filter.

This nebula is the result of a Wolf-Rayet star blowing stellar winds 5.000 light years away from us.

There are many wonderful objects in Ursa Major and The Little Pinwheel Galaxy is one of them. I only managed to get 3 hours of data and had to battle some high clouds but I’m happy with the result.

Distance to earth: 40 million light-years.

Inspired by Halton Arp’s Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies I decided to have a long look at NGC 4490 also known as the Cocoon Galaxy. This used to be a spiral galaxy but clashed with the smaller companion (NGC 4485) and they will meet again at some point in an epic dance of the stars.

All this is happening at 25 million light years away from us.

Probably my favourite galaxy. Distance to earth is 27 million light years and shape and bright yellow core explain where it gets its name from.

We are very lucky to be able to witness what is happening here. Bode’s Galaxy on the left is gravitationally affecting the Cigar Galaxy on the right, causing starbust.

Distance to earth: 11.5 million light years.

This was a tricky capture. Over 4 hours of data but some issues in post processing that had to be fixed.

Messier 106 steals the show on this picture but it’s not the only visible galaxy. On the lower right you can see NGC 4217 and other smaller galaxies scattered around.