HII rich region in Norma

HII rich region in Norma

This very interesting region in Norma contains many HII features as well as many other interesting objects. Below you can see an annotated version with the most clearly visible objects identified, except for the HII region in the bottom left corner. I couldn’t find out what this is called, so if anyone knows please let me know in the comments below 🙂 Somehow these objects and this fov get rarely imaged, which made it all…

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Mosaic of M16, M17, M18 and NGC6604

Mosaic of M16, M17, M18 and NGC6604

This is a 3 panel wide field mosaic of NGC6604, M16 and M17 in H-alpha, OIII and RGB. Also in the same field of view are M18 and IC4701, along with a view more open star clusters and nebulas. It was my main project on my astrotrip to Namibia this year and I spent the first 5 nights collecting the data for this. The end result is a highly detailed image of 20378 x 11160…

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M24 Sagittarius star cloud and surroundings

M24 Sagittarius star cloud and surroundings

Since there were many nights with high cirrus clouds when I was on my astrotrip to Kiripotib, I deviated from my prepared plan and chose some star clusters to photograph. By the way, it was amazing and remarkable how good the nights still were even with that haze in the sky. Since there is no light pollution, you can’t really see the thin haze other than the ‘feeling’ it was less transparant as it could…

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Widefield of Cat’s Paw and Lobster nebula

Widefield of Cat’s Paw and Lobster nebula

This beautiful wide field of view of Scorpion’s tail contains the famous cat’s paw and lobster nebula’s along with the ‘prawn’ nebula at the bottom. Near the Prawn nebula you see the ‘northern jewel box’ star cluster, or NGC 6231. I especially love the way the dust clouds on the right side of the image almost seem to be slowly moving as if they are colorations within a liquid. Image acquisition details Date: July 12,…

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The Pipe Nebula with the Sagittarius triplet; Lagoon, Trifid and IC1274

The Pipe Nebula with the Sagittarius triplet; Lagoon, Trifid and IC1274

The Pipe nebula, also known as Barnard 59, 65–67, and 78, is a huge dark cloud in the constellation of Ophiuchus, near the center part of the Milky Way. This area contains a lot of dark clouds and you can also see the much smaller Snake Nebula to the right of the Pipe nebula.  You can see the Pipe nebula really ‘popping out’ of the Milky Way when you watch it with the naked eye…

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A window into the Milky Way; wide field image of Sagittarius

A window into the Milky Way; wide field image of Sagittarius

Update: This image was Image of the Day on 8-8-2015 on Astrobin.com The Sagittarius part of the Milky Way is a very interesting and beautiful area. You can find the Lagoon (M8) and Trifid (M20) nebulas here, as well as the Eagle (M16) and Omega nebulas (M17). But perhaps even more interesting is the Sagittarius Star Cloud, or M24. This is a gap in the dust of Sagittarius and you look right through into the…

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Southern Cross and Coalsack nebula

Southern Cross and Coalsack nebula

The Southern Cross and Coalsack nebula were very prominently present in the Southern sky, and I miss the sight of them already! Every evening I would point the scope to Alpha Crux in the Southern Cross as the reference star to align the mount. Alpha Crux is a double star, so it is extra convenient to be sure you are aligning on the right star. The Coalsack nebula is the clearest dark nebula in the…

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