ToddSpace: John's Astrophotography Page

The North American and Pelican nebulas

For us Astro-geeks, the first sign that summer is on its way is the rising of the constellation, Cygnus the swan in the east.  By mid-summer, this constellation is riding high overhead and is easily identifiable by the asterism it contains, the Northern Cross.  At the tip of the northern cross is the second brightest star in the summer sky (Vega is the brightest) Deneb.  If you have the luck to live under very dark skies, you will frequently see two fairly bright but nebulous patches of white clouds next to Deneb, these are the North American and Pelican nebulas.  This particular photo was taken on the evening of July 25^th from my backyard in Bedford, NH.  It is a composite of 8 5 minute exposures taken through an ordinary unmodified canon 200mm f/4 L lens at with my modified canon 350d @ ISO 800.  I used a deep red filter known as a hydrogen alpha filter for this shot and converted to greyscale. 

The advantage to doing this is all the ambient skylight on the visual spectrum below the deep red of nebulas never makes it to the camera giving the photo a deep representation of the nebula.  I will photograph this same object in color this summer and you will see the deep reds that I’m referring to.

May 2006 Galaxy Hunting

In the astrophotography hobby, April and May are glorious times of year to shoot some relatively close galaxies with views completely unobstructed by the plane of the Milky way.  What do I mean by that?  During the summer and winter, if you're in a dark enough area, you'll see the stars of the milky way stretching across the sky, not so in spring and autumn.  Here are three galaxy shots that I took in the last two months, each of them are composites of about 2 hours worth of exposure time with my new camera, a modified canon 350d (modified specifically for astrophotography).  The first in the parade of galaxies is known as Bode's nebula.  Bode's nebula is of course, not a nebula at all but rather a pair of galaxies in the constellation ursa major.  The pair, known as m81 and m82 are gravitationally bound and it's been theorized that m81 (the one on the right, a grand design spiral galaxy) has been shredding apart it's neighbor.  It's known as Bode's nebula because on new years eve, 1774, it was first described by Johann Bode as a difuse nebula.  A hundred years later when galaxies were better understood, that was corrected.  Next up we have m101, also known as the pinwheel galaxy.  This galaxy, also located in ursa major, is visible with binoculars under very dark skies located between the first and second stars of the big dipper's handle and offset to the north.  It's lopsided shape is most likely due to a tidal interaction with another galaxy in the neighborhood, which one, I can't even guess.  This galaxy is about 24 million light years away.  If you do go looking for it, you must dark adapt your eyes as it is not a very bright galaxy at all, it's only under long exposure photography can we begin to see the magnificent spiral arms this beauty holds.  Last up is the "Black eye galaxy", so called because of its... well, it's black eye!  Can you see it?  M64 was discovered by Edward Pigott on March 23, 1779, interestingly, just 12 days before the aforementioned Johann Bode found it completely independently.  It was given the black eye monicker shortly afterwards by William Herschel.  The dark part of the galaxy, i.e. the black eye, is the result of heavily concentrated interstellar dust lanes, under very high resolution photographs taken by hubble, we now know that this dust lane is alive with star formation and many hydrogen alpha emissions.  Speaking of Hydrogen alpha emissions, these are the very well known red nebulas that populate our summer skies, when next I post, I hope to have some of these summer beauties from within our own milky way galaxy... stay tuned!

The trio in Leo

From time to time I'll post some of my new photos without much regard for the learning aspect, here's my first time doing this.  Last night, on the evening of April 19th I was able to get out under clear skies and photograph a dazzling trio of galaxies in the constellation Leo.  If you look directly overhead on March, April and May evenings here in New England shortly after nightfall, you'll see a backwards question mark, that's the head of Leo, the lion.   The constellations Leo and Virgo are home to countless galaxies, most of which are visible in small telescopes and some even in binoculars under clear dark skies.  The following photograph is a composite of 4 10 minute exposures of "the Leo Trio" consisting of M66, M65 and NGC3627 (that's the one shaped like a hamburger).  The photo was taken with a brand spankin new modified Canon 350d (aka digital rebel xt), my Takahashi E-160 and the Losmandy G-11 mount.  There's also another component to these 10 minute exposures that I take called guiding, that's done electronically with a seperate ccd called an ST-4, I'm not going to get into that right now, that'll be a seperate post when I have a little more time.   Anyway, click on the photo to see the larger version.

These three galaxies are gravitationally bound and are sometimes referred to as the "M66 group", but are part of the much larger super cluster called the Virgo cluster.