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M33 Pinwheel Galaxy

M33 is commonly called the Pinwheel Galaxy in Triangulum. The reason is obvious! It’s 2.5 million light year distance is actually pretty close for a galaxy and it’s quite large in the sky. Unfortunately, even though it’s larger than a full moon, it’s difficult to view due to its very low surface brightness. Viewed with a C8 from my house it’s barely visible. If you’re in fairly dark skies give it a try though. It’s nearly overhead in the early AM right now but it’s moving to the late evening skies quickly.

For this image I combined 34 subs of 2-minutes each for a total exposure time of 68 minutes. I used a Canon 40D DSLR with the Televue NP101is 4” refractor. Guiding was done with an M8C CCD camera through an ETX-90. Image capture and most of the processing was done with ImagesPlus with a little help from Photoshop.

M27 Dumbbell Nebula

This is a picture I took of planetary nebula M27, the Dumbell Nebula, a few hours after the night-time launch of Discovery. The cloulds blew away after the launch to provide me with a very clear sky. I really enjoy the color and symmetry of planetaries. The image is a stack of fourteen 2-minute subs for a total exposure of 28 minutes. It was taken with an unmodified Canon 40D DSLR through a Televue NP101is refractor. Guiding was done with a Starlight Xpress M8C through an ETX90.