„Lift up your eyes to heaven and see. Who has created these things?
It is the One who brings out their army by number; He calls them all by name.
Because of his vast dynamic energy and his awe-inspiring power, Not one of them is missing (…)”

Middle Eastern poem about the stars, 8th century BCE

Our recent pictures

Veil Nebula

NGC 6960 / Caldwell 34

The Veil Nebula is the remnant of an exploded star. It is massive; when viewed from Earth it is over 30 times the area of the full Moon. The actual diamater is about 65 light-years and our distance from it is around 2,500 light-years. Even the finest filaments are huge; their thickness is about the distance from the Sun to Pluto! The supernova explosion (that this nebula is the remnant of) happened less than 20,000 years ago.

Ring Nebula

M57 / NGC 6720

Dora’s favorite planetary nebula imaged on the night of the summer solstice. In the middle is a (now) white dwarf. It is actually 200x as bright as the Sun, but is 2,400 light-years away. This nebula is tiny (when viewed from Earth), just 1.5 by 1 arcminutes. It only started the expansion 200-600 years ago!

North America & Pelican nebulae

NGC 7000 / Caldwell 2 & IC 5070 & IC 5067

The North America Nebula is huge; when viewed from Earth it is over 10 times the area of the full Moon. The actual diamater is about 90 light-years and our distance from it is around 2,590 light-years.

M13

NGC 6205

The M13 globular cluster is one of the largest and brightest in the Milky Way. This ancient, 11.6 billion years old cluster is made up of 100,000 stars and thousands are visible in this picture. It is located 22,200 light-years away from Earth.

M3

NGC 5272

The M3 globular cluster is one of the largest and brightest in the Milky Way. This ancient, 11.4 billion years old cluster is made up of half a million stars and thousands are visible in this picture. It is located 32,600 light-years away from Earth and is quite isolated from the rest of our galaxy because it is ~40° above the galactic plane.

The Eyes

NGC 4435 & NGC 4438 / Arp 120 and asteroids!

NGC 4435 is a barred lenticular galaxy currently colliding with NGC 4438. Both are about 52 million light-years away. There are 3 interesting trails visible in the image below. These belong to a minor planet and two asteroids. Can you find them? Only a handful of people have ever seen any of these objects!

Articles

Blaze Star

T Coronae Borealis

The Blaze Star is a recurring nova (not a supernova) in the constellation Corona Borealis. It also known as T Coronae Borealis or T CrB for short. A nova event is expected any day now. The star will suddenly brighten up to a similar luminosity as Polaris (North Star). The next occurance is expected in 2104.

How do we take astrophotos?

What kind of equipment is needed to take these pictures

People keep asking us if these pictures are made by us. They are. Really. This is the equipment we use.

Etcetera

Assorted throwaway pancakes

More often than not astrophotos don’t come out the way you planned them to. There are about 200 steps involved in taking a picture, and they all have to be right. Also, often we need to experiment, finetune equipment or the sky is not good enough for long enough to finish a project. These are some examples of failures and experiments.