Category: Astrophotography

In the upper right are the Lagoon Nebula and Trifid Nebula while the rest of the image is dominated by the Milky Way, mostly in the constellation of Sagittarius.

The Lagoon is a bright star forming nebula, visible to the unaided eye, and second only to the Orion Nebula in the winter sky. Above and to the right is the Trifid Nebula, which deserves it’s own closeup. The Trifid contains emission, reflection, and dark nebulae all in one tidy package. Throughout the image but especially in the Milky Way, you can see dark nebulae everywhere. These are simply cold clouds of gas and dusk that are too cold to emit light and not near anything to let them reflect light.

This was shot with my Samyang 135mm F/2 lens and ASI2600MC Pro with an Antlia Triband RGB Ultra filter for a total of two hours from the River Ridge Observatory.

The Elephant Trunk Nebula is a bright emission nebula in the constellation of Cepheus. This is a bit of a closeup but the entire nebula is roughly spherical and is energized by the bright star a little above the “trunk” in this picture.

This was shot with my 11″ SCT at f/1.9 with an L-Extreme F2 filter and an ASI2600MC Pro for a total of 137 minutes from the River Ridge Observatory.

The Lobster Nebula is a diffuse Hydrogen Alpha (red light) nebula in the constellation of Scorpius. This was shot with my 11″ SCT at f/1.9 with an L-Extreme F2 filter and an ASI2600MC Pro. It was the last item on my list for the night and as such I only got 45 minutes of total exposure from the River Ridge Observatory. Even so, there’s enough to see how it got it’s nick name.