The Cocoon Nebula IC 5146 is a dust and gas pillar dozens of light years long, approximately 2000 light years away from us. Inside the very tip of the pillar there is a cluster of young stars, which light up the dust and excite the hydrogen gas, making it glow red.
The image was exposed for a total of 10 hours with Chroma LRGB filters, a ZWO ASI2600MM camera, Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED refractor telescope and an APM Riccardi 0.
The photo shows two very well known galaxies high in the northern sky called Messier 81 and Messier 82. The galaxies are seemingly surrounded by dust clouds, which are actually intergalactic matter made visible by all the starlight coming from the Milky Way, called the Integrated Flux Nebula. It is extremely faint and visible only in some parts of the sky with very long exposure times.
The image was exposed for a total of 13 hours with Chroma LRGB filters, a ZWO ASI2600MM camera, Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED refractor telescope and an APM Riccardi 0.
IC 2169 on the left is a complex of dark nebulae and a large reflection nebula in the constellation of Monoceros. It is approximately 2500 light years away from us.
On the right you can see the so called Christmas Tree cluster NGC 2264, surrounded by red hydrogen nebulosity. At the tip of the “tree” you can see the small Cone Nebula.
The image was exposed for a total of 9 hours with Chroma LRGB filters, a ZWO ASI2600MM camera, Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED refractor telescope and an APM Riccardi 0.
The Pleiades, or Messier 45, is a star cluster about 450 light years away from us. It is very easy to spot in the sky with your bare eyes if you know where to look. The cluster is formed of relatively young and very hot stars, all formed within the last 100 million years or so. So around the time dinosaurs still roamed the Earth or later!
The name of the cluster is Subaru in Japanese, and the car brand Subaru has it in their logo too!
Along with Cygnus, the Orion constellation houses many bright and interesting nebulae. This photo shows a large portion of the sky containing the Orion Nebula M42, the Flame Nebula NGC 2024 and the Horsehead Nebula IC 434.
The image is a 3-part mosaic, and each part was exposed for a total of 2 hours with Chroma LRGB filters, a ZWO ASI2600MM camera, Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED refractor telescope and an APM Riccardi 0.
The Cygnus constellation contains many bright and beautiful nebulae. This photo shows a large part of the constellation. You can see the NGC 7000 North America Nebula in the top left corner, and in the bottom right corner you can see the Butterfly Nebula IC 1318 and the Crescent Nebula NGC 6888.
The image consists of 16 separate panels, each exposed for a total of 15 minutes with Chroma 3 nm narrowband filters (S-II, H-a and O-III) with a ZWO ASI2600MM, a Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED refractor telescope and an APM Riccardi 0.
Messier 33 or the Triangulum Galaxy is one of the closest galaxies to our own home galaxy The Milky Way. The galaxy is 2.7 million light years from us. In good conditions it can be seen with the naked eye, not very far from the Andromeda galaxy!
The photo has been exposed for a total of 5 hours with Chroma LRGB filters with a ZWO ASI2600MM, a Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED refractor telescope and an APM Riccardi 0.
This is a two-part mosaic image of the large supernova remnant called the Veil Nebula, located in the Cygnus constellation of stars. The nebula covers over 3 degrees of the sky. The supernova remnant was born when a large star 2 400 light years away from us exploded 10 000 - 20 000 years ago.
The photo has been exposed for a total of 5 hours with Chroma 3 nm narrowband filters (S-II, H-a and O-III) with the ZWO ASI2600MM, a Sky-Watcher Esprit 100ED refractor telescope and an APM Riccardi 0.
Orion is one of the prominent winter star constellations, and contains a host of beautiful nebulae. Next to Alnitak, the easternmost star of the Orion belt, is a big nebula called IC 434. In the middle of the nebula there is a dark dust cloud called the Horsehead Nebula for obvious reasons. The column of dust is roughly 3.5 light years in length.
IC 434 is fairly low in the Finnish winter sky, and clear weather has been sparse, which means it took me three months to collect all the material for this photo.