San Francisco, 2011-07-09

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Iris Nebula, NGC7023 2022-05-23
Reprocessed with yet more data. I don’t know that this is significantly better than my previous results ( here and here and here ). But NGC7023 is a fascinating object, and I will probably return to it for the rest of my life. As always, the images available from Wikipedia are worth a pause.
IC2574 2022-05-21
IC2574 is the faint smudge in the center, 13 million light-years away. A dim dwarf spiral galaxy. According to Wikipedia, approximately 90% of its mass is dark matter. Taken with a 110mm F/7 refractor. Total exposure time is about 13 hours.
M63 2022-05-21
Sometimes referred to as “the Sunflower Galaxy”. This image has about 7 hours total exposure time. It is quite a pretty galaxy — if you zoom in (ie, click on the picture), it looks like a swirl of altocumulus clouds on a spring day.
M102 2022-05-19
M102 is a difficult object for my setup and conditions. It is, apparently, known as the “Spindle Galaxy”. A five or six times blowup of the above image does manage to show the “spindle”, barely: This Hubble image gives a better idea of how it got the name.