A Gallery of Astronomical Images by RAS Members and Friends

M65, by Mearl Balmer

Messier Galaxies 65 and 66 by Mearl Balmer.  This is a composite of one 10 minute exposure and seven 5 min exposures with a Canon 550 on a Meade LX8 scope with a wedge; no dark or flat images, processed with PixInsight software.

The Cigar Galaxy M82, by Madhup Rathi

Evidence indicates that this reddish hydrogen area of ionized hydrogen near the center is being driven out by the combined emerging particle winds of many stars, together creating a galactic superwind. The filaments extend for over 10,000 light years. The 12-million light-year distant Cigar Galaxy is the brightest galaxy in the sky in infrared light, and can be seen in visible light with a small telescope…

Antennae Galaxies, by Madhup Rathi

An image of the Antennae Galaxies by Madhup Rathi.  These galaxies are some 60 million light-years away in the southerly constellation Corvus.  The two large galaxies are colliding, leaving a long tail of their remnant spiral arms. Spanning about 500 thousand light-years, the stars in the two galaxies, cataloged as NGC 4038 and NGC 4039, very rarely collide directly in the course of this merger,…

ISS and Moon, by Tyler Hutchison

Tyler Hutchison took this image of the ISS at 6:01 AM on January 19, 2017 with 48.4s of exposure at ISO 200 and f/3.5. Jupiter is visible just to the right of the Moon, and the bright star Spica just below that. The International Space Station appears to fly right through the Moon’s “halo”, an optical phenomena that occurs when hexagonal ice crystals refract moonlight in…

The Cone Nebula, by Madhup Rathi

This nebula is so named because of its apparent shape.  It consists of a dark absorption nebula of cold molecular hydrogen and dust in front of a faint emission nebula containing hydrogen ionized by S Monocerotis, the brightest star in the image. The faint nebula is approximately seven light-years long (with an apparent length of 10 arc minutes), and is 2,700 light-years away from Earth….

Irregular Dwarf Galaxy IC1613, by Madhup Rathi.

IC 1613 is an irregular dwarf galaxy, visible in the constellation Cetus near the star 26 Ceti. It is approaching Earth at 234 km/s and is one of the closest galaxies to us at approximately 2.38 million light year. It is closer to us than the nearest large galaxy Andromeda galaxy and is substantially smaller. Madhup captured this image over 6.5 hours with 8 luminance images…

Abell 85, by Dwight Talley

Composite image of Abell 85 (also known as CTB1) by Dwight Talley consisting of 18 hours of exposure time (27 x 20 minute images through a hydrogen-alpha filter, 27 x 20 minute images through an oxygen III filter, using an AT65EDQ telescope and QSI 660 camera).

Comet 45P, by Dwight Talley

Dwight Talley captured this image of Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova from New Mexico. The timing was early in the comet’s latest approach to Earth with the comet very low in the western sky at sunset. Dwight’s image is a composite of 5 images, each at 2 minutes exposure using a TEC 140 telescope and STF8300C camera.

Star Trails, by Rebecca Browder

Star trails captured in a sequence of 320 30-second exposures at ISO 6400 on December 30, 2016.  The individual images were combined into one composite using Startrails software.  A video showing the image accumulation/compositing is at https://youtu.be/UCyaeLtAefI.