The Triangulum Galaxy - M33 Over 30 hours of standard RGB image data captured and blended with over 7 hours of Hydrogen and Oxygen gas cloud emissions data. This spiral galaxy is 2.73 million light-years from Earth and can be located in the Triangulum constellation. This galaxy is the third largest of the local group of galaxies (behind Andromeda and the Milky Way) and is one of the most distant objects that can be seen with the naked eye. It is roughly 60,000 light-years across and is roughly 60% of the diameter of the Milky Way. It is estimated to contain approximately 40 billion stars, whereas the Milky Way and Andromeda are estimated to have 400 billion and 1 Trillion respectively.

The Horsehead and Flame Nebula (IC434) Located on the easternmost part of Orion's belt, these nebula lie approx 1375 light-years from earth and are connected (in our view) by the star Altinak. At the center of the Flame Nebula is a cluster of newly formed stars, 86% of which have circumstellar disks. This image was captured over several nights in January 2026 with 14 hours of RGB color data blended with 4 hours of Hydrogen Alpha emissions data. I combined the RGB data with the Ha data to bring out greater detail in the nebula.

I captured this image back in September of 2023. This galaxy is located approx 2.5 million light years from Earth near the constellation Andromeda. Also seen are two dwarf satellite galaxies, M32 (above and to the left of M31) and M110 (below and centered). There are approx 1 Trillion stars in the Andromeda Galaxy (about 2x the amount in our Milky Way). The Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxies are expected to collide in 4.5 Billion years. Image is the result of a little over 5 hours 30 minutes of data capture near downtown Hillsboro.

Waxing Gibbous Moon from Dec 9, 2024. Image is a mosaic of 9 separate images. These images were captured using a Celestron C11 scope, a small planetary imaging camera, and FireCapture Software. Each image of the mosaic was stacked from the best 15% of frames from short videos containing 1000+ images. The 9 images were then combined using MS Image Composite Editor.

This easily seen winter star cluster is approximately 444 light years from earth and are the nearest star cluster to us. It is located in the Taurus constellation. The cluster is comprised of over a 1,000 stars and is mainly composed of hot blue and luminous stars that were formed during the last 100 million years. In Japan, the cluster is known as Subaru, and is the logo for the famous car brand of that name. Image was captured the night of 6 November 2024 and I was able to collect almost 5 hours of usable data.

The Rosette Nebula and the open star cluster, NGC 2244 in the core, lie approximately 5,000 light years from earth and span about 130 light years. This image is the result of over 11 hours of imaging to gather emission data from Hydrogen, Sulfur, and Oxygen gas clouds. These clouds are being blasted with ultraviolet radiation which causes them to emit light.

The Cygnus Wall, part of the North America Nebula and can be found in the constellation Cygnus. This image was created by using data from Sulfur, Hydrogen, and Oxygen gas emissions and combining them using what is known as the Hubble palette. This nebula is approx 2,000 light years from earth and exhibits areas of concentrated star formation. Image was the result of over 40 hours of data captured over 7 nights.

The Omega Nebula (aka Swan Nebula, M17, Lobster Nebula, Checkmark Nebula...) The Omega Nebula is between 5,000 and 6,000 light-years from Earth and it spans some 15 light-years in diameter. The cloud of interstellar matter of which this nebula is a part is roughly 40 light-years in diameter and has a mass of 30,000 solar masses. It is considered one of the brightest and most massive star-forming regions of our galaxy. Its local geometry is similar to the Orion Nebula except that it is viewed edge-on rather than face-on. The open cluster NGC 6618 lies embedded in the nebulosity and causes the gases of the nebula to shine due to radiation from these hot, young stars; however, the actual number of stars in the nebula is much higher - up to 800. It is also one of the youngest clusters known, with an age of just 1 million years. This image was captured on July 13, 2024.

This nebula covers an area more than ten times the area of the full moon, but typically cannot be seen with the naked eye. The nebula is approx 2,590 light years from earth and spans 140 light years across, and 90 light years north to south. It can be found within the constellation Cygnus. This was captured over several nights in June of 2025 using a monochrome camera and filters to capture Hydrogen Alpha, Sulphur, and Oxegen gas emissions.

This is an emission nebula in the constellation Cygnus, about 5000 light years from Earth. It is formed by fast stellar wind from a Wolf-Rayet star colliding with and energizing slower moving wind ejected by the star when it became a red giant around 250,000 to 400,000 years ago. The result of the collision is a shell and two shock waves. In the lower left of the image you'll see the Soap Bubble nebula, a planetary nebula discovered by an amateur astronomer on Jun 19, 2007 using just a 160mm refractor. This is one of those targets I loved to capture when I first started AP. The challenge was always trying to pull out the Oiii nebulosity without mangling the fine details. This was very frustrating till I realized I just needed to get a lot more data on the target to do it correctly, especially from my Bortle 7 location.

IC 1318 is the diffuse emission nebula surrounding the star Sadr at the center of the Cygnus cross. The Sadr Region is just one of the star's surrounding nebulous regions; others include the Butterfly Nebula and the Crescent Nebula (not seen in this photo). It contains many dark nebulae in addition to the emission diffuse nebulae. Sadr, the brightest star in this image, has a magnitude of 2.2 (very bright) and is about 1,800 light years away. The nebulous regions around the region are also fairly bright. This image was captured over three nights from my backyard during the summer of 2025.

WR 134 is a Wolf-Rayet (WR) type star 6,000 light years distant in the constellation Cygnus. WR stars are rare, extremely hot, and massive stars (often 20-50x mass of our sun) nearing the end of their lives and characterized by intense stellar winds and high mass loss. They are known for shedding outer hydrogen layers to reveal heavier elements like helium, carbon, or nitrogen. This star is surrounded by a faint bubble nebula created by the intense radiation and stellar winds from the star. The star is the of the four central stars near the center of the bubble. WR134 is extremely hot at 63,000K and is 400,000 times as luminous as our sun. In this image the bubble is shown in doubly ionized oxygen light (OIII) as the round blue area with a stronger signal from the left hand side. Also the area is full of Hydrogen (HII) emission shown as the red clouds of gas.

Located in the constellation Cepheus, these large star forming molecular clouds are located about 1,200 light years from us. This is a region of low and intermediate star formation known as the Cepheus Flare. The Cepheus Flare molecular cloud complex stretches almost seven full moons across the sky. This image was captured at a Stub Stewart State Park outside of Portland.

Estimated to have formed about 10,000 years ago, it is believed that the source of this supernova remnant is now a very fast moving Pulsar (J0002). Interestingly, the pulsar was detected outside the bubble of the nebula, meaning that during the SN, it was sent careening away fast enough to overtake the expanding cloud of gas and dust.

The Fireworks Galaxy is a face-on intermediate spiral galaxy with a small bright nucleus, whose location in the sky straddles the boundary between the northern constellations of Cepheus and Cygnus. At a distance of 25.2 million light-years from Earth, it was discovered in 1798 by William Herschel. This galaxy has a diameter of approximately 40,000 light-years, about one-third of the Milky Way's size, and it contains roughly half the number of stars as the Milky Way. It is called the Fireworks Galaxy due to it's rate of Supernova's detected is about twice that we would expect from a galaxy that size. It is heavily obscured by interstellar matter due to its location close to the galactic plane of the Milky Way. Due to its prodigious star formation it has been classified as an active starburst galaxy.

Located 21 million light years away in the constellation Canes Venatici (just below the handle of the big dipper). This was the first galaxy to be classified as a "spiral" galaxy. Estimated diameter is 76,000 light years with a mass of approx 10% of the milky way galaxy. M51 is also known as NGC 5194 and can be seen interacting with NGC 5195, a dwarf galaxy. These two are the most famous of interacting galaxy pairs.

This open cluster of stars, known as Melotte 15 and as Collinder 26, contains stars nearly 50 times the mass of the Sun, and many more dim stars that are only a fraction of the Sun's mass. This cluster forms the center of the Heart Nebula (IC 1805).

The Elephant's Trunk Nebula is a concentration of interstellar gas and dust within the much larger ionized gas region IC 1396, located in the constellation Cepheus about 2,400 light years away from Earth. The Elephant's Trunk Nebula is now thought to be a site of star formation, containing several very young (less than 100,000 yr) stars that were discovered in infrared images in 2003. Two older (but still young, a couple of million years, by the standards of stars, which live for billions of years) stars are present in a small, circular cavity in the head of the globule. Winds from these young stars may have emptied the cavity. The combined action of the light from the massive stars ionizing and compressing the rim of the cloud, and the wind from the young stars shifting gas from the center outward lead to very high compression in the Elephant's Trunk Nebula. This pressure has triggered the current generation of protostars.

Abell 39 is a low surface brightness planetary nebula in the constellation of Hercules. It is estimated to be about 3,300 light-years from earth and 4,600 light-years above the Galactic plane. It is almost perfectly spherical and also one of the largest known spheres with a radius of about 1.3 light-years. Its central star is slightly west of center by about 2″ or 0.1 light-years. This offset does not appear to be due to interaction with the interstellar medium, but instead, it is hypothesized that a small asymmetric mass ejection has accelerated the central star. The mass of the central star is estimated to be about 0.61 M with the material in the planetary nebula comprising an additional 0.6 M. This planetary nebula has been expanding for an estimated 22,100 years. Oxygen is only about half as abundant in the nebula as it is in our own sun. This was captured from my backyard on 19-20 July 2022.

Located about 6,000 light-years from Earth, the Soul nebulae is an emission nebula that forms a vast star-forming complex that makes up part of the Perseus spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. The Soul nebula is also known as the Embryo nebula, IC 1848 or Westerhout 5. The Perseus arm lies further from the center of the Milky Way than the arm that contains our sun. The Soul nebulae spans an area of sky equivalent to four full moons. The nebulae is a massive star-making factory, marked by giant bubbles that were blown into surrounding dust by radiation and winds from the stars. These stars are less than a few million of years old. Image was the result of over 32 hours of data captured over 6 nights in late summer/fall of 2024.

This nebula is over 20 light years long and runs through IC1396, a young star cluster located in a cloud of glowing, ionized gas in the Cepheus constellation. The Elephant's Trunk is composed of cool interstellar dust and gas, which blocks the light on its way to Earth and leaves behind a long, thin silhouette that gives the nebula its name. The IC 1396 star cluster is located about 3,000 light years away.

The Western Veil is also known as the witch's broom, is part of a larger structure known simply as the Veil Nebula. The source of the nebula was a Supernova explosion of a star 20 times as massive as our own Sun. Estimates are that the star exploded 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. The supernova, had we seen it, would have been brighter to us than Venus. Estimated distance to this nebula is 2,400 light years. edit: That bright star is 52 Cygni and is only 291 light years away.

The Eastern Veil Nebula, also known as Caldwell 33, is a large supernova remnant in the constellation Cygnus that is about 2,400 light years from Earth. It is an expanding cloud created by a supernova from a star about 20 times the mass of our sun. Scientists believe that the light from this supernova explosion reached Earth about 10,000 to 20,000 years ago.

This is a bright emission nebula in the constellation Cassiopeia. It gets it's name from it's resemblance to the video game character. Up until then, it was just known as NGC 281, IC 11, or Sh2-184. The Pacman nebula, aka NGC 281, is about 9,500 light years from earth and has a diameter of about 96 light years. This was shot from my backyard August 12-14 2023, August 28-29 2024, and September 4-5 2024.

Another capture of the this nebula. It is over 20 light years long and runs through IC1396, a young star cluster located in a cloud of glowing, ionized gas in the Cepheus constellation. The Elephant's Trunk is composed of cool interstellar dust and gas, which blocks the light on its way to Earth and leaves behind a long, thin silhouette that gives the nebula its name. The IC 1396 star cluster is located about 3,000 light years away.

This nebula in the constellation of Cassiopeia has flowing veils of gas and dust that have earned it the nickname "Ghost Nebula." The nebula is being blasted by a torrent of radiation from a nearby, blue-giant star called Gamma Cassiopeia, which can be easily seen with the unaided eye at the center of the distinctive "W" asterism that forms the constellation. IC 63 is located 550 light-years away. I captured this image Sep 9, 2023 and was able to gather just under 6 hours worth of data using a 6 inch Newtonian telescope.

This is an area of interstellar hydrogen that is ionized. It is associated with the North America Nebula in the constellation Cygnus. The Pelican is studied because it has a very active mix of star formation and evolving gas clouds. The light from young energetic stars slowly transforms cold gas to hot causing an ionization front to gradually move outward. In the upper middle of this picture, you can see filaments of cold gas that still remain. The Pelican is about 1,800 light years from earth. This image was captured over 4 days in June 2025 with a 10 inch Newtonian telescope.

Also known as Sh2-119, this is a diffuse Nebula in the constellation Cygnus and appears to envelop the fifth magnitude star 68 Cygni. Its shape appears similar to two shells that are arranged east and west of 68 Cygni; the eastern part is the largest. In the southern part, thin filaments and cocoons of dark nebulosities are visible , contrasting strongly both with the glow of the nebula and with the rich background star field. The distance of Sh2-119 is estimated at 2200 light years from us. Captured over 5 nights in July 2025 with a total exposure of 29h 27m, using a 6 inch Newtonian telescope.

There are three main components of the Veil Nebula. The western veil (center bottom of image), the eastern veil (top, just right of center), and Pickering's Triangle (large nebula between the other two), which was discovered by Williamina Fleming, but credit was given to her observatory directory, Edward C Pickering. The source of the nebula was a Supernova explosion of a star 20 times as massive as our own Sun. Estimates are that the star exploded 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. The supernova, had we seen it, would have been brighter to us than Venus. Estimated distance to this nebula is 2,400 light years. The whole nebula is approx 65 light years across and from our perspective, if compared in size to the moon, would be 6 times wider/taller. Image was captured over 3 nights in Sep/Oct 2023 using a small 51mm refractor telescope.

This nebula, aka NGC 7380, spans an area on the sky of about 5 times the size of the full moon. NGC 7380 is located in the constellation Cepheus about 7,000 light-years from Earth. The star cluster is embedded in a nebula, which spans some 110 light-years. The stars of NGC 7380 have emerged from this star-forming region in the last 5 million years or so, making it a relatively young cluster. This image was captured from my backyard over multiple nights in 2023 and 2024, capturing over 19 hours of data, with a 5 inch refractor telescope.

This is an emission nebula located 1,000 light years away from us in the constellation Perseus. It earned it's name due to it's resemblance to the US State. Its fluorescence is probably due to ionization of Hydrogen in the nebula by the nearby very energetic O-star (Massive, luminous, blue star of spectral type O) Menkib seen at center above in my picture. This image was captured over 6 days, with over 57 hours of data, in 2023 and 2024 using a small 2 inch refractor telescope.

"This beautiful nebula is unique amongst its counterparts. While many of the nebulae visible in the night sky are emission nebulae — clouds of dust and gas that are hot enough to emit their own radiation and light — the Iris Nebula, or NGC 7023, is a reflection nebula. This means that its color comes from the scattered light of its central star, which lies nestled in the abundant star fields of the constellation Cepheus. Located some 1,400 light-years away from Earth, the Iris Nebula’s glowing gaseous petals stretch roughly 6 light-years across. Reflection nebulae glow because they are made up of extremely tiny particles of solid matter, up to 10 or even 100 times smaller than dust particles on Earth. These particles diffuse the light around them, giving the nebula a second-hand glow that’s typically bluish (like our sky). While the Iris Nebula appears predominantly blue, it includes large filaments of deep red, indicating the presence of an unknown chemical compound likely based on hydrocarbons." - NASA This image was captured at a Stub Stewart State Park on 5 Jul 2024 and is the result of only 2 hours 22 minutes of data captured with a 6 inch Newtonian telescope.