M31
Takahashi FSQ-ED 106 f/5
Camera: SBIG STL-11000
Mount: Paramount PME
Filters: LRGB
Exposure: 11 x 300sec Bin 1×1, 5 x 300 sec in the Blue, 9 x 180 sec in the Green and 7 x 300 sec in the Red RGB all 2×2 bin. Dark Subtracted, Flat fielded
By Nick Tonkin
Lower part of North American nebula by Dean Ashton
The bottom of the North American Nebula that I have imaged over the last few months. This is a 2-frame mosaic image
NGC4244 on the lower left and NGC4214 middle right.
It’s NGC4214 that piqued my interest. The most obvious is how chaotic it looks. On further investigation it’s classed as an ‘Irregular’. In my copy of ‘Hubble Atlas of Galaxies’ it goes further and names them as Irr Type 1 or Megallanic Cloud type irregulars. If they took the Large Megallanic Cloud and repositioned it 11 mly away it would look very much like NGC4214 shown here.
It’s also called a s Starburst galaxy, which is one with an exceptionally high rate of star formation compared to the average. This activity is so great, that around the 6 or so blue star clusters, the stellar winds form bubbles in the surrounding gas. Over time these bubble increase in size as the Hot ‘O’ type stars within them grow older. This activity is so great that these galaxies are often called Wolf-Reyet galaxies. As well as containing lots of new young stars, this galaxy contains many old red supergiants which suggest that this bout of current star formation is not the first and with the abundant supply of hydrogen will likely continue to do so in the future.
M16 & M17 by Dr Nigel Price
This is the Eagle Nebula (M16) centre and the Omega Nebula (M17) bottom right. Both are quite low to the horizon….lots of stars due to the proximity to the galactic bulge…over 230,000 point sources in the image!
The Flaming Star, Tadpole and Spider and Fly nebulas in Auriga by Dr Nigel Price
Lagoon & Trifid Nebula
by Dr Nigel Price
All images are Copyright of the respective owners names against each image.