June was a great month of viewing.
I’ve changed the labels on my photos this month. As in the past I show the common names of these objects, such as “Sunflower Galaxy,” if it has one. But I always include one of the catalog names, such as M12 or NGC 6946. These designations are easier to look up on the internet if you are interested in learning more. The M stands for Messier, an astronomer in the 1700s who documented objects that he saw that were not asteroids, which he spent much of his time looking for. NGC stands for New General Catalog, a catalog of deep sky objects from the late 1800s and early 1900s. There are many other catalogs. If it isn’t obvious, I also show what kind of object it is, such as an “Open Cluster” or a “Spiral Galaxy.” Mag. Stands for magnitude, or how visible the object is. In this scale, the larger the number, the dimmer it is. Objects with a magnitude of 6.0 or less are visible with your own eyes in the night sky, when the sky is clear and dark (very rare since the advent of electric lights) and you know where to look. The brightest objects, such as Mars, have negative magnitudes (-2.94). The number to the right of the magnitude indicates the distance it is from us in light years or “ly.” Mly stands for millions of light years. A Light years is the distance light travels in an Earth year or about six trillion miles. So, the light year distance tells you not only how far away it is, but how long ago that light started on its journey, before being detected by my telescope and camera.
Here’s this month’s line-up:
M 12 is a Globular Cluster of stars, and as you can tell by the number of light years away it is, it is part of our Milky Way galaxy.
M 16 is the Eagle Nebula. The image shown is only part of the nebula and shows what is often referred to as The Pillars of Creation, an active star forming region.
M 20 was captured using a filter that blocks all light but a narrow band in the Hydrogen Alpha bandwidth.
M 27 is a Planetary Nebula. It has nothing to do with planets, but is “any of a class of bright nebulae that are expanding shells of luminous gas expelled by dying stars.”
M 57 is another interesting planetary nebula.
M63—Just love these galaxies!!!!
M 64—If you can zoom in, check out the center of this galaxy!
M 81 was shown last month, too, paired with another galaxy. The stars in the foreground are just a few thousand light years away, so you see them as dots. The stars in M 81 are so small and numerous that they just blur together.
The Moon—to give you a little perspective, the moon is 0.00000004 light years away.
NGC 6888 is a nebula. I was only able to gather less than 20 minutes of light on this. I’m trying to get set up for longer exposures so I can get more of the nebula—where in other photos I’ve seen, it looks more like a baked potato.
NGC 6946, the Fireworks Galaxy really has that pinwheel look!
I’ll be back next month with more, if the skies are clear….
Hank
