September 2025

Welcome to Hank’s September 2025 Astrophotography Blog. This month I removed the wide field view of the Hyperstar lens I was imaging with for the last couple of months and started taking photos with the 8” Celestron’s native setup, which has a narrow field of view of less than a half a degree of width, and a focal length of 2032 mm. What that means is that I have been looking at a number of small distant galaxies and small nebulosity.

M27 is called a couple of names, usually the Apple Core or the Dumbbell Planetary Nebula. This image was taken with sixty 2-minute exposures or for two hours. It is the remains of a supernova that exploded over 14,000 years ago, and the resulting dust and gasses have been expanding outward ever since. It is 1,360 light years (ly) away. M 57, the Ring Nebula, is another planetary nebula that is about 2,500 ly distant.

Here are three other galaxies I wanted to get a look at: The Fireworks Galaxy, the Squid Galaxy and the Silver Sliver Galaxy. Galaxies are typically shaped like a plate—round and flat. The first two are face-on toward us, whereas the last is edge-on, making it look like a sliver in this case. Often galaxies bulge in the center, where most of the dense mass of the galaxies is.

The large Deer Lick Galaxy, NGC7331, is about 44 million light years (Mly) away, and is sometimes labeled as a group with the other 4 smaller nearby galaxies. They are only a visible grouping, as the four smaller galaxies are about 300-350 Mly away. Up until the 2000s, the Deer Lick Galaxy was sometimes referred to as “Milky Way’s twin”, but apparently there are differences. The Milky Way’s center bulge is thought to rotate in the same direction as its disk, whereas NGC7331’s central bulge rotates in the opposite direction as the disk.

Stephen’s Quintet is a group of 5 galaxies in Pegasus. NGC7320 on the left is not physically close to the other four galaxies as it is about 39 Mly away from us. The other four galaxies are about 300 Mly away. Also, NGC7318A and 7318B are colliding at the speed of about 900 km/second and creating huge shock waves. Marianne will be pleased to know that the angelic figures at the beginning of her favorite all time holiday film, “It’s a Wonderful Life”, are based on the galactic images of Stephen’s Quintet.

I had my portable Seestar telescope out a couple of times this month. Here’s the Iris Nebula, taken with 221 thirty second images, or 110+ minutes of exposure.

At our BHAS Star Party at Custer State Park on September 19th I took the image below of Andromeda. When I take an image with the Seestar each 30 second exposure shows up on my iPad, stacked on top of the last image. As time goes on it brings out more and more detail. One feature I really like with Seestar is that it saves each one of the individual exposures, and I can then do post processing later using the Siril, Photoshop Elements and GraXpert. The first image shows the Seestar processing, and the second shows the results using Siril,Photoshop and GraXpert. It can really bring out more detail.

Finally, on the morning of the 19th, there was a conjunction of the Moon, Venus and the star Regulus in the constellation Leo. I drove out to my spot on Hwy 16A where there is a good view to the East and started taking photos with my iPhone. A car pulled up behind me and just sat there with their lights on. Next thing I know the Sheriff drives up and wants to know what was going on. I guess amateur astronomers are a suspicious looking bunch.

Until next time, clear skies! -Hank