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07 January 2025

NGC 2736 (also known as the Pencil Nebula) is a small part of the Vela Supernova Remnant, located near the Vela Pulsar in the constellation Vela. The nebula's linear appearance triggered its popular name. It resides about 815 light-years (250 parsecs) away from the Solar System. It is thought to be formed from part of the shock wave of the larger Vela Supernova Remnant. The Pencil Nebula is moving at roughly 644,000 kilometers per hour (400,000 miles per hour).
The Vela supernova remnant is a supernova remnant in the southern constellation Vela. Its source Type II supernova exploded approximately 11,000 years ago. The Vela supernova remnant is one of the closest known to us.
I scheduled 25 missions through the Slooh telescope Chili two with a total exposure time of 46 minutes. The resulting 100 FITS images are combined and further processed in PixInsight.

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12 January 2025

NGC 3199 is located in the constellation Carina. Because of the form of this nebula it got the nickname The Banana Nebula. In the apparent center of the partial ring is a Wolf-Rayet star with the designation HD 89358. A Wolf-Rayet star is the remnant of a supermassive star that blew away half of its mass into the interstellar space and as such exposing its super hot core. The intense radiation of this hot core ionizes the previously ejected material; this would normally result in a bright ring nebula around the star. In this case there is not a complete ring but only a partly visible radiating nebula. This is caused by the original composition of the surrounding space as a recent (2017) study suggests.
I scheduled 30 missions through the Slooh Chili two telescope with a total exposure time of 55 minutes. The resulting FITS-files are combined and processed in PixInsight.

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30 December 2024

This picture shows the young open star cluster NGC 346 in the neighboring Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy. The cluster is embedded in the brightest H II region in that galaxy, designated N66. The youngest stars in this open cluster are considered to be just 2 million years old. The intense radiation of these young stars ionize the gas in this H II region resulting in the nice emission nebula visible around the star cluster.
NGC 346 is located in the constellation Tucana (the Toucan) and spans approximately 200 light-years. The distance of the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy is about 210,000 light years from earth.
In the lower right corner of this image another compact open cluster can be seen. This cluster has the designation NGC 330.
I scheduled 55 missions through the 0.5 meter Australia One telescope with a total exposure time of 1 hour and 41 minutes. The resulting 220 Fits images were combined and further processed in PixInsight.

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10 January 2025

NGC 3576 is a HII Ionized region in the Carina constellation. This nebula is a minor nebula in the Sagittarius arm of the Galaxy a few thousand light years from the Eta Carinae nebula. When John Herschel discovered this nebula in 1834 he could only see several bright nebulous patches and eventually this nebula received six separate classification numbers, NGC 3576, 3579, 3581, 3582, 3584 and 3586. These days astronomers usually call the entire nebula NGC 3576.
It got the nickname Statue of Liberty nebula because in images made with narrowband filters there is clearly a form visible resembling the statue of liberty. The dark nebula above the middle is the body of the statue but the arm with the torch is not visible in this RGB-image.
I scheduled 25 missions through the Slooh Chili two telescope with a total exposure time of 46 minutes. The resulting Fits-files were combined and processed in PixInsight.

Click on the image to get a larger version