Images by Utah Desert Remote Observatories’ clients
This is a widefield view of the Cygnus Loop supernova remnant, captured from Bortle 2 skies at Utah Desert Remote Observatories, rendered in Hubble Palette. Composed of a total of 4 hours of SHO data and 1 hour of RGB data for stars processed in PixInsight, this spectacular widefield image was captured over 2 nights in June 2022. Of special note is the abundance of Ha visible in this image, possible only from very pristine skies, as well as the minimal integration time required due to superior data quality. Credits: Chiradeep Chhaya/Craig Stocks/Utah Desert Remote ObservatoriesThanks to Utah Desert Observatory and Craig, I have the joy of having an image of M94 – The Cat’s Eye Galaxy. The tight winding inner spiral arms and the faint outer disk required a better telescope than I had. It was fun both discussing the capture plan with Craig and processing the captured images. Amazing this was from only 5 hours of data during April of 2022The Seagull Nebula, a large colorful nebula in the constellation Monoceros. This was taken from Utah Desert Remote Observatory using the Takahashi FSQ-106 and ZWO ASI6200MM. A total of 9 hours of data was used to create this image. This was shot with narrowband filters and combined as the Hubble Palette. A little bit of extra time was used with broadband filters for the stars. Credits: Antoine Grelin/Craig Stocks/Utah Desert Remote Observatories. More information is available on The Galactic Hunter website.This grand design spiral galaxy (M74 Phantom Galaxy) was captured with 11+ hours exposure (LRGBHa) over several nights using the imaging system at Utah Desert Remote Observatories in October 2022. The processing was focused on revealing the inner core details inspired by images from the Hubble and recently James Webb space telescopes.The main target we captured with our remote telescope throughout November, December, and January is none other than NGC 2264.
We used our SVX130 telescope, which has a longer focal length (655mm) than the small beginner telescope we used from home for our previous attempt (350mm). https://www.galactic-hunter.com/post/ngc2264Despite the near-full moon being high in the sky, I decided to aim my 655mm refractor telescope (hosted by Utah Desert Remote Observatories ) at the comet and start shooting using R, G, and B filters.
Because I was on vacation for the holidays, I did not have any knowledge about the comet’s position, number of tails, and best angle to capture it. I did a quick Google Image search to look at recent pictures of the object and tried my best to align it right in my field of view. Looking back, I wish I had off-centered it more to the bottom of the frame, to have a full view of the upper tail. https://www.galactic-hunter.com/post/green-cometThe Pacman Nebula is an emission nebula in the constellation Cassiopeia. It is located in the Perseus arm of our Milky Way galaxy, and so is best photographed in the Fall Season. We’ll show you all our attempts in this post, our last one being with over 54 hours of total integration time! https://www.galactic-hunter.com/post/ngc-281-the-pacman-nebulaRosette Nebula by HeatherFireworks Galaxy by PaulWhen pursuing a close up of the Horsehead Nebula, an astrophtographer will become acquainted with Alnitak. Many astrophotgraphers consider it to be a real pain, and it is. But another, sigma-Orion just to the west (up in this image) can also create a strong lens flare. With this framing, both the large flare from sigma-Orion, and the small one from Alnitak, cross to frame the horsehead in an effort to… just embrace the light. In the process, in between the flares a nice close up of the Horsehead emerges.
This target is fascinating the way sigma-Orion lights the dark horsehead nebula from above and behind, yielding a bright top, sides and even front, while the protected region just at the top of the “neck” stays dark. Small, faint stars are all around. And the striations of red, hydrogen gases seemingly rising toward sigma-Orion make it appear as if there is a magnetic field somehow aligning charged gases. (No one knows what is really happening with those striations but it is fun to think about). Then the large cloud of gas that looks like the tops of clouds you fly over on earth with an invitation to run through them to disturb their peaceful rest. What makes them lie down together, then shoot up towards sigma-Orion? What caused the horsehead to move in a direction different from the rest of the dark matter? Maybe it’s to give beauty and variety to us.CTA1_025840 by Reg LBN 534 by RegEagle Nubula by PatrickTadpoles Nebula by Steve Robbins
