A Deep Narrowband Study of One of Amateur Astronomy’s Recent Discoveries
In an era where we think everything in the night sky has been catalogued, it’s remarkable that a massive nebula nearly a degree across remained undiscovered until 2011. The Giant Squid Nebula (Ou4) is a testament to what modern narrowband imaging can reveal—and a reminder that amateur astrophotographers are still making real discoveries.
Continue reading The Flying Bat & The Giant Squid: Sh2-129 and Ou4Of all the objects in the night sky, few capture the imagination quite like M42—the Great Orion Nebula. Visible to the naked eye as a fuzzy “star” in Orion’s sword, even under moderately light-polluted skies, it’s been observed for millennia. This was one of the first deep-space objects I ever tried to photograph (back around 2018), but there’s always something new to discover.
Continue reading M42: The Great Orion Nebula & The Running ManFrom Starfront Observatories near Brady, Texas – IC 2118, the Witch Head Nebula, emerges from the cosmic darkness in not too far away in our nighttime sky from the famous Great Orion Nebula. This object, however, is a faint reflection nebula sitting approximately 900 light-years away, meaning the photons in this image began their journey around the year 1125 – during the height of the Crusades and the construction of Europe’s great cathedrals.
Continue reading 46 Hours on The Witch Head Nebula (IC2118) in LRGB + H-alpha 🧙♀️The Dark Shark Nebula 🦈
From Starfront Observatories near Brady, Texas – I caught a predator lurking in the depths of Cepheus. LDN 1235, better known as the Dark Shark Nebula, glides through a sea of stars approximately 650 light-years from Earth. The photons in this image left this cosmic nursery around the year 1375 – as the Renaissance was beginning to dawn in Europe and the Ming Dynasty was rising in China.
Continue reading 52 Hours on the Dark Shark: Deep Sky Astrophotography of LDN 1235
