Astrophotography

This planetary nebula (Charles Messier's first) is one of the brightest in the night sky. The elegant aquamarine and red-orange hues reveal an abundance of oxygen laced with hydrogen gas. Four billion years from now, this will be the likely fate of our own sun. By Carl Crum '24

M45. The Pleiades. Subaru. The Seven Sisters. Since antiquity, this open cluster has been admired from China to Australia to Europe. According to Greek mythology, the Pleiades were the seven daughters of Pleione, a sea-nymph, and Atlas, the titan who holds up the sky. Relentlessly pursued by Orion the Hunter, Zeus took pity on the beautiful sisters and immortalized them in the stars, sparing them from Orion (who still chases them in the night sky as a constellation of his own). In reality, the Pleiades star cluster contains thousands of stars, many of which burn blue and hot due to…

Carl Crum '24 For the final Quad Drop this school year, I give the SHP community something special that I’ve been working on for the past month: the Pinwheel Galaxy! With its royal blue spiral arms, pink-red hydrogen alpha regions, and dark central dust lanes, this face-on galaxy is one of the most popular deepsky targets for astronomy enthusiasts to photograph. The Pinwheel Galaxy, which is also known as Messier 101, is almost twice the size of our Milky Way galaxy and contains a whopping 1 trillion stars!

Carl Crum '24 If you thought the Messier 3 globular cluster was impressive, then say hello to the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules! Although this stellar assembly has fewer stars than Messier 3, it is considered one of the most beautiful deep-sky objects in the northern hemisphere. The two giant stars around the Great Cluster are Eta and Zeta Herculis, and in the top-right corner of the image is NGC 6207, a distant spiral galaxy 30 million light years away. Due to the cluster’s immense age (over 11 billion years old), its stars only contain 5% of the iron our…

Carl Crum '24 What would be even cooler than claiming the Moon? Claiming a nebula! The California Nebula is known for its elongated shape which loosely resembles the Golden State. Despite extending 100 light years in length–making it one of the largest nebulas in our local Orion Arm of the galaxy–it’s surrounded by only stars and faint molecular clouds for several trillion miles in all directions. Coincidentally, the declination of the California Nebula (+36º 25’ 18”) is the same as the latitude of central California! Do you like looking at my astrophotos? Then check out the high-resolution images on Astrobin…

Carl Crum '24 Although situated 2 million light years away, the Andromeda Galaxy is nonetheless visible to the unaided eye when seen from a dark sky site, which makes it the farthest space object observable without a telescope. According to Greek mythology, Andromeda was the daughter of King Cephus and Queen Cassiopeia of Ethiopia. When Queen Cassiopeia offended the Nereids (sea nymphs) by claiming she was more beautiful than them, the nymphs complained to Poseiden, who sent the sea monster Cetus to decimate her lands as punishment. To end the conflict, King Cephus offered princess Andromeda as a sacrifice to…

Carl Crum '24 It’s often said that we know less about the bottom of the ocean than outer space, but who knew that aquatic creatures roamed the stars? IC 443, or the Jellyfish Nebula, is the wispy remains of a red supergiant star which went supernova thousands of years ago. When a star is larger than 10-15 solar masses, it only burns for several million years. During that time, it progressively expands and cools, and once it exhausts its nuclear fuel, the entire star will collapse under its immense gravity in a matter of seconds. However, instead of dissipating into…

Carl Crum '24 3/4/2021 - Needle Galaxy It’s that time of year again: Galaxy Season! From March to May, astrophotographers in northern latitudes set up their largest telescopes each night in search of the furthest and faintest deep-space wonders known to man. Captured last season, this photo is of the Needle Galaxy (NGC 4565), an edge-on galaxy located approximately 40 million light years away in the constellation of Coma Berenices. The central nucleus is somewhat bloated as a result of gravitational interactions with another galaxy. Although the Needle appears skinny and small, don’t let that deceive you: in reality, it…