Observations of Deep-Sky Objects

These are the observations made by amateur astronomers from around the globe. I'm keen to present the work of an observer (members or not) to further the aims of the Webb Deep-Sky Society. Images, sketches or even your observing notes are of interest.

If you have any observations of your own that you'd like to submit I'd be delighted to hear from you. Please try to include as much detail about the object (after all that's why we observe them) as possible. Time, date, location and observing conditions are useful.

We have observations of these Objects

14 Aur 16 Dra 17 Dra 20 Gem 39 Dra 47 Tau AC1 ACO2197 ARN31 Abell 10 Abell 12 Abell 84 Arp 116 Arp 123 Arp 166 Arp 19 Arp 245 Arp 290 Arp 31 Arp 35 Arp 78 Arp143 Arp180 Arp186 Arp43 Arp49 BU63 Hickson 16 IC1364 IC1367 IC1534 IC1535 IC1536 IC1730 IC2458 IC405 IC410 IC418 IC458 IC459 IC460 IC461 IC464 IC465 IC504 IC505 IC506 LAU4 LGG117 M101 M102 M11 M12 M15 M20 M33 M35 M41 M42 M44 M46 M50 M53 M56 M57 M58 M59 M60 M63 M67 M73 M74 M76 M91 M92 M95 M96 MCG+3-30-35 NGC1057 NGC1060 NGC1061 NGC1066 NGC1067 NGC125 NGC126 NGC127 NGC128 NGC130 NGC145 NGC1499 NGC1501 NGC1502 NGC1555 NGC1843 NGC188 NGC1924 NGC1964 NGC2022 NGC2146 NGC2237 NGC2275 NGC2283 NGC2288 NGC2289 NGC2290 NGC2291 NGC2292 NGC2293 NGC2294 NGC2340 NGC2371 NGC2372 NGC2389 NGC2419 NGC246 NGC2486 NGC2487 NGC2562 NGC2563 NGC2683 NGC2749 NGC2805 NGC281 NGC2814 NGC2820 NGC2854 NGC2856 NGC2857 NGC2903 NGC2964 NGC2967 NGC2968 NGC2970 NGC2992 NGC2993 NGC3018 NGC3023 NGC3344 NGC3454 NGC3455 NGC3473 NGC3474 NGC3482 NGC3501 NGC3507 NGC3628 NGC3636 NGC3637 NGC3790 NGC3801 NGC3802 NGC3803 NGC3806 NGC3837 NGC3840 NGC3841 NGC3844 NGC3845 NGC3851 NGC3865 NGC3866 NGC4109 NGC4111 NGC4114 NGC4117 NGC4118 NGC4314 NGC4410A NGC4411A NGC4449 NGC4567 NGC4568 NGC457 NGC4621 NGC4631 NGC4649 NGC4725 NGC4762 NGC48 NGC49 NGC5053 NGC51 NGC52 NGC5222 NGC5746 NGC5777 NGC5857 NGC5859 NGC5866 NGC5965 NGC6058 NGC6548 NGC6549 NGC6702 NGC6703 NGC6745 NGC6764 NGC678 NGC680 NGC6901 NGC6906 NGC6928 NGC6934 NGC6956 NGC6959 NGC6961 NGC6962 NGC6964 NGC6965 NGC6967 NGC7006 NGC7010 NGC7046 NGC7241 NGC7264 NGC7265 NGC7331 NGC736 NGC738 NGC740 NGC741 NGC742 NGC7431 NGC7433 NGC7435 NGC7436 NGC7448 NGC751 NGC7537 NGC7538 NGC7541 NGC7549 NGC759 NGC761 NGC7635 NGC7724 NGC7727 NGC7768 NGC7778 NGC7779 NGC7781 NGC7782 NGC7789 NGC794 NGC833 NGC876 NGC877 NGC90 NGC93 NGC969 NGC970 NGC978 PGC213372 PGC214715 PGC23406 PGC23493 PGC23509 PGC23510 PK 193-9.1 PK 197-14.1 S502 S503 SN2014bc SN2014j SN2014l SN2016coj STF163 STF2525 STF2690 STF2816 STF2840 STF3050 STF485 STF644 STT147 STT461 UGC 3697 UGC 3714 UGC11320 UGC11435 UGC11964 UGC12914 UGC12915 UGC6697 UGC7089 VV219 iota Cas iota Leo omi Cap pi Ari rho Cap

Which fall into these classes

HII-region Herbig–Haro object asterism cluster double double star emission nebula emission-nebula flat galaxies galaxy globular globular cluster nebula open cluster open-cluster planetary nebula supernova variable nebula variable star

And these Constellations

Andromeda Aquarius Aquila Aries Auriga Bootes Camelopardalis Cancer Canes Venatici Canis Major Capricornus Cassiopeia Cepheus Cetus Coma Berenices Crater Cygnus Delphinus Draco Equuleus Eridanus Gemini Hercules Hydra Lacerta Leo Leo Minor Lepus Lynx Lyra Monoceros Ophiuchus Orion Pegasus Perseus Pisces Puppis Sagittarius Scutum Sextans Taurus Triangulum Ursa Major Usra Major Virgo Vulpecula

Or if you'd just like to browse through our most recent observations

• NGC 2237 in Monoceros

  I took this last night, but the camera was not cooled, I forgot to set it, think it was the excitement of a clear night!! My observatory is in my back garden in Boughton which is on the edge of Northampton.

  

  Image Details

  It is a 500 second single shot, which has been slightly cropped, taken with a FLI microline colour using sparse configuration in full frame. The result is processed in Maxim.

  • Telescope: AG14 Orion F 3.8
  • Camera: FLI Microline Camera

  Richard Weatherley - (3 January 2022).

• Barred spiral galaxy NGC 2146 in Camelopardalis

  I was doing some electronically assisted observing some four weeks ago and was intrigued by the sight of NGC 2146. I had not investigated this galaxy previously and returned to it some nights later for a closer look.

  

  This galaxy was discovered by Friedrich Winnecke, a German astronomer, in 1876. Despite its distorted presentation, it is not listed in the Arp Atlas of peculiar galaxies. It seems that the cause of the twisted presentation of this galaxy is not fully understood. Some have proposed that a close encounter with a nearby galaxy, such as NGC 2146A, which is to the top left of the uncropped image, is the cause of the disturbances. However, the significant difference in their radial velocities doesn't support this hypothesis.

  Moreover, radio-based observations show little evidence of the disturbances we see in the optical wavelengths. Perhaps we are looking at a post-merger state of two galaxies, now merging into one. It is a starburst galaxy with significant star formation ongoing, and two supernovae have been observed in recent years. Some of the star-forming regions are just visible at the resolution limit in this image.

  

  NGC 2146 is listed as being between 50 and 70 million light-years away. I find it interesting to reflect that all of the higher mammals on earth have evolved during the time the photons captured by my camera have traversed the void after emission from this galaxy.

  Image Details

  • Telescope: 200mm Ritchey-Chretien.
  • Camera: QSI 683 camera.
  • Mount: Skywatcher EQ8.

  The image comprises 38 x five minutes of luminance plus 15 x five minutes each of RGB.

  David Davies - (16 December 2021).

• The Skull Nebula (NGC 246) in Cetus

  I've always considered the Skull Nebula to be too low in the sky, with a maximum altitude of just 26 degrees from my location, to image successfully. However, clear skies on the nights of 30th and 31st October gave me an opportunity to attempt it.

  NGC 246 is a planetary nebula in the constellation of Cetus and was discovered by William Herschel in 1785. Stephen O'Meara writes about it in his book Deep Sky Companions: The Caldwell Objects and discusses the visibility of the central 12th magnitude star. It turns out that this star is readily visible in my image but it is not the dwarf star responsible for the nebula. The central star is, in fact, at least a triple system. There is a 14 magnitude companion, an orange dwarf star, type G8-K0 V, just 3.8" from the primary. Further, in this link to Stars and Skulls: new ESO image reveals eerie nebula, ESO describes work by the ESO VLT in 2014 that reveals a third red dwarf star.

  

  The first inspection of my captured image revealed that the central star was not round. My first reaction was to think that I had some sort of guiding error but I quickly realised that other stars in the image did not exhibit the same feature and this set me to investigate further. Inspection of the central star revealed a blue-white primary star and an orange companion. There is just a hint of the companion visible in the image processed to bring out the nebula and its structure. I reprocessed the data to see what could be revealed by stretching the image only slightly to limit the blooming of star images. I then used this second image as an additional luminance layer on the original image to reveal the companion 14 magnitude orange dwarf star.

  

  Image Details

  • Telescope: 200mm Ritchey-Chretien.
  • Camera: QSI 683 camera.
  • Mount: Skywatcher EQ8.
  • Software: PixInsight and Photoshop

  The data comprise 15 x five-minutes subs each of RGB and 51 x five-minutes luminance subs - eight hours of data.

  David Davies - (20 November 2021).

• NGC 7538 in Cepheus

  It's been a while since I shared an astrophotography image with you. Indeed, I think my last one was in April.

  During April, my suspicions that something was seriously amiss with my EQ8 mount were confirmed and resulted in a complete dismantle and rebuild with parts repaired and other parts replaced as upgrades. The work took until late July when I was able to start re-tuning the mount and working with some new software tools.

  This image, therefore, represents my return to imaging with the repaired equipment.

  I selected NGC 7538, Sh2-158 as my target. This is quite a small but very attractive star-forming region in Cepheus is around 9,100 light-years from us. It has been reported to contain the largest protostar system observed to date, around 300 times the size of our solar system. It is not frequently imaged as most prefer to concentrate on its brighter and showier close neighbour, the Bubble Nebula.

  

  Image Details

  The image data was gathered during September 2021 and comprises nine hours of LRGB data, with two hours each of RGB in 10-minute subs and three hours of luminance data, also in 10-minute subs all binned 1x1.

  • Telescope: 200mm Ritchey-Chretien, Lodestar off axis guider.
  • Camera: QSI 683 with Astrodon filters.
  • Mount: Skywatcher EQ8.

  David Davies - (7 October 2021).

• NGC 6058 in Hercules

  Sadly no new observations from me of late as my telescope software has malfunctioned and I can't find a remedy!

  However I do have a sketch that matches up with one of this months challenges 😀 It's NGC 6058 in Hercules observed with 14" Newtonian in June 2008, and sketched using a Watec video camera.

  

  Dale Holt - (19 May 2021).

• The Siamese Twins NGC 4567 and NGC 4568 in Virgo

  At the beginning of May 2018, I spent several evenings gathering data on the Siamese Twins, NGC 4567 and NGC 4568. Realising how faint the objects were, I opted for 10-minute exposures which, unfortunately, challenged the tracking performance of my, then EQ6 mount, and virtually guaranteed that I had a satellite trail on every sub. After calibrating the data, I decided not to process them since I considered that they just weren't good enough. I then ran out of dark skies and forgot about this unfinished project.

  I was reminded of the Twins by Callum Potter's recent BAA Deep Sky Notes and went back to revisit the data that I gathered in 2018. By applying some new image processing techniques, I've been able to use the data I gathered, complete with satellite trails, though I confess they have challenged my cloning skills.

  NGC 4567 and NGC 4568 (nicknamed the Butterfly Galaxies or Siamese Twins are a set of unbarred spiral galaxies about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. They were both discovered by William Herschel in 1784. They are part of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies. These galaxies are in the process of colliding and merging with each other, as studies of their distributions of neutral and molecular hydrogen show, with the highest star-formation activity in the part where they overlap. However, the system is still in an early phase of interaction. (Wikipedia)

  

  Data gathered between 7th and 18th May 2018. 20 x 10-minutes Luminance, 10 X 10-minutes each RGB.

  This is a crop from the original image, which presents the Twins better but at the expense of losing NGC 4564 from the top of the image. The galaxy at the bottom of the image is an edge-on spiral galaxy IC 3578 at magnitude 15. Between it and NGC 4568 is the very faint (magnitude 18.2) PGC042075. There are many other faint galaxies in this image.

  Image Details

  • Telescope: 8" Ritchey-Chretien.
  • Camera: QSI 583 with a Lodestar off-axis guide camera.
  • Mount: Skywatcher EQ6.

  Image data were captured on the evenings of 17th to 27th February 2020. The data comprise 24 x 5-minutes luminance and 6 x 10-minutes each of RGB.

  David Davies - (4 May 2021).

• Observation of NGC 3636 and NGC3637 in Crater

  A call of nature and a clear sky coincided at 01.30 BST this morning. Result the observatory was opened and I went straight for NGC 3636 and NGC 3637 in Crater. These galaxies Owen has picked as his Galaxies of the Month for April, they form a visual trio with 7th mag star HD98591.

  They were low in the southern sky where viewing conditions are at their worse for me. I wasn't even sure that the scope and Watec camera would even get onto them but as I star hopped ever closer I was rewarded with an image on the monitor. Not a spectacular scene but one that I appreciated was not so easy.

  

  Not knowing when I was going to lose the view I waited for decent 15 second steady exposure image and hit the freeze button. The sketch didn't take long, 10-15 minutes perhaps but by the time I had it completed and released the freeze button the sky was completely clouded over!

  So to bed, lucky and pleased.

  Dale Holt - (04 April 2021).

• NGC 2419 in Lynx

  The generally cloudy weather of recent weeks gave few possibilities for imaging, so on the odd cloudless evening, I will tackle a subject that I can capture in a single evening. The enclosed image is of NGC 2419, The Intergalactic Wanderer, a globular cluster that has proved to be something of an enigma to understand.

  

  NGC 2419 was discovered by William Herschel on December 31, 1788. It differs from most other globular clusters in that it is so distant from the centre of the galaxy that it was thought to be not in orbit about the galaxy and thus earned the nickname 'The Intergalactic Wanderer'. Studies of it now reveal that its orbit takes it out beyond the Magellanic Clouds and it takes three billion years to make one trip around the galaxy. It is at a distance of about 300,000 light-years from the solar system and at the same distance from the galactic centre. It presents a dim disc 4.5' across and has a magnitude of around 10. The brightest foreground stars in this image are around magnitude 8 but the brightest individual stars in the cluster itself are around magnitude 15.

  Image Details

  The data comprise 15 x five-minute sub-frames of RGB captured on the evening of 5th February 2021.

  • Telescope: 200mm Ritchey-Chretien at 1660mm focal length.
  • Camera: QSI 683 with Astrodon filters and a Lodestar as an off-axis guide camera.
  • Mount: Skywatcher EQ8.

  David Davies - (18 March 2021).

• Galaxy Group ACO 2197 in Hercules

  I managed to get the following image of ACO 2197 after reading Owen's very interesting Galaxy of the Month for May 2018.

  

  ACO 2197 is a hidden galaxy cluster in the constellation of Hercules. There are so many eliptical, spiral, and irregular galaxies but the brightest three are NGC 6160, NGC 6173 and NGC 6175 and were all discovered by William Herschel in 1787. These galaxies also have very interesting dust halos which were the most challenging thing to process, however, I'm more than pleased with the result.

  Image Details

  • Telescope: C ED 80.
  • Camera: QHY 183 Mono Cool, QHY 5 guide.
  • Mount: Skywatcher Heq5 PRO.

  The image is composed of 120s sub-exposures with a total integration time of 11 hours.

  Vasileios Spanakis-Misirlis - (29 March 2021).

• A well known morsel from Leo

  A very brief opportunity on the evening of March 19th allowed me just enough time to sketch the thin one of the Leo triplet, NGC 3628.

  The skies have probably been the poorest and for the longest in my 22 years of observing! If I had picked either of the Messier members I would have run out of clear sky trying to capture their complexity and magnificence, so I guess I got lucky with my choice!

  

  This galaxy filled my field of view and although I have sketched it a number of times before I think this is probably my best rendition! I hope I can get back to my usual much more elusive and distant prey very soon.

  Dale Holt - (21 March 2021).