An international society of amateur and professional
astronomers specialising in the observation of double
stars and 'deep sky' objects founded in 1967.
Membership is open to anyone who shares the interests
of the Society.
Sara's back for second consecutive December with another famous winter nebula.
I couldn't resist all that nebulous detail of this fabulous image. I'm sure you know we're in Orion. The iconic Horsehead nebula's in there, but there's so much else going on.
I think that these objects are made of monochrome from both an aesthetic perspective and in terms of the definition of detail. Just my opinion of course, but I write this column so...
Following on from the dark nebulae near NGC225 last month we have some really significant cosmic dust. These are the dark nebulae in and around the Taurus dark cloud with all its wonderfully complex chemistry.
Alson's wide angle image taken from California is packed with Barnard numbers and is more than ten degrees across! It shows them off beautifully against the starry backdrop. This image feels three dimensional to me, and those on his website are larger and better.
With my small telescope Cassiopeia is one of my favourite places as the haunt of many fine open clusters one of which is NGC 225. It's one of Caroline Herschel's discoveries, but not her best. I'd have to say that NGC 7789 nearby tops it visually.
So why an image of this cluster for Picture of the Month? I was caught by the nebulosity from the reflection nebula and those dust clouds in Warren's image. Combined with those jewel-like stars I think it adds a great deal to the interest of this cluster. I just don't get that in the eyepiece. Perhaps a bigger telescope and darker skies would help?
Oh, and the name? As Warren points out The Sailboat Cluster was coined by Dr. Rod Pommier in Astronomy Magazine.
Another planetary nebula from the Capella Observatory, but this one's visible to those further north than my last selection in Norma.
Not that it'll be easy at 15th magnitude and about an arcminute in diameter. One for the large telescope or imager armed with an O-III filter. Never-the-less this image shows why it's worth having a go due to its interesting irregular shape and brightness variations.
James Whinfrey - Website Administrator.
August 2017 - Picture of the Month
IC 1318 (Gamma Cygni Nebula) in the Constellation of Cygnus
I know that many of our members live for views of galaxy groups outside the plane of the Milky Way, but I'm a galactic person, and this is one of my favourite areas of the night sky.
David's filtered widefield image (I'd guess more than 5 degrees across) is packed with my usual targets: open clusters. What's so striking is that they're almost drowned out by nebulae including IC1318 A, B and C; a host of dusty dark nebulae; and the Crescent Nebula (NGC 6888).
Whether my sky is dark enough to even catch a glimpse I shall see, but my UHC and OIII filters are on standby for late summer and early autumn.
Inspired by one of our speakers at this year's Annual Meeting, Bernhard Hubl, I thought I'd feature another southern gem. So I raided his Chile archives for something suitable, and I think I found it.
This is a galaxy that looks more like a cluster in this image due to it's close proximity (only 200,000 lightyears). I particularly like the composition with NGC 104 nearby, but there are a host of NGCs in this frame if you care to find them all.
The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is one of those objects that I'm unlikely to see with my own eyes, but it certainly looks glorious captured with a DSLR. I'll probably move back north next month, but southern observers are lucky people 😊
I've had a run of galaxies recently and I've decided it's time for a change. On top of that the nights are getting very short and bright here in the UK. To that end, I've chosen to head south for the summer and found a wonderful planetary nebula.
Shapley 1 is a fine ring nebula, but quite a lot smaller and fainter the Ring Nebula (M57) that's around in the northern sky again. That magnitude 14 white dwarf at the centre seems to be a close binary pair, and our view is perpendicular to their orbit. This means that we're probably seeing this planetary nebula from a polar perspective.
This image shows lots of subtle (and not so subtle) detail in the bright ring, and the faint outer halo too.
James Whinfrey - Website Administrator.
May 2017 - Picture of the Month
NGC 5754 and many others in the Constellation of Boötes
More galaxies this month, many more in fact. This image of Adam's caught my eye immediately since it's so dynamic. That's right, galaxies are more interesting when colliding.
Apart from the main feature galaxy NGC5754 we have three more showing significant detail in this beautiful image. These are NGC5752, NGC 5755 and NGC5753 I believe. This is the interacting group known as Arp 297 for your enjoyment this May.
James Whinfrey - Website Administrator.
April 2017 - Picture of the Month
NGC 4567 and NGC 4568 in the Constellation of Virgo
It's Spring time in the northern hemisphere, and that means galaxies for the deep-sky observer. It also means that the nights are getting shorter at northern latitudes, so make the best of your observing opportunities.
I've chosen another galaxy this month, or in this case a pair of colliding galaxies: the Siamese Twins. These two are in the early stages of their collisions and still look like spirals with very minimal distortion.
A little investigation reveals that the image above is only about 13 arcminutes across: these are not large objects. Kepple and Sanner suggest a 12–14 inch telescope to observe the pair, but they may be visible as a fuzzy "V" in smaller scopes?
James Whinfrey - Website Administrator.
March 2017 - Picture of the Month
The Needle Galaxy (NGC 4565) in Coma Berenices
I think that this is a beautiful galaxy, but what's more important is that it's not only visible to imagers and those with huge telescopes. You can find it with small scopes, and Owen claims that the dark lane is potentially visible for those using 8 inches of aperture and more.
This image of NGC 4565 is provide with kind permission
of David Davies from his observatory in Cambridge, UK.
If you feel you're lacking a proper challenge, as David pointed out in his email comments below...
This LRGB image reveals the dark dust lanes of the edge on spiral arms partly obscuring the bulge of the core. NGC 4565 is approximately 40 million light years away and is thought to be a barred spiral galaxy 100,000 light years across, similar in size to the Milky Way. Several other galaxies can be seen in this image including NGC 4562 to the lower right.
... there's more hidden in this field to hunt down with cameras and large dobsonians.
James Whinfrey - Website Administrator.
February 2017 - Picture of the Month
A Widefield View of a Supernova Remnant in Vela
As I told this month's contributor when a contacted him to ask permission to use his work, I liked the idea of an image of the NGC 3372 (I'm a big fan of eta Carinae) this February. Browsing around the internet one of his took my fancy and my mind was made up... until I spotted his amazing image of the Vela supernova remnant!
But he wasn't finished with me! In addition to granting permission, he pointed me at a more recent version he's created using his original and adding Digital Sky Survey (DSS) data, and this is the result.
As you've probably gathered I have a soft spot for nebulosity, but that’s an incredible object by any standard. It's about 250 Parsecs distant and still fills around 8 degrees of the sky, something that's probably taken it 11,000 years!
It's also so large that there are many deep-sky objects within its bounds and many more to be seen in this image. Definitely take a look at the version marked up with DSOs on Rob's website.
I think this is a stunning image (or collection of images, it is a mosaic), but I'll leave it to you to decide which version is your favourite.
In truth I'm not really much of a galaxy observer which might be considered heresy in a Deep-Sky society. In order to mitigate this infringement I've decided to start the new year with a nice bright galaxy.
Those in southern Europe and the US should be able to find NGC 1291 as Steve has from Australia. Unfortunately you won't be so lucky from the UK where it's not visible, so it's one for the winter vacation perhaps.
I chose Steve's image because NGC 1291 is a striking galaxy that shows plenty of detail to the camera that I suspect would need a big telescope so see visually. It's also another of those objects that are so good they named it twice. It seems to bear the designation of NGC 1291 (James Dunlop) and NGC 1269 (John Herschel).
This image was provided courtesy of 