Picture of the Month for 2020

• March 2020 - Picture of the Month

  NGC 3344 in the Constellation of Leo Minor

  

  I've gone for another galaxy image this month, and this time there's no mitigating nebulosity around. But we are entering the season for galaxies.

  All the same it is a stunning object and one that I've observed with my 10-inch reflector a couple of years ago in pursuit of the Herschel 400. It was very faint and I almost missed it in my suburban skies. It certainly didn't look like this, I particularly noted that I couldn't see any texture!

  If you visit Bernhard's web page, and I suggest that you do, there's an image that points out some faint galaxies in this field. This included a new dwarf galaxy discovered by a pro-am group called Tief Belichtete Galaxien (TBG) to which Bernhard seems to contribute. It's inspiring to see that there's some real science being done by amateur astrophotographers.

  James Whinfrey - Website Administrator.

• February 2020 - Picture of the Month

  M81, M82 and the IFN in the Constellation of Ursa Major

  

  It's time for another galaxy or two, but I have to be careful not to clash with Owen's Galaxy of the Month. My normal tactic is to choose something bright. So with Ursa Major nearly overhead I started searching for M81 and M82. This pair are showpieces for both visual observers and imagers. What I found has some added interest in the form of nebulosity, always a favourite of mine.

  Terry's beautiful image reveals the glow of the integrated flux nebula (IFN): the light of the stars in our own galaxy reflected from its interstellar dust and gas. It's faint and required 11.5 hours of integrated imaging time to capture using a 130mm telescope and CMOS camera. The IFN provides an atmospheric – can I use that word to describe interstellar space? – foreground to these two interacting galaxies which show terrific detail.

  There's no shortage of galaxies in this field. In addition for the feature pair there's NGC 3077 and NGC 2976 to the upper right and upper left respectively, and a few UGCs scattered around too. It's well worth some closer examination of this image and area of the sky.

  James Whinfrey - Website Administrator.

• January 2020 - Picture of the Month

  NGC 2467 in the Constellation of Puppis

  

  We're back to the birth of stars rather than their demise to kick off the New Year, and heading to the southern skies to do it. Just over a degree to the east-south-east of Omicron Puppis you'll find an open cluster, or several, embedded in this spectacular nebula.

  This is another stellar nursery, much beloved of this column, that's no more than a few million years old. Home to three open clusters: Haffner 18, Haffner 19 (both around 6 kpc distant) and the NGC 2467 cluster itself (about 4 kpc away). The Spitzer telescope has found many Young Stellar Objects (YSOs) still shrouded in the dust cloud that makes up the nebula, and is being sculpted by an O6 star in that bright region.

  Distant is tricky as usual. For the open cluster data I've used 'Star Clusters' by Archinal and Hynes. However ESO and Hubble give a distance of 13 kpc, but whether this is to the nebula is unclear. The Hubble image give a fine close up.

  The NGC 2467 nebula is about 15 arc-minutes across and accessible to those with moderately large telescopes and good skies. It was an Object of the Week over at the DeepSkyForum last March.

  James Whinfrey - Website Administrator.