Deep Sky Astrophotography

Deep Sky Astrophotography This page is dedicated to imaging objects in deep space.

I am continuing to process these images from the week of clear skies we had, here is the second one I finished. This is ...
02/19/2026

I am continuing to process these images from the week of clear skies we had, here is the second one I finished. This is Messier 106 (M106). It is an intermediate spiral galaxy. Intermediate just means it is in between the classifications of barred and unbarred spiral galaxy. For reference, the Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy. M106 is in the constellation Canes Venatici about 25 Mly away. This galaxy is one of the largest and brightest nearby galaxies, which is similar and size to the Andromeda galaxy. M106 is 151,000 light years in diameter and has a supermassive black hole at the center roughly 39 million times the mass of the sun. In this image are several galaxies. NGC 4217 is in the lower right corner and unfortunately it got cut off some. I should have framed it better. Next time. This galaxy is 60 Mly away and is a possible companion galaxy to M106. A companion galaxy is a smaller gravitationally bound galaxy. NGC 4248, which is the smaller galaxy just to the upper right of M106 is a companion galaxy. There are several others if you just look around the image.

Telescope: Explore Scientific ED152CF
Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ8-Rh Pro
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro
Total exposure time: 8h50'
Hi res image: https://app.astrobin.com/u/rebrowni?i=287mfa

We had a week of clear skies here in Oregon and so I got the telescope out and captured a few nice images of some old an...
02/04/2026

We had a week of clear skies here in Oregon and so I got the telescope out and captured a few nice images of some old and some new targets. This one is vdB 31, and is a new target for me. vdB 31 is the bright blue reflection nebula surrounded by the dark interstellar dust. The nebula is located about 470 light years away in the constellation Auriga. The bright star that lights up the nebula is a hot young variable star known as AB Aurigae. The nebula is surrounded by dust clouds with names Barnard 26, 27, and 28.

Telescope: Explore Scientific ED152CF
Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ8-Rh Pro
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro
Exposure Time: 15h15'
Hi res image: https://app.astrobin.com/u/rebrowni?i=h6xm0k

This is my last image until we get some clear skies here in Oregon, which is rare for this time of year, but it happens....
11/19/2025

This is my last image until we get some clear skies here in Oregon, which is rare for this time of year, but it happens. This region includes the nebulae IC 63, or more commonly known as the Ghost of Cassiopeia, and IC 59. This was the last image I photographed while at MFS (Malheur Field Station - The Great Basin Society, Inc.). This nebula region is located 550 light years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. IC 63 (lower region) is an emission nebula while IC 59 (upper region) is a reflection nebula. IC 59 is being shaped by the intense UV radiation from the bright star gamma Cassiopeia (star in lower right of image). This star, also known as Navi in the constellation, puts out as much energy as 34,000 suns. IC 63 gets its ethereal glow from the same star. One note about the star gamma Cassiopeia is that it is a giant blue star. My image makes it look more like a yellow star. This is due to the narrowband filter I used on the camera to get the hydrogen gas to come out stronger. I didn't have time to take another image with color corrected stars.

Telescope: Explore Scientific ED152CF
Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ8-Rh Pro
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro
Total Exposure: 7h45m
Hi res image: https://app.astrobin.com/u/rebrowni?i=8hnmc9

It has been a bit since my last post, but I still have a few images to post from my trip to MFS (Malheur Field Station -...
11/09/2025

It has been a bit since my last post, but I still have a few images to post from my trip to MFS (Malheur Field Station - The Great Basin Society, Inc.). This is a new galaxy for me. This galaxy is NGC 2403 in the constellation Camelopardalis about 9 Mly away. It is an intermediate spiral galaxy in the outlying region of the M81 group. It is about 90,000 light years in diameter, or just slightly smaller than the Milky Way. There are several other galaxies in this image a great distance away.

Telescope: Explore Scientific ED152CF
Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ8-Rh Pro
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro
Total Exposure time: 6h30m
Hi res image: https://app.astrobin.com/u/rebrowni?i=7rpilf

Here is another one of my images that I captured while on my trip to MFS (Malheur Field Station - The Great Basin Societ...
10/19/2025

Here is another one of my images that I captured while on my trip to MFS (Malheur Field Station - The Great Basin Society, Inc.). This is IC 342, also known as the Hidden Galaxy. I photographed this last year at MFS, but this year I used a NB (narrowband) filter to select the hydrogen gas emissions (the red areas) in the nebulae so it would show up better than it did in the original image. This galaxy is in the constellation Camelopardalis (the Giraffe), about 10-11 Mly away and has a diameter of about 150,000 light years. I am photographing this galaxy through the galactic plane of the Milky Way and there is a lot of dust and gas in between which gives it the brownish color. If this galaxy were not blocked by the dust, you would be able to see this galaxy with the naked eye. This galaxy is loaded with hydrogen gas nebulae, which is why I used the filter that brings it out. This galaxy is in the group that is one of the closest to the local group of galaxies and part of the Virgo Supercluster.

Telescope: Explore Scientific ED152CF
Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ8-Rh Pro
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro
Total exposure time: 13h45m
Hi res image: https://app.astrobin.com/u/rebrowni?i=bc6ud4

Here is a nebula I have tried a few times to photograph, however I have never been able to get a decent image, at least ...
10/14/2025

Here is a nebula I have tried a few times to photograph, however I have never been able to get a decent image, at least compared to what I see others posting. I really need a monochrome camera to get the extremely faint blue to come out. I did use a color camera with a special filter to get it, but again it is very faint and not as good as I would like. It still took nearly 20 hours of exposure. These two nebulae are Ou4 (Squid Nebula) and Sh2-129 (Flying Bat Nebula). The Squid is the very faint blue, which is ionized oxygen gas, while the red hydrogen gas nebula is the Flying Bat. The Squid has been difficult to determine the actual distance, but it is believed to be within the red nebula, which puts it at 2300 light years away. The size of the Squid is 50 light years across, of course that assumes it is indeed inside the Flying Bat nebula. To put that into perspective, our entire solar system, if we use the sun's gravity as the boundary, is about two light years in diameter. So the Squid is 25 times larger than the solar system.
I am posting the image with and without the stars so that you can see the Squid Nebula easier.

Telescope: Explore Scientific ED102CF
Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ8-Rh Pro
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro
Total Exposure: 19h45m

Here is an image I captured of the Veil Nebula region before my trip to MFS (Malheur Field Station - The Great Basin Soc...
10/09/2025

Here is an image I captured of the Veil Nebula region before my trip to MFS (Malheur Field Station - The Great Basin Society, Inc.). This is a wider field of view than one I normally get, but I used my smaller telescope to get this view. This is NGC 6960 also known as the Western Veil nebula. The Veil complex is a large supernova remnant, of which NGC 6960 is just a small part. My telescopes are too large to get the entire region into one field of view, so I only photographed the Western Veil portion, which also has a part of Pickering's Triangle on the left side of this image. The top portion of this image is NGC 6960 and has a few common names such as The Witches Broom and the Finger of God, but most people just refer to it as the Western Veil nebula. The source of the nebula is a star 20 times more massive than the sun that went supernova 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. It is a distance of about 2400 light years away in the constellation Cygnus. Its diameter is about 6 times the size of a full moon (the size of the full moon in the sky from our viewpoint, not the physical width of the moon itself), which is about 130 light years across. It is also expanding at a rate of 1.5 million kilometers per hour, or just under 1 million miles per hour. This is one of my favorite areas of the sky to image.

Telescope: Explore Scientific ED102CF
Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ8-Rh Pro
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro
Total exposure time: 6h15m
Hi res image: https://app.astrobin.com/u/rebrowni?i=1x8hy9

I just returned from my annual trip to MFS (Malheur Field Station - The Great Basin Society, Inc.) and it was a great we...
09/29/2025

I just returned from my annual trip to MFS (Malheur Field Station - The Great Basin Society, Inc.) and it was a great week for astrophotography. One of the great things about this place is the truly dark skies. Many of the images I post are from my home, but the skies at MFS are some of the darkest in the country. No light pollution whatsoever, so there is much more detail in the images than I can get from my home. I was able to get four different images during my visit and this first one is new for me. It is called the Wolf's Cave Nebula. There is a blue reflection nebula VdB 152 that lies at the tip of the dusty complex known as the Wolf's Cave. It lies 1400 light years away in the constellation Cepheus. There is a lot to view in this image, such as hydrogen gas emission, a couple of galaxies, and lots of dust. This guy is pretty dim. You wouldn't see this in a telescope without long exposure photography. The image looks dim to me on Facebook, so hopefully you can see the detail I see. You can always click on the hi res image link.

Note: I got to meet the new MFS manager, Elizabeth, as Rose is retiring in October. Happy retirement Rose. Welcome Elizabeth.

Telescope: Explore Scientific ED152CF
Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ8-Rh Pro
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro
Total Exposure Time: 6h40m
Hi res image: https://app.astrobin.com/u/rebrowni?i=wsvr9q

My next image is one I have taken before but I used the smaller telescope to get a wider field of view and was able to g...
09/07/2025

My next image is one I have taken before but I used the smaller telescope to get a wider field of view and was able to get enough exposure time (nearly 15 hours) to capture a very faint object which I have never captured before. This is the famous Crescent Nebula (NGC 6888) and the Soap Bubble. The Soap Bubble is what is new for me. First let me start with the Crescent. It is an emission nebula is the constellation Cygnus about 5000 light years away. The stellar wind from star WR 136 colliding with slower moving wind when the star became a red giant is causing two shockwaves, one moving inward and one moving outward. This is what is creating the "crescent" shape, which looks more like a brain than a crescent. The blue gas around the Cresent is oxygen gas. This shows up pretty well on the image I took with the larger telescope some time ago, but it is visible here as well. The Soap Bubble is a very small and faint nebula, almost perfectly spherical and slightly blueish. It was only discovered about 18 years ago. I added a zoomed in image and circled the bubble so you can see it.

Telescope: Explore Scientific ED102CF
Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ8-Rh Pro
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro
Total exposure time: 14h46m
Hi res image: https://app.astrobin.com/u/rebrowni?i=qn72y0

Still processing through my summer targets. I switched over to the smaller telescope for the summer so I could get a wid...
08/24/2025

Still processing through my summer targets. I switched over to the smaller telescope for the summer so I could get a wider field of view of some of the rather large nebula areas, so even though a lot of these images I have captured before, they will show a different field of view. This week is WR 134, or Wolf-Rayet 134 for the designation of the star in the center of the image. In this case the star is the center of attention rather than the nebula surrounding it, since there is no name for the nebula, so we refer to the star. The star is located 6000 light years away in the constellation Cygnus and surrounded by a faint bubble nebula (blue-green region) blown by the intense radiation and stellar wind from the star. The blue nebula is very faint and really requires a monochrome camera with filters and a lot of exposure to get that to come out fully. All you see in my image after 11 hours is a partial sphere which sort of looks like a dolphin, but the entire thing is a large blueish sphere.

Telescope: Explore Scientific ED102CF
Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ8-Rh Pro
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro
Total exposure: 10h55m
Hi res image: https://app.astrobin.com/u/rebrowni?i=xuwwh9

I have gotten behind in processing some of the images I have captured. I have three in progress right now. This next one...
08/06/2025

I have gotten behind in processing some of the images I have captured. I have three in progress right now. This next one is a galaxy I have imaged before, but this time I did a similar process as I did for the previous galaxy and mixed in data using a filter to bring out the red hydrogen gas emissions in the nebula in the galaxies spiral arms. This is Messier 101, also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy. M101 is a face on intermediate spiral galaxy about 21 Mly away in the constellation Ursa Major. It is a large galaxy by comparison, approximately 252,000 light years across, compared to the 100,000 light years for the Milky Way. So M101 is 2.5x the size of the Milky Way. It has a high population (nearly 1300 according to 1990 study) of H II (ionized interstellar atomic hydrogen) regions, which are the reddish/pinkish regions in the image, and why I used the special filter to make them more visible. If you look closely you can see that the galaxy is asymmetric, which is due to the tidal force of its companion, or nearby galaxies. I previously posted an image I took of this galaxy in 2023 when it had a supernova that was visible. That supernova is gone now. I am adding it to this image so you can see the two together and you can also see how using the special filter makes a difference in showing the nebula. The orientation of the 2023 galaxy is actually upside down.

Telescope: Explore Scientific ED152CF
Mount: Sky-Watcher EQ8-Rh Pro
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro
Exposure Time: 16h50m
Hi res image: https://app.astrobin.com/u/rebrowni?i=qs34qj

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