Charles Messier first discovered M84 and M86 the two brightest galaxies in the chain, in 1781. The other galaxies were discovered later by William Herschel entered into John Louis Emil Dreyer's New General Catalog (NGC) published in 1888. The name ultimately received it's name from Armenian Astrophysicist Benjamin Markarian, who …

April brought a cold front and what I thought were going to be some very clear skies for coming on to the new moon. I setup in the evening around 8ish expecting to have most of the night to gather some real data. As luck would have it, clouds rolled …

I spent some time at my favorite dark site this spring taking some images of M81 and M82. These two are in a gravitational dance as they are close enough to have each affected the other's shape and composition of one another. NGC 3077 was also captured but not featured …

Here is a three hour exposure of the California Nebula NGC 1499. It's actually much larger that you see in this image but since I was shooting at my native focal length of 714mm with an APS-C sensor, I was only able to get part of it.

Equipment List

• Losmandy …

About M31

M31 is located in the Andromeda Constellation and as a result is called the Andromeda Galaxy . She is the Milky Way's nearest neighbour at 2.5 million light years away.

This Image

This started off as a test of my new equipment. It's been a rough couple of …

This is an image of a Triplet of Galaxies found in the constallation Leo. They are interating with eacother making for an interesting sight. They are about 30 million light years from earth. Check out the [BBC Sky at Night Magazine] for some fascinating information on these objects. I took …

The Rosette Nebula is about 5500 light years from us and is about 65 light years across. It can be found in the consellation Monoceros. I spent the better part of two nights in February aquiring the data for this image. It ended up being about 4 hours 20 mins …