The Orion Nebula is a diffuse nebula in the constellation Orion. It is in the lower portion of Orion south of his belt. This object can be seen with the naked eye. It is part of Orion's sword and looks very fuzzy with the naked eye. Located 1500 light years away, the stars have formed from collapsing clouds of interstellar gas within the last million years.

2-min exposure. Total exposure time was 40 minutes.

Imaged at Zodiac Ranch near Fort Davis, TX in the early morning hours of October 30, 2011.

The Orion constellation is a dominant constellation during the winter season.

M81 Group

M81 group is a group of galaxies in the constellation Ursa Major (Big Dipper area) that includes both M81 and M82. M81 is on the right and M82 is the smaller one to the left. Approximately 12 million light years away. NGC 3077 is a smaller fainer galaxy in the lower right hand corner.

Imaged on October 30, 2011 from the Zodiac Ranch near Fort Davis, TX.

2-min exposure. Total exposure time, 22 minutes.

Messier 74

Messier 74 is a face on spiral galaxy located in the constellation Pisces. Approximately 30 million light years away.

Imaged at Zodiac Ranch near Fort Davis, TX on October 30, 2011. 2-min exposure. Total exposure time was 44 min.

Captured using a QHY8 CCD color camera and autoguided using an Orion Star Shoot autoguider piggybacked on a Celestron 11" SCT.

Jupiter

Our largest planet in the solar system is very close to Earth this time of year and is about to be at opposition. This is the brightest object in the sky other than the moon (for the time being anyway).

This image was aquired with a Phillips TouCam webcam. It was taken at 10 frames per second for 3 minutes. That's a total of 1800 frames. Frames were stacked using software for the final result.

On some nights, you can see it's four main moons (Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto) cast a shadow on the planet as they orbit the planet with an 8" or larger telescope.

Image was taken around midnight on September 30, 2011 from my back yard in Midland, TX. Clear skies with excellent seeing and transparent skies. Some light pollution. Used without filters and guided.

Mars in the Beehive Cluster

Two images at once! The planet Mars entered into the Beehive Cluster (M44). Although M44 is 580 light years away, Mars is a mere 168 million miles (approximately).

M44 is an open cluster in the constellation of Cancer (the Crab)

NGC 253 Sculptor Galaxy

Sculptor Galaxy is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Sculptor. It is a mere 10 million light years away and spans about 70 thousand lights year. NGC 253 was discovered by Caroline Herschel in the 1783.

Imaged at Zodiac Ranch, Fort Davis, TX on September 24, 2011 under excellent seeing conditions with an 11" Celestron HD (hyperstar)

5 min exposure X 15 images (total time of 75min exposure time). Captured using Nebulosity software and stacked with darks for the final result.

M45, Pleiades cluster

The Pleiades. The cluster is also called The Seven Sisters, where the sisters are seven of the brightest stars in the cluster. The two bright stars to the left in the cluster are the parents, Atlas and Pleione, hence also the more common name Pleiades (the children of Pleione). The seven sisters are Alcyone, Merope, Electra, Maia, Celaeno, Taygeta and Asterope (Messier45.com)

Several Pleiads appear surrounded by intricate blue filaments of light. This nebulosity is the result of starlight scattering (reflecting) off minute grains of interstellar dust in the vicinity. The dust particles are inside a cloud of mostly hydrogen gas that the cluster seems to be plowing into (Steven Gibson, www.naic.edu/~gibson/pleiades/)

This was a 20 minute exposure, guided and captured in the early morning of September 25, 2011 from Zodiac Ranch in Fort Davis, TX.

The sky was perfectly still with excellent transparency and great seeing.