Monthly Archives: September 2017


Spaghetti (with Tomato Sauce)

This is a bi-color version of the Spaghetti Nebula.  I wasn’t able to put together a suitable rig for the wider angle lens, so just captured O-3 (oxygen) with the same 200mm setup.  Hydrogen is assigned to red and oxygen to blue and green.  In other photos of this nebula I found online very few bothered with the S-2 channel, as there is so little there.  Well, as I said before, even the hydrogen is very dim.  Oxygen is even dimmer:  You can see just a hint of it in blue/green near the top. I suspect that this is pushing […]


Mama Mia!

There are lots of things to be surprised about these days, starting with how long it has been since I posted anything here!  It has been very busy for several weeks here at Wa-chur-ed Observatory, including product development, order fulfillment, and my daughter’s wedding!  But it has not included any astro-photography – until last night. The Spaghetti Nebula, also known as Simeis 147 and Sh2-240, is a supernova remnant in Taurus.  It doesn’t have any spicy meatballs in it, but it is surprisingly dim – probably the dimmest target I have ever attempted.  It’s also very large at over 3 […]


Playing With Pacman

The sky has been mostly clear of clouds lately, but often full of smoke from forest fires.  At times it has been bad enough that we’ve had to close the windows to avoid the smell of smoke.  But I found a couple of reasonably clear nights and decided to re-shoot the Pacman Nebula (NGC281), which I haven’t done in about 5 years.  I don’t know when the “Pacman” name was first used to describe this emission nebula in Cassiopeia, but the video game character was created in 1980, so it is quite new in astronomical terms.  The nebula was first […]