Cepheus


Spelunking

I won’t admit to having any particular phobias, but do believe that it’s quite insane to be crawling around through narrow passages deep underground (I’ve also never had even the slightest desire to jump out of an airplane).  So I recently explored a different kind of exotic structure, the Cave Nebula.  This is one of the targets I attempted to capture during the last dark site star party a few weeks ago, but something went wrong with that capture, so I’ve been working on it from home on the handful of clear nights we’ve had since then.  The Cave is […]


Another Wild Flower from OSP

It seems that every year when I go to OSP (Oregon Star Party) I end up shooting this beauty, the Iris Nebula, and each year it gets a little better.  I had not planned to shoot it again this year, but when I saw how good the seeing was on the second night, I just had to drop what I was doing and move on to the Iris. The Iris (NGC7023) is a reflection nebula in the constellation Cepheus, which has many great targets for astrophotography.  As with the Pleiades cluster, the blue appearance is really just the color of […]