Comet of the Year! After a week of cloudy mornings, I finally got a break in the clouds and took this image of Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) at 6:10 a.m. on September 30. This is the comet that’s been on the news lately. It’s about 65 million miles away from us and getting closer. I […]
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Night Sky: Visible planets and more highlights for September
The Rest of the Veil! Last month I posted this image of NGC 7974, the Western Veil Nebula. Almost immediately after posting this image, I got asked if there was an Eastern Veil. Of course, there is an Eastern Veil (NGC 6992), and here’s an image: And there’s also a central veil, which is called […]
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Night Sky: Perseid meteor shower, visible planets, and more highlights for August
The Nebula of August August greets us with quite a few nebulae in the NE skies. Here are three prominent ones. This is NGC 7974, the Western Veil Nebula. This nebula has a visual magnitude of +5.0, but it’s extremely difficult to see unless you have a telescope with a good light filter. NGC 6960 […]
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Night Sky: Delta Aquariids meteor shower, visible planets, and more highlights for July
July 1, 2024 | Island Features | By: Gerry Lebing
With the passing of the Summer Solstice on June 20, the Earth starts to tilt away from the Sun and the night starts to lengthen. On the Summer Solstice, the Sun rose at 5:46 a.m. and set at 8:20 p.m. That means we received about 14 hours and 34 minutes of daylight. On July 1, […]
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Night Sky: Globular Clusters and more highlights for June
June 3, 2024 | Island Features | By: Gerry Lebing
A Good Month for Globular Clusters! NASA defines globular clusters as “stable, tightly gravitationally bound clusters of tens of thousands to millions of stars found in a wide variety of galaxies.” That literally means a sphere of stars! June will offer a chance to see two very beautiful examples of globular clusters with your naked […]
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Night Sky: Eta Aquarids meteor shower and more highlights for May
May 2, 2024 | Island Features | By: Gerry Lebing
The Eclipse and the Comet! On April 8, there was a total eclipse of the sun, if you happened to be about 400 miles west of the Outer Banks. Here in Waves, we had a somewhat less exciting experience, but interesting all the same. We saw about 60-65% coverage of the sun. I think a […]
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Night Sky: the Pons-Brooks Comet, a partial eclipse, and more highlights for April
Watch Out for the Devil Comet! This is the Devil Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks on the night of March 11. It’s called the Devil Comet because it tends to change its shape and brightness rather abruptly! Some researchers believe this is caused by volcanic eruptions which release internal gases from its core. Currently, the Devil Comet is […]
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Night Sky: Visible planets, two comets, and more night sky highlights for March
March 1, 2024 | Island Features | By: Gerry Lebing
It’s Galaxy Time! The beginning of March always puts Earth in a position to view hundreds of galaxies. Of course, the groupings of galaxies start to appear before the beginning of the month. Here are three images I took during February: This is M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy. It’s 28 million light-years (MLY) away from us […]
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Night Sky: Visible planets, two comets, and more highlights for February
Must be the Season of the Witch! This is the Witch Head Nebula, IC 2118. It’s a large, faint, reflection nebula located in the constellation Eridanus, near the star Rigel. The red area in the following image shows you where IC 2118 is located: With a visual magnitude of +10, IC 2118 is impossible to […]
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Night Sky: Quadrantids meteor shower, and more highlights for January
In astrophotography, we combine multiple images to increase the field of view and allow us to look at very large objects or show multiple objects that appear close to each other in the night sky. This mosaic is a composition of eight frames. It shows three famous emission nebulae, the Orion Nebula, M42, (on the […]
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