This image of Messier 13, the Great Globular Star Cluster in Hercules was imaged by Claudio Oriani in Richmond Hill, Ontario on May 30, 2023 using an 8″ SCT telescope. The cluster, also known as NGC 6205, is 24,000 light-years away from our sun. The cluster appears as a faint fuzzy patch in binoculars, and…
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This image of Messier 13 in Hercules, the father of all globular star clusters visible from the Northern Hemisphere, was captured by Martin Pugh. Hundreds of thousands of stars, 25,000 light-years away from the sun, are arranged in a sphere by their mutual gravitational attraction. M13 is visible as a faint fuzzy patch to the…
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This terrific Wikipedia image by Hunter Wilson from March 28, 2008 shows the Leo Triplet of Galaxies, which is located south-southeast of the bright star Chertan in Leo. The photograph, with celestial north up and East toward left, covers a pinky-finger-width (or 0.6 degrees) of the sky left-to-right. The Hamburger Galaxy is at the top…
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This spectacular photograph by Alan Dyer of Alberta, Canada captured Venus’ swing past the Pleiades Star Cluster, or the Seven Sisters, on Tuesday, April 3, 2012. The image, spanning about two fingers widths of the sky, nicely shows the mini-dipper shape of the stars that you would see through binoculars. Alan’s original blog post is…
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The relatively bright galaxy named NGC 2903 sits in front of Leo, the Lion’s nose, just below the reddish star Alterf. The magnitude 9 spiral galaxy is visible in medium-sized telescope under dark sky conditions. End-to-end the galaxy spans 11 arc-minutes, or one-third of the full moon’s diameter! While it didn’t make Charles Messier’s List,…
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This wonderful image was captured around 8:30 pm EST on Saturday, February 11, 2023 by Andrea Girones from her backyard in Ottawa, Canada. It shows the green comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) as it slid past reddish Mars. The dusty tail is material left behind as the comet travels downwards (celestial southbound) in the sky. The…
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This spectacular image of the Pleiades Star Cluster (Messier 45) in Taurus was captured and processed by Shawn Nielsen of Kitchener, Ontario. Notice both the bright blues of reflection nebulosity and the darker dust in the background. Shawn posts his images on social media as @Visible Dark_ . His website https://visibledark.ca/ contains many more treasures.…
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