Welcome to my Astrophotography Blog!

This is a journal of my adventures in astrophotography -- taking images of distant celestial objects. Please look around and feel free to add your comments, questions, and critique to any of the entries by clicking the "comments" button on the bottom of each entry -- or just say "howdy!

And don't forget to click on the images for a larger view!

So choose either the Red pill or the Blue pill and follow me down the wormhole....

JOhn

Comanche Springs Star Party

Comanche Springs Star Party
Doin' my thang at the Comanche Springs Astronomy Campus (where I often become a "red ghost")

Dallas Sky

Rancho Venado Sky

Atoka Sky

Camanche Springs Sky

Thursday, July 10, 2008

The Pinwheel Galaxy

This is M101, otherwise known as the "Pinwheel Galaxy". This sucker is BIG -- we're talking 170,000 light years in diameter big! Imagine that... if you could travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) it would take you 170,000 years to go from one side of this galaxy to the next. Dude, that's seriously big.

M101 is parked very close to the handle of the Big Dipper. You'll notice the little companion galaxy to the lower right -- this is NGC 5474. But if you look closely, there are a BUNCH of galaxies in this field. In the larger version of this file I can see 19 galaxies (although there are probably many more) http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3022/2655611999_b83c991837_o.jpg

This was taken at my session last Saturday night in Atoka. Some clouds moved-in and tainted some of the data. I plan to try again and go much deeper on this object : )

For more info on this galaxy click here http://www.seds.org/messier/m/m101.html


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