Month: February 2017

NGC2264 Cone nebula

Cone nebula is a giant cloud of ionized hydrogen gas, which includes the Christmas Tree Cluster. It’s located between two bright winter stars Betelgeuse (constellation Orion) and Procyon (Canis Minor) and it’s 2700 light-years far from the Solar System. There is a famous picture from Hubble Space telescope of the tip of the cone – star forming complex.

Bi-color picture didn’t look as I expected, therefore I decided to publish only mono version of hydrogen alpha channel.


M96 Galaxy

M96 is a spiral galaxy located in constellation Leo. It is approximately 31 million Light-years far from Earth and it has same size and mass as our home – Milky Way. Neighboring galaxies M95 and M105 will be captured next time.


M44 Beehive Cluster

Beehive cluster is an open cluster located in constellation Cancer. Because of its relatively “short” distance to the Solar system (600 Light years), it didn’t fit fully into the field of view of my telescope. The cluster has approximately 1000 stars and even two planets were discovered there.