Hercules Cluster of Galaxies
The Hercules Cluster (Abell 2151) is a cluster of about 200 galaxies some 500 million light-years distant in the constellation Hercules. One of the coolest aspects of this cluster is […]
The Hercules Cluster (Abell 2151) is a cluster of about 200 galaxies some 500 million light-years distant in the constellation Hercules. One of the coolest aspects of this cluster is […]
The Perseus Cluster of galaxies (Abell 426) is a cluster of about 200+ galaxies some 240 million light-years distant in the constellation Perseus. It is rich in spiral galaxies and […]
From our vantage point in the Milky Way Galaxy, we see NGC 3344 face-on. Nearly 40,000 light-years across, the big, beautiful spiral galaxy is located just 20 million light-years away […]
More commonly known as Hockey Stick Galaxy, NGC 4656 is a distorted edge-on spiral galaxy. Its distinctive shape is due to a recent gravitational interaction with the galaxy NGC 4631. […]
You can see multiple galaxies in this section of the constellation Ursa Major. The most striking is NGC 3718, the warped spiral galaxy near picture center. NGC 3718’s spiral arms […]
While most spiral galaxies, including our own Milky Way, have two or more spiral arms, NGC 4725 has only one. In this image, the solo spiral arm seems to wind […]
NGC 4395 is a spiral galaxy with a very low surface brightness. Unlike most galaxies the center of the galaxy is small and faint. Nearly all galaxies are known to […]
A two part galaxy! This galaxy is different as there are two parts to it. The outer part, which is really really faint as compared to the bright inner part, […]
M61 is a barred spiral galaxy located in the nearby Virgo Cluster of Galaxies. Visible in M61 are a host of features common to spiral galaxies: bright spiral arms, a […]
Spiral galaxy pair NGC 4567 and NGC 4568 (in center) share this area with lonely elliptical galaxy NGC 4564 (on left). All are members of the large Virgo Galaxy Cluster. […]
From our vantage point in the Milky Way Galaxy, we see NGC 6946 face-on. The big, beautiful spiral galaxy is located 22 million light-years away, behind a veil of foreground […]
Messier 90 (also known as M90 and NGC 4569) is an intermediate spiral galaxy exhibiting a weak inner ring structure about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. Messier […]
This is spiral galaxy Arp 188, the Tadpole Galaxy. The cosmic tadpole is a 420 million light-years distant toward the northern constellation Draco. Its eye-catching tail is about 280,000 light-years […]
The Whale Galaxy (NGC4631) is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici. This galaxy’s slightly distorted wedge shape, gives it the appearance of a whale, hence its nickname. […]
Gorgeous spiral galaxy NGC 3521 is a mere 35 million light-years away, toward the constellation Leo. It is considered to be a flocculent galaxy. Flocculent galaxies are those that are […]
Messier 109 is a barred spiral galaxy exhibiting a weak inner ring structure around an obviously well-structured central bar approximately 83.5 ± 24 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa […]
Our galaxy is part of a group of galaxies that includes Andromeda, Pinwheel and about 80 other galaxies. This group is called ‘Local Group of Galaxies’. Neighboring to our group […]
Spiral galaxy M83 is located in the constellation Hydra. A “starburst” galaxy, M83 is considerably smaller than our own galaxy but is producing stars at a much faster rate. The […]
NGC 3718, also called Arp 214, is a galaxy located approximately 52 million light years from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major. NGC 3718 has a warped, s-shape. This may […]
NGC 7814 is sometimes called the Little Sombrero for its resemblance to the brighter more famous M104, the Sombrero Galaxy. Both Sombrero and Little Sombrero are spiral galaxies seen edge-on, […]
Grand spiral galaxies often seem to get all the glory, flaunting their young, bright, blue star clusters in beautiful, symmetric spiral arms. But small galaxies form stars too, like nearby […]
Majestic on a truly cosmic scale, M100 is appropriately known as a grand design spiral galaxy. It is a large galaxy of over 100 billion stars with well-defined spiral arms […]
Messier 77 is a barred spiral galaxy located 47 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Cetus. Measuring some 170,000 light-years in diameter, it is one of the largest galaxies […]
This just looks bunch of stars and some fuzzy stuff. But, they are dozens of very distant galaxies. The larger ones are about 450 to 525 million light years away […]
Famous as the Leo Triplet, the three magnificent galaxies gather in one field of view. They are NGC 3628 (right-bottom), M66 (top-right), and M65 (top-left). All three are large spiral […]
There are 5 galaxies right in the middle of this image. All the yellowish galaxies are about 300 million light years away, whereas the bluish one is about 260 million […]
NGC 2903 is a field barred spiral galaxy about 20 million light-years away in the constellation Leo. Just a little smaller than our own Milky Way, NGC 2903 is about […]
This is a rather bad image. I never got a good guide star on it and had to adjust it all the time and therefore had to forcibly cut 50% […]
There are five galaxies in this image. They are all about 90-130 million light years away!!! Yes – light that you see now left these galaxies way before Dinosaurs were […]
Although similar in mass to our Milky Way Galaxy, light takes about 60,000 years to cross M102, about 30 percent less than light takes to cross our own Galaxy. Why […]
NGC 4244, nicknamed the Silver Needle Galaxy is my next image. This galaxy spans some 65,000 light-years and lies around 13.5 million light-years away. It appears as a wafer-thin streak […]
My telescope is now fully collimated (aligned), but these images were taken before collimation, so there is some amount of fuzziness. But the objects are marvelous. The large Galaxy in […]
This is not a pretty image, but, you can see astrophysics in action here. This is a galaxy (named M77) about 47 million light years away. I took image of […]
A rather UGLY looking galaxy! Similar in size to large, bright spiral galaxies in our neighborhood, IC 342 is a mere 10 million light-years distant in the constellation Camelopardalis. A […]
Last week, I had posted Splinter Galaxy, an edge-on galaxy that was rather thin. This week, I am posting the Hamburger Galaxy (NGC 3628), which is also a edge-on galaxy, […]
Some 60 million light-years away in the southerly constellation Corvus, two large galaxies are colliding, leaving a long tail of their erstwhile spiral arms. Spanning about 500 thousand light-years, the […]
Barred spiral galaxy M95 is about 75,000 light-years across, somewhat smaller in size to our own Milky Way and one of the larger galaxies of the Leo galaxy group. In […]
Probably the best example of a spiral Galaxy, M101 is known as the Pinwheel Galaxy for obvious reasons – it’s many spiral arms give a clear impression of a pinwheel. […]
Some 10 million light-years distant and about 50,000 light-years across, the spiral galaxy also seems to have more than its fair share of giant star forming HII regions, marked by […]
Dust lanes seem to swirl around the core of Messier 96 in this picture of the beautiful island universe M96. Of course M96 is a spiral galaxy, and counting the […]
This is a tough galaxy to shoot. There is not a lot of light coming from this dim galaxy and therefore, it does not look as pretty. NGC 925 is […]
What’s lighting up the Cigar Galaxy? M82, as this irregular galaxy is also known, was stirred up by a recent pass near large spiral galaxy M81. This doesn’t fully explain […]
Normally, I take images of galaxies with nice spiral arms. Sometimes I shoot edge on galaxies, which look flat from our angle. Then there is another group of galaxies, which […]
Peculiarly shaped spiral galaxy NGC 772 is found within constellation Aries, some 130 million light-years beyond the stars and nebulae of our Milky Way galaxy. This island universe is peculiar […]
Usually most galaxies pictures that I post have spiral arm structure, dust lanes, definite shape and usually 100s of billions of stars. But, this image is of a irregular dwarf […]
NGC 891 is an edge-on spiral galaxy about 30 million light-years away in the constellation Andromeda. NGC 891 looks as the Milky Way would look like when viewed edge-on (some […]
About 1/3rd smaller than our Milky Way galaxy, an island universe of about 100 billion stars, 32 million light-years away toward the constellation Pisces, M74 presents a gorgeous face-on view. […]
The large galaxy in this picture is a spiral galaxy about 40 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. The galaxy is similar in size and structure to the galaxy […]
With my lower magnification Stellarvue SV130 telescope, I imaged this galaxy again in 2023. Here is this image. Update 2022 NGC 253 is an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation […]
After a long time, I visited Cherry Spring State Park, a truly dark sky in north central Pennsylvania. My main purpose was to observe deep sky objects using my telescope, […]
Also known as the Knife Edge or Splinter galaxy, NGC 5907 is an edge-on spiral galaxy. We see it like a knife edge, as we see it from the side, […]
This trio of galaxies is sometimes called the Draco Trio, located in the northern constellation of (you guessed it) Draco. From top to bottom are edge-on spiral NGC 5981, elliptical […]
Pinwheel Galaxy (M33) in Triangulum constellation is our neighbor. It is the second nearest galaxy to our Milky way (excluding our Milky Way’s satellites). It’s smaller than our galaxy – […]
It is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici. M106 is at a distance of about 22 to 25 million light-years away from Earth. It is also a Seyfert […]
A bright spiral galaxy of the northern sky, M63 is about 25 million light-years distant in the constellation Canes Venatici. Also cataloged as NGC 5055, the majestic island universe is […]
Nearby and bright, spiral galaxies M65 (top) and M66 stand out in this cosmic snapshot. The pair are just 35 million light-years distant and around 100,000 light-years across, about the […]
I have revisited this galaxy in 2020 and took a image with long duration of 19 hours. (43 images of 20 minutes each for Luminance & 9 images each of […]
Andromeda Galaxy (M31) – Andromeda Galaxy is the nearest large Galaxy to Milky Way. It consists of 1 trillion stars. The Andromeda Galaxy is a spiral galaxy approximately 2.5 million […]
Those who follow my pictures closely will notice that I have imaged this galaxy many times. It’s because I love this galaxy and try to image it every year to […]