GerryC

@gapc.bsky.social

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I am a retired Biology/Science teacher from Adelaide. I am now trying my hand at astrophotography, learning French and reading Ancient History. Zoo volunteer and bird lover. He/him. I follow a lot of scientists. There is no obligation to follow back

See my inadequate description of the starless version of this photo. In this one we we the stars and there are lots of them because we are on the edge of the Milky Way
The centre of the Tarantula Nebula is very bright and it looks like it has a number of clouds exploding from the centre bright region.
The picture shows two images taken with the Seestar S50 telescope. The one on the left shows the central star surrounded by a dark pink half halo. On the right of it is a dark are then a brigher area which looks like a horn (upside down). It is a stack of 12 photos taken over two minutes. The second photo is the same nebula but it is a stack of 1200 images taken over 10 hours. It shows much more detail in the halo - swirling clouds of dust, still mainly pink but with reds, greys and whites mixed through it. The 'horn on the right now also has much more detail and it now looks like a scary face with half a mouth and one eye!
This is print of a female superb wren by Rachel Hollis. It is a small bird but fills up this screen. It is predominately plain brown in colour, with a white breast and reddish bill and lores. Her long tail points up at almost 90 degrees to her body.
The Eye of God or NGC 7293 really does have an eye shape. The central part is a circular shape with a green hue. There is another middle circle outside of this with a light coloured dust and then the outer part gives it the eye shape and is a darker orange colour. There are a moderate number of stars through and around the nebula.
M6 in this image is a group of around 20-30 stars that are about 1600 light years from Earth. It is not a tight cluster, and some of the stars form V shapes. They are surrounded by a blue nebulosity. In the top right-hand corner is more nebula, although it is more of a traditional brown-orange colour.
M8 or Lagoon nebula. 4,000 light years from Earth, it looks like the head of a horse that is on fire. The 'snout' is at the base of the nebula and has a red-orange bridge of dust. The 'eyes' are about halfway up the image and, at least, the left 'eye' is looking right at you! The forehead is a lighter orange colour with a set of stars in the middle of the 'forehead'. The rest of the head trails off into dust on the left hand side. The nebula is surrounded by many stars but there are about 20 stars featured prominently on the 'head'.
M8 or Lagoon nebula. 4,000 light years from Earth, it looks like the head of a horse that is on fire. The 'snout' is at the base of the nebula and has a red-orange bridge of dust. The 'eyes' are about halfway up the image and, at least, the left 'eye' is looking right at you! The forehead is a lighter orange colour with a set of stars in the middle of the 'forehead'. The rest of the head trails off into dust on the left hand side. The nebula is surrounded by many stars but there are about 20 stars featured prominently on the 'head'.
The Carina Nebula consists of three major parts that look a bit like a pinwheel. The top 'wedge' is a reddish plate of dust with what looks like a dinosaur head of slightly brighter dust on the side. The bottom right 'wedge' is still mainly red but consist of two pieces, the top of which looks a bit like a crocodile head with teeth and the bottom is just a rectangula blob of dust. The middle left 'wedge' is the brightest and most spectacular part. It is triangular in shape and the central part of the triangle is very bright with lots of stars. There are lots of stars throughout the image. It is hard to describe but I hope I did it some justice.
This is the Trifid Nebula which is about 4100 light years from Earth. It is a rounded shape with the top half looking like an orange ball with numerous cracks on the surface. The 'ball' sits on a green base. It is surrouded by stars from our Galaxy and include other dust elements in the top right of the photo and lighter sections of orange dust throughout.
See previous description the original view of NGC 6188. All I have done is remove the stars which you can do when processing the image.
This is the Firebird nebula although you would have to use your imagination to see a bird in the image. This 'bird' appears to have a small head with two eyes near the centre of the image and then streaks of dark pink colour on the top of the 'wing' with a darker colour on the underside. The rest of the image consists of streams of light and dark coloured 'clouds' of dust that extends from, surrounds and reaches into the 'bird'. There are hundreds if not thousands of stars in the image looking, for the most part like tiny pinpricks of light.
This is NGC 3324, also called the Gabriela Mistral Nebula. The image mainly contains stars, including a cluster of stars near the bottom. The nebula itself looks like a round fireball with the left half of the 'ball' a bright red colour. This slowly fades across the right half of the 'ball', which then seems to disintegrate on the edges. There are some other wisps of the nearby Carina Nebula featuring in the top and left corner of the image.
This is a starless view of the Firebird Nebula. Whilst processing this nebula you can remove the stars and just focus on bringing out the dust and gas that give this nebula it's shape. It does look like a bird in that you have a 'head' in the middle with two wings spreading out to the top and bottom of the picture. The wings look like long, thin turbulent brown clouds. The head and some of the wings are backlit. I am sorry that my description is so inadequate but I hope you can get a sense of the image.
Southern hemisphere galaxy called M83 or the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy. It is 15 million light years away from Earth. This photo was taken with the Seestar S50 smart telescope and shows a central bright 'bar' of stars. It has around four swirls of stars radiating from the centre. It shows tinges of red throughout.
The flame nebula is in the bottom middle of the image. It looks like an upside-down tree in this photo because it was taken in the Southern Hemisphere. Essentially, it is some stars that are shining through some dust or gas that are giving it a red colour, but some of that colour is blocked by other dust which looks like the outline of a tree.
During the processing of a galaxy, there is a step where you can remove most of the surrounding stars and leave only the feature you are focussed on - in this case, the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy. Other than that, the description is the same as my first photo in this post.
The galaxy sits about half-way down the image. There is a bright centre with two bright but short lines of stars running above and below the centre of the galaxy. Then there is a 45 degree curve line of stars from the top of the top line to the left and the bottom of the bottom line to the right.
The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy is a spiral galaxy photographed from Adelaide, South Australia. It is 15 million light-years from Earth.
Mount Taranaki, New Zealand in the background. Former volcano.
This is the Horsehead Nebula (IC 434). This is an emission nebula which means that a horsehead-shaped gas cloud is blocking light from behind so it looks like the head of a horse. Two big stars from the Orion constellation are featured at the middle-right and bottom of the photo. The nebula is a red colour and is about 1200 light years from the Sun.
You can see the heads of three young Blackbird chicks inside a very comfortable and solid nest
NGC 7293 Southern Hemisphere version
The Firebird Nebula or NGC6188 showing the nebula but not the stars