These are my photographs of objects that are part of the Hubble Night Sky Challenge for January. The challenge is coordinated by The Astronomical League in cooperation with NASA. More information about this project cam be found on the Night Sky page.
First, we have two objects that were not official targets for January but that I think made for better pictures. The Rosette Nebula contains an open cluster known as the Satellite Nebula (NGC 224 or C50), This cluster contains some super bright stars and has been estimated to be less than 5 million years old. The nebula and the star clusters are in the constellation Monoceros.
NGC 2244
NGC 2264 gives you two objects for one – the Christmas Tree Cluster and the Cone Nebula. My photo did not pick up any significant nebulosity. I do see a “Christmas” tree with a star on top. Do you? The Christmas Tree star formation consists of young stars obscured by heavy layers of dust clouds. These dust clouds, along with hydrogen and helium are producing luminous new stars. This object is also in Monoceros.
NGC 2264
Due to short integration times, lost frames and incoming cloudy weather, the photos below are not all they could be. Hopefully this project will be a learning process for me to improve my astrophotography and visual observing. If you would like to see some beautiful photos of the objects taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, please visit the NASA page here. Do you see the objects in these photos below?
A popular target for astrophotographers is Orion Nebula, also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976. It is a diffuse nebula south of Orion’s Belt in the constellation of Orion, and it is known as the middle “star” in the “sword” of Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky with an apparent magnitude of 4.0. I usually need binoculars to see this faint fuzzy patch in Orion. It is 1,344 ± 20 light-years away and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth.
M42
Messier 43 or M43, also known as De Mairan’s Nebula and NGC 1982, is a star-forming nebula also in Orion. It was discovered by the French scientist Jean-Jacques d’Ortous de Mairan some time before 1731, then catalogued by Charles Messier in 1769. It is physically part of the Orion Nebula , separate from the main nebula by a dense lane of dust known as the northeast dark lane. I found this difficult to pick out in my telescope and tried to zoom in on the area designated as M43, but I the small pink blob at the top of this photo is what I’m looking for,
M43
NGC 2261 (aka Hubble’s Variable Nebula or Caldwell 46) is a variable nebula located in the constellation Monoceros. The nebula is illuminated by the star R Monocerotis (R Mon), which is not directly visible itself. The first recorded observation of the nebula was by William Herschel on December 26, 1783, being described as considerably bright and ‘fan-shaped’. It has also been described as looking like a small comet and can be variable in appearance due to changes in its apparent brightness. I definitely see the comet-like appearance in this phots. It also looks like a shuttlecock to me.
C46
Below is a very faint reddish blob which is a photo of the Crab Nebula (M1, NGC 1952, Taurus A), a supernova remnant and pulsar wind nebula in the constellation of Taurus. The common name comes from a drawing that somewhat resembled a crab with arms produced by William Parsons in 1842 or 1843. The nebula was discovered by English astronomer John Bevis in 1731. It corresponds with a bright supernova observed in 1054 AD by Native American, Japanese, and Arabic stargazers. The supernova was also recorded by Chinese astronomers as a guest star. The nebula was the first astronomical object identified that corresponds with a historically-observed supernova explosion. This is one I will definitely image again with longer exposure integration times.
M1
Messier 78 or M78, also known as NGC 2068, is a reflection nebula in the constellation Orion. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1780 and included by Charles Messier in his catalog of comet-like objects that same year.
M78 is the brightest diffuse reflection nebula of a group of nebulae which belong to the Orion B molecular cloud complex and is about 1,350 light-years distant from Earth. M78 is easily found in small telescopes as a hazy patch and involves two stars of 10th and 11th magnitude. These two B-type stars are responsible for making the cloud of dust in M78 visible by reflecting their light. The nebula came out quite faint and small in my photo and only the main area of nebulosity is visible.
M78