The Goosehead Nebula in IC 1848 (October 2018)

This is 11x1200" with the Synta-ONTC 8" and the SXVF-H9 through an Astronomik 6nm filter.

NGC 5585 (May 2018)

NGC 5585 is a satellite of M101, supposedly.  It lies at about the same distance, ~20-24 million light years, and not very far from M101 in the sky.  In this image, I can clearly see a spiral structure and a brightening at the galaxy's core.  The galaxy's image gives the impression of busy-ness, as if star clusters are popping up all over it.  As galaxies go, NGC 5585 is fairly small, probably only around 35,000 light years across.

In fact, the whole frame is busy and shows a wide distance scale.  The bright star above left of the galaxy is HD238342, 680 light years away and magnitude 9.43.  The bright star on the far right, magnitude 8.85, is HD 125918 and is 5,100 light years away.

Beyond NGC 5585 are many more distant galaxies. Some of these are nearly 2 billion light years away.  They must be enormous and very bright.

This image is 22x720" with the SXVF-H9 through an Astronomik CLS filter, a Baader MPCC, and the ONTC-Synta Newtonian at f/4.95.

NGC 4565 (April 2018)

NGC 4565 appears in the constellation Coma Berenices but is around 44 million light years away.  It is a very large spiral galaxy, which we see nearly edge-on.  It is famous for the dust lane and how its thin shape seems to taper away to nothing at the ends, which are actually extended spiral arms.

The galaxy in the upper left is NGC 4565A and is perhaps 3 million light years closer than 4565.  The piece of fluff directly below the center of 4565 but about level with the lower tip of 4565's left end is IC 3571, perhaps 20 million light years further away.  Other little galaxies in the image shine from hundreds of millions of light years' distance.

This image is 69x480", about 9.2 hours, through the ONTC-Synta Newtonian at f/4.95, with the SXVF-H9C camera and an Astronomik CLS filter.

M102 or NGC 5866 (March 2018)

This galaxy is known as NGC 5866 and probably is the 102nd item in Messier's list of not-comets.  There is some historical dispute about 102 being a duplicate of 101, but what I've read suggests that it is not.  I don't think anyone who had seen both through the eyepiece could believe these two were the same object.  M101 looks like a faint but fuzzy patch, or several of them, and M102 looks like a single flying saucer. Also, they are just not that close to each other.

M102 is about 47 million light years away.  We see it in the constellation Draco.

To the left and down from M102 is galaxy NGC 5866A, which is only about 27 million light years away, not connected at all to M102.

This image is 23x480" (just over three hours) with the SXVF-H9C through the ONTC-Synta Newtonian.

M66 (March 2018)

Galaxy M66 is 37 million light years away.  It appears in our constellation Leo.

The image also shows several background galaxies.  In the upper right corner you can find galaxy PGC 1417198, magnitude 17.18 and 1.2 billion light years away. In the upper left corner, galaxy PGC 3542444 shines at magnitude 17.95 and is 2.9 billion light years away! Wow! That must be some galaxy! Just below that and a little to the right is PGC 1423398, which is  magnitude 17.85 and 1.9 billion light years from us.  (These distances come from SkySafari.)

The dimmest stars in this image are +19 magnitude.

This image is 42x480" (5.6 hours) over two nights with the SXVF-H9C through the ONTC-Synta Newtonian and Baader MPCC II.

M66 was actually the first deep sky object I ever imaged eleven years ago. A year later, ten years ago this month, I obtained what I thought was a decent image. I posted about it here.