Helix Nebula in SHO (Summer 2018)

The Helix never ceases to amaze.  This data is from a 12" RCOS telescope from New South Wales.

M13 (not deep) — First Light with Atik 460ex Color (April 2020)

This is M13 again.  I spent most of the night on something else, but it seemed a shame to waste the darkness when I could still be shooting, so I took 3x360" on M13.  It's not deep.  One can barely spot IC 4617, but this was a pretty good test.  I took this picture through an Astronomik CLS filter, a Baader MPCC (the first version), and the 203mm f/4.95 Synta-ONTC Newtonian. 

NGC 2442 (April 2019)

NGC 3953 (April 2020)

OK, so this is a galaxy just southeast of the Big Dipper's bowl.  It looks a lot like M109 and might actually be the galaxy discovered that we now call M109 (whose position was disputed for a long time).  NGC 3953 is a lovely spiral about 61 million light years away.

The image is a time machine looking back into the past.  Find the following beginning at NGC 3953 in the center:

Two galaxy lengths down and left, PGC 37256. No idea how far this one---perhaps it is near NGC 3953.

Above and a little left of NGC 3953, PGC 213900, mag 16.76, 710 million light years.

Below and a little right, PGC 2412642, mag 16.58, 710 million light years.

Immediately left of the galaxy, the small, horizontal "seed" shape, PGC 213899, mag 17.84, 340 million light years.

Below the galaxy, nearly at the bottom of the frame, PGC 2411483, mag 17.30, 970 million light years.

Directly far left of NGC 3953, elliptical, PGC 2407838, mag 17.85, 1.4 billion light years.

In the upper left corner, there are three galaxies.  Beginning at lower left, PGC 2406768, mag 16.69, 1.2 billion light years. Directly above that, PGC 2406922, mag 18.26, 1.2 billion light years. To the right and above that, PGC 2408846, mag 17.87, 1.6 billion light years.

In the bottom right, 1 galaxy length in from the bottom and 1 from the right, PGC 2415838, mag 17.96, 1.7 billion light years.

This image is 49x360" through a light pollution filter.

NGC 2841 (Jan. 2020)

NGC 2841 is found in Ursa Major, mostly down the bear's front leg.  Apparently this galaxy, about 46 million light years distant, is 150,000 light years across, half again larger than our own galaxy.

This image is 34x360" with the 203mm f/4.9 Synta-ONTC Newtonian telescope and the SXVF-H9 camera.

Comet C\2019 Y4 (ATLAS) (1:37-1:58 UTC on 4-1-2020)

And a single frame taken at 1:44 UTC:

Taken with the SXVF-H9 through the Synta-ONTC 203mm Newtonian at f/4.9.  Each exposure was 30 seconds through an Astronomik CLS filter.

NGC 2442 & some companions (2019)

NGC 2442 is in the constellation Volans.  It is not visible from Texas at all---too far south.  This data came from a remote observatory in Australia, gathered by an amateur whose standards for data are as high as mine or higher.

NGC 2442 is about 56 million light years away.  It has obviously been disturbed by something.  According to more than one study, that something is probably AM 0738-692, the galaxy to the left (also known as PGC 21457).  The small galaxy appears to have come from the right and moved to the left just above NGC 2442, probably within the last 300,000 years.  This passage disturbed the larger galaxy, and eventually the smaller one will swing back, crash again, and eventually combine with NGC 2442.  At least that is predicted by this study: https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/9701015.pdf.

Another study suggests another cause and posts a deep image showing that NGC 2442's unusual arm extends much further than the other:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0103099.pdf
Here's the photo from that study:
https://arxiv.org/PS_cache/astro-ph/ps/0103/0103099v1.f2.jpg
I can make my data do some of that:

A later study detected an intergalactic gas cloud in the area of NGC 2442.  It's possible that the gas cloud has come from NGC 2442 as part of its interactions.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/321453/pdf

Lots of other little galaxies are floating about, including some that I could not identify.

This is 21x1200" with a 17 Planewave CDK and SBIG 11000m camera.