AstroGeek

12/20/2025

The “Deer Lick Galaxy Group” and “Stephen’s Quintet” in LRGB-Ha

The most prominent galaxy in this image NGC-7331 was first discovered in 1784 by the famous astronomer, William Herschel. This galaxy is very similar to our own galaxy in size, shape, and type. NGC-7331 is about 45 million light-years from Earth! We think this looks extremely similar to how the Milky Way would look from a very far distance and is commonly referred to as our twin galaxy. The “smaller” galaxies that are close by in this image, actually aren’t close at all. NGC-7335, NGC-7336, NGC-7337, and NGC-7340 range anywhere from 7-9 times further away. That puts thse other galaxies anywhere from 287-365 million light-years away!This is often misunderstood due to it being commonly referred to as a “galaxy group” when in reality, they aren’t grouped in the slightest. We see them initially “grouped” as simply an illusion of alignment from our perspective.

In the lower left area of the main image, you will see a legitimate galaxy group know as the extremely famous “Stephen’s Quintet”. This is a very active galaxy group creating this beautifully violent collision of these massive structures. Besides the brightest blue galaxy, NGC-7320, they are so close that their own gravitational fields are effecting each other. You can visually see this as they are tied together and ripping each other apart. NGC-7320 is an actually multiple times closer at “only” 40 million light-years, but it is much smaller then galaxies like our own, the Milky Way. The other four massive structures in this group are NGC-7317, NGC-7318A, NGC-7318B, and NGC-7319. This group has been imaged by so many different instruments from all over the world. The current most fanous image of course is the James Webb Space Telescope, but was first observed in the highest detail by its predecessor, Hubble Space Telescope. This galaxy group is special in so many ways, besides just how unusual it is structurally.

Bonus Image:
I was running some scripts just to see if there was any odd things in this deep field image that I don’t normally get to see and I found something really cool! I normally don’t share this sort of things because it is genuinely just super nerdy stuff. Anyway, I was running some scripts to see if there were some really faint and distant objects and there definitely is! With the help of data from Hubble and the Chandra X-Ray telescope, there is an extremely faint signal of a Quasar behind the galaxy NGC-7319.

I will briefly explain what a Quasar is. A Quasar is a hyper-active galactic nucleus (center of a galaxy) that is extremely bright and fueled by a super-massive black hole. The super-massive black hole has dense matter at the center of the host galaxy spinning very fast around the accretion disk creating heat and energy. This process creates an amount of energy that forces a release of pressure in the form of jets that radiate out to its respective north and south. It shines so bright it can outshine its entire host galaxy by multiple times.

The Quasar behind NGC-7319 is at a remarkable distance… the galaxies in this image alone are enough to make your mind boggle at distances ranging from 40 to 365 million light-years….but this TRULY will make you think. This Quasar has a redshift measurement of 2.11 which calculates the distance to 10.58 BILLION light-years away. Yes, BILLION light-years. The Sun, Earth, the literal entire existence of our own Solar System is only 4.5 Billion years old…..This means that the light from this Quasar was OVER half way ALREADY HERE before our Solar System was EVEN BORN!!! I can’t speak for anyone else, but this makes my brain itch. Absolutely mind blowing. If you read this far, how does this make you feel/think? I would absolutely love to see anyone’s thoughts, questions, or concerns in the comments! Please don’t hesitate!

Thank you all for looking and geeking out with me! ❤️

09/08/2025

The Sun in Hydrogen-Alpha.

I finally got to get my hands on the SHG700 and test it out…after two months of waiting, it’s definitely worth it! What is extremely cool about this unit is it’s more then just for Astrophotography, it’s a tool of raw science. The Spectroheliograph was first invented way back in 1890 and first good results dated in 1892. This tool is extremely special due to accepting more then one wavelength like almost every other tool in monochrome imaging. I will be able to image and capture data in 7 different wavelengths making it possible to collect almost any data I want to on any day instead of having to have special filters designed for one wavelength each. I won’t go into extreme detail and keep it short…but man this thing is so cool. As you will see in some of these images, these are all the same wavelength or “color”…but they all represent something different. The red/blue image is representing the “Doppler Effect” in simple terms, the rotation of the sun. When rotating, the red light is showing that side of the sun as it is moving away from us and stretching the light wave and shifting it into the red spectrum. This is called “red-shift”. The blue end, as you probably guessed by now, means this light wave is coming towards us causing the light to compress and shifting to the blue spectrum. This is called “blue-shift”. These things are one of the biggest reasons we know the universe is expanding. The next image is basically the same thing, but a little different. It is the Doppler Effect of the prominences only…pretty cool how you can almost picture a 3D representation on how those massive arms of plasma are moving to and from us. Keep in mind, those “small little smudges” on the edge are average 2-4 times the size of Earth! The other two are showing active regions of giant sun spots. The last image is simply a negative of the raw mono data for differential contrast.

This was my first real session with this unit and the data coming in can and will be a lot cleaner once I get some really good time messing with it. There is a lot more I could do with this data set but I couldn’t resist posting it. In my books it seems a success for a “test” run. A huge factor is not it just being clear but I need really good seeing and a super stable atmosphere with extremely low wind. I’ll just have to get super lucky with seeing conditions! It was really fun to learn this unit from scratch and collect and process data in a completely different way then normal.

Thanks for looking!

07/07/2025

Just a quick thought…. Has anyone missed/thought of the random “AstroFact” posts? I didn’t really post but just a few of them due to low numbers on engagement, but is anyone actually interested in such? I, constantly, am either doing my own thought experiments or reading about the latest images, theories, or cosmological discoveries and feel I have no where to share the information to those who are, even slightly, curious! I am not “searching” for numbers… I am simply curious if there are even a small number of my followers that are slightly interested. If so, please like/share/comment on this post and I will start posting more then just my Astrophotography images! Thank you, all ❤️

06/18/2025

Hey everyone! I am sorry I haven’t had anything to post on here the past few months. I am in the middle of building a big custom telescope, and I am still working on the extremely sensitive mechanical parts to achieve what I am building it for. I am trying to let myself be “okay” with “good enough,” but I honestly don’t think I will settle for anything less than absolute precision. This is a huge optical upgrade from what I have used for every single one of my images on this page, and I think you will understand what I mean by that! This telescope build has been one of the hardest battles I have faced in the hobby, and it sure has put my brain to the test… but this has been such a great learning experience and will make me appreciate the capabilities of it once I get it fully tuned. Here are some photos of the NEW vs OLD telescopes for a size perspective. From both a mechanical and technical standpoint, this rig will be a true test of my abilities to compose and produce the best possible images that I am capable of. Hopefully very soon I will be able to get my first set of extremely clean data so I can share with you all! I also have something else I am working on to produce a very different style of images from what this build is for! Looks like we are finally getting a break in the weather, so I can get out and get to work.

03/18/2025

03/16/2025

03-14-2025 Total Lunar Eclipse or “Blood Moon”

The month of March’s full moon is known as the “Worm Moon” to tell the story of the ground starting to warm up as spring is right around the corner. This year we were very lucky to be in the path of this Lunar Eclipse deeming the name now as the “Bloodworm Moon”. Most of you are aware a Lunar Eclipse is when the Earth transits between the Sun and Moon, but do you know why it turns to a red/copper color? When the Earth is directly in between the Sun and Moon, some of the Sun’s white light gets scattered when passing through our thick atmosphere. The reds, oranges, and yellows make it through as they are longer in wavelength…the greens, blues, and violets get scattered very easily as they are shorter in wavelengths and are smaller then the particles in our air (mostly nitrogen and oxygen) causing them to scatter and break apart. This happens due to a phenomenon called the “Rayleigh Limit”. Have you ever wondered why the sky is blue? This is the exact reason why!

I was fortunate enough the clouds broke apart right in time for the total eclipse to start. I planned on doing a whole time lapse from start to finish on one of my other cameras but the weather had other plans for me. I did a quick live stream in the few moments leading up to the totality and then swapped cameras to get some high resolution data. This is 2 panel mosaic stack of about 1500 photos, but I then only pulled about 15% due to unstable atmosphere conditions. I then took some various exposure times to get the glowing effect and some stars for the background to give this image more dynamic range. I am very pleased with how this turned out! I hope some of you were able to get up and take a look at the moon yourself…it was truly such a cool experience. After imaging I took time to just appreciate how stunning this event was. I even took my cameras out and put an eyepiece in the new scope and WOW. It boggled my brain seeing a whole field of stars behind the moon in a 100% pure black background.

I hope you enjoy this photo as much as I do!
Thanks for looking everyone! 🩸🌕

03/14/2025

Unfortunately, it’s not looking too good for imaging the Blood Moon tonight. 👎🏼 Extremely high clouds, very unstable atmosphere, and 20mph wind gusts. I plan to stay up until opposition just in case I get a window! Fingers crossed 😅

02/16/2025

IC-1805 or the “Heart Nebula” & IC-1795 the “Fish Head Nebula” in the foraxx palette.

The Heart and Fish Head Nebula are located about 7,500 light years away from Earth and spans a huge 165 light years radially in the constellation Cassiopeia. This nebula has been given its name from the distinct heart shape of the dense hydrogen gas on the outer edges of its system, although, some astronomers say it resembles a “running dog”. This is an emission nebula caused by the massive amount of radiation from the open star cluster, “Melotte-15”, in the middle of the larger Heart Nebula causing the hydrogen gas to ionize and emit light and heat. This action allows the gas to glow bright and allows it to be captured with highly sensitive camera sensors. Melotte-15 is a young star cluster only around 1.5 million years old with several massive stars roughly 50 times the mass of our star, the Sun…as well as many very faint stars well below the mass of our Sun. These stars also emit light in the Ultra-Violet spectrum which also aids in the “glowing” effect from the surrounding gases. You are able to see this with a pair of very large binoculars or a wide aperture telescope from an extremely dark location. The Fish Head Nebula acts in a very similar way having dense regions of hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen gas ionizing and radiating light caused by dense star clusters with massive O and B type stars energizing the entire system.

I captured and processed this data back in October last year, but I wanted to wait and post it around Valentine’s Day due to its common name! If any of you ordered a 2025 Calendar, you have seen that it is featured as the image for the month of February. Once again I would like to say I am extremely grateful for anyone and everyone who got their hands on it! I am still currently in the middle of building my custom telescope so I haven’t been able to get out and image for about 6-7 weeks now. I think I’m having withdrawals 😅. Mainly waiting on a couple parts to show up and then I will get first light with it, get it tuned, and be able to rock and roll with some new images. The time and thought I have put into this project should be able to achieve next class images and I can’t begin to explain how excited I am. Fingers crossed!

Thanks for looking, and Happy Valentine’s Day!

02/03/2025

Messier-45 or the “Pleiades” also known as the “Seven Sisters” in LRGB.

M-45 is an open cluster of stars containing over one-thousand individual stars although it is completely dominated by the most prominent seven stars, hence its common name. It is located roughly 445 light years from our home planet in the constellation Ta**us and is visible with the naked eye! This star cluster is about 100 million years old, which is extremely young from the cosmological perspective. The Pleiades is one of the closest star clusters to Earth which makes it extremely visible with no special equipment. You can go outside on a reasonably dark night and let your eyes adjust, then find the three stars from Orion’s Belt and follow them in a line upwards and you will find a very bright cluster of stars that give off a very distinctive blue hue. You will most likely only count 6 stars, but if you grab a pair of binoculars you will see the distinctive seven, and more!

I collected this data back in early December but haven’t had much time recently to do much image processing. A mixture of bad weather and other regular life responsibilities has kept me extremely busy the past few weeks so I am trying to sort of get back on track with things. I am currently in the middle of building a custom telescope to meet the kind of results I am looking for… it’s been a heck of a process so far but it’s finally starting to come together and I have extremely high hopes for the quality of images I will be able to produce out of this unit. If anyone is interested I can share a post when the telescope is done and I can share in simplistic terms what I have done and share a few photos of the building process? Let me know if anyone would be interested in seeing any of that. Hopefully I can get back to my regular posting schedule!

Thanks for looking! ✨

01/01/2025

I want to say a HUGE thank you to everyone who has supported me and my “hobby” this past year. Every like, comment, and share doesn’t go by without great appreciation. You all have helped me reach goals I only hoped for in the years prior. It is such a wholesome feeling knowing that other people are even somewhat interested in either looking at my images or even reading random nerd facts about the uncomprehensible cosmos we are a part of. I also want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has either ordered a print or bought a calendar this year. It seriously means the world to me that I have your support at that level. I know it’s super cliche to say “Next year will be even better!” but trust me, it most definitely will be. I have some REALLY cool projects planned for 2025… new gear that will be absolutely game changing, planned trips to extremely dark skies and EXTREMELY cool historic sites, possible collaborations with other astronomers, my new website up and a full “AstroGeek” store for full extremely detailed prints, new targets that I’ve never attempted before, and HOPEFULLY break ground on my own self built observatory…fingers crossed! I am so beyond excited for where this next year will take me so I can share it with everyone! What was your favorite image/experience of 2024? I can’t wait to share a path into our Universe…or Multiverse?

Seriously, thank you all for your support. ❤️