I’ve got something really cool to share with you today and I’m so excited! UGC 2838 holds a special place in many budding astrophotographer’s hearts because it is a little sliver of light that they inadvertently capture in their photos of the Pleiades star cluster and come to realize that it is actually a galaxy that is 300 MILLION lightyears away from Earth. I had just such a moment two years ago and posted about it. I couldn’t believe my telescope captured light that left its home galaxy before the dinosaurs even evolved on Earth!

As you may know by now, I am endlessly curious. So on a whim this year, I decided to point my biggest telescope at UGC 2838 to see if I could pull out any details from this super distant target which is doubly tough because we see it edge on. After 40 hours of exposures, I could just tease out the tantalizing hints of a spiral structure and some color.

I was surprised when looking around that I could not find a single other image of this object in this resolution. Not from anyone on Earth. Not from the Hubble space telescope. Nada.

So here it is folks. It looks a bit fuzzy since it is SO far away, but I believe that this may be the highest resolution image of this galaxy to-date. I thought this was a fitting way to cap my most active year of astronomy yet, as my favorite thing about this passion is sharing the wonder, beauty, and bewildering sights of our Universe with you.

I hope you have a wonderful New Years celebration and are ready to explore more together in 2023! In the meantime, keep your head up and keep.

Something really special to share with you today. I’m working on processing a deep 12 panel, 600 megapixel mosaic of a portion of IC 1396 that I spent a full month of telescope time on over the summer. This is a tiny section of it, showing the tip of the Elephant Trunk nebula in pure natural colors as our eyes would see it were they sensitive enough.

Seen here in the highest resolution I could achieve, this column of dust is being compressed and ionized by massive stars that are nearby but out of this frame (you’ll see the guilty parties in my larger mosaic though). This both causes it to glow and is also leading to the formation of new star systems within the column, which will form their own clear domains as they come to life. You can see an example of this in the cavity being formed near the tip of the column.

Meanwhile, subtle reflections of the dark dust structures cascade throughout the image as a result of of the starlight coming from countless surrounding stars.

Isn’t it our Universe beautiful!?

My names Bray, I started doing astronomy at the age of 14 from my backyard in Arizona. I went to school for aerospace engineering and when I got out of school in 2020 realized my dream job wasn’t going to happen, so I decided to go full in on my astrophotography by teaching and making prints.

In September of 2022 I decided to completely change the way I do astrophotography, and I began to survey the night sky in search of new objects. It was back then when I realized there is a huge lack of scientific knowledge about the presence of ionized oxygen plasma in our galaxy. Specifically the color Oiii, which is a nice blue/green color. This gas emission line is heavily tied to high mass stellar physics, particularly supernovae and their remnants, as well as special planetary nebulae.

It was at this time that you could take an Oiii filtered image anywhere in the sky away from known nebulae, and likely be the first human to ever do so. How exciting is that! To go and look where nobody has before with questionable odds of success. Many many hours would be spent with failure, but it has been worth it in ways I couldn’t have imagined.

So after a year of searching what have we learned? Firstly there are many undocumented supernova remnants, things that have been hidden for all time because they aren’t bright in known wavelengths. There are also lots of unknown Oiii bright PN, even in places far away from the galactic plane. There is also a large number of objects we can’t explain, and for those a special catalog has been created, the OO catalogue.

My dream having studied aerospace was always to work on the exploration of space. In a weird roundabout way, somehow I’ve gotten to! (I should’ve gotten an astrophysics degree).

I hope this helps explain what I’m doing; and why all my images have blue nebulae in them now!

This is a wide field view of the North America and Pelican nebulae as taken from my 10 panel mosaic. It captures a vast expanse of “local” space within our Milky Way just 2,590 lightyears away and measuring more than 140 lightyears across. In wide field, it becomes apparent that these two nebulae are actually part of one massive pool of ionized interstellar gas that is giving birth to thousands of stars systems, but which appears split in two by a massive tract of dark dust that sits in the foreground between the Earth and this target.

Amazingly, the entire region is being ionized by the brilliant radiation of a single star. Can you guess which one? It is tough because it sits behind the dark foreground dust causing our view of it to be deeply attenuated. I’ll share a marked image tomorrow that shows exactly where it is, but wanted to share this beautiful view with you in the meantime.

I hope you like it and have a great day!

Image 1,2: 3D computer artwork, viewed at an altitude of 39 kilometres. In the foreground is Kanchenjunga, which, at 8586 metres high, is the third tallest in the world. In the background is Mount Everest, the world’s tallest mountain at 8844 metres high. To the left the green regions of lower Nepal and northern India and to the right the high plains of Tibet. This image was created by Christoph Hormann using data obtained from satellites such as Landsat and SRTM (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission). The data was processed into computer models using three-dimensional rendering software and then coloured and distorted to mimic the natural curvature of the Earth.

Image 3,4,5: An astronaut aboard the International Space Station shot this oblique photograph of Mount Everest, Earth’s tallest mountain (when measured from sea level). Standing on the border of China and Nepal, Everest is the centerpiece of the Great Himalaya Range, the highest and northernmost section of the Himalayas. Many of the world’s tallest peaks are found here, including Kanchenjunga (8,586 meters/28,169 feet) and Everest (8,850 meters/29,035 feet). Stretching 2,300 kilometers (1,400 miles) across Pakistan, India, Nepal, and China, the mountain range has an average elevation above 6,100 meters (20,000 feet).

Do you love the Himalayas?

This nebula, which I’m going to call “the outflow” is one which you will not be able to find any other photographs of. You may wonder what it is, but the truth of the matter is that nobody knows. What I can say for sure is that this is an absolutely massive galactic scale nebula which is embedded inside of m31.

An image like this represents the frontier of our understanding of the night sky, and that space exploration is still possible for us to do here on earth!

To provide some context I’ve also included a wider view of the outflow so you can see it has been hiding in plain sight in one of the most photographed objects ever! The total exposure time spent to capture these images totals about 340 hours of exposure time.

This image is available in my calendar which is still preorder only until Dec 1. So order now while you still can!

Imagine how different our skies would feel if we could see these things with our naked eye!

I hope you enjoy it and have a great day!

I hope you like it and have a great day!