Figure 1 – NGC 2359 the Thor’s Helmet Planetary Nebula (c) DEWolf 2025

This image is right off the presses. The weather here has continued to be snowy, icy, and cloudy. It’s been too treacherous to take out the telescope, Observacar or no! I am hoping that the recent thaw and melt will make it observing safe for this coming Sunday or Monday.

In the meanwhile, I was driven back to my favorite remote telescope, a 20″ beauty on the iTelescope.net in Chile known as T72. I had my eye recently on some wonderful imagrs of NGC 2359 referred to as the Thor’s Helmet or flying Duck Nebula.Thor’s Helmet sounds more mythic and besides lends itself to embeding music from Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyrie!” So I decided to do some remote telescope imaging. I looked at the absolutely perfect all-sky camera from Chile and was absolutely sold.

First, the particulars about the telescope. PlaneWave Instruments CDK 20″ f/6.8, 3411mmFL, FLI ML16200, Blank,LRGB, SII,Ha,OIII,U,V,B,R,I Filters. PlaneWave Instruments L-500 Mount. Observatory: Deep Sky Chile at Rio Hurtado Valley, Chile – MPC X07. South 30°31’34.712″  West 70°51’11.865″ . Elevation: 1710m  MPC X07 

Figure 1 shows the results of 36 min imaging. I am very happy with it. Exactly what are we looking at here? This intricate and vivid planetary nebula is located approximately 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Canis Major, and provides a fascinating glimpse into the death of massive stars and the beauty of cosmic phenomena. Planetary nebulae, form when a dying star dramatically sheds its outer layers, leaving behind a hot, dense core, typically a white dwarf star. These white dwarves are incredibly dense and hot. They emit high energy radiation, which ionize the gaseous out layer causing it to emit light – hence the beautiful irridescent display here..

Here the story is slightly different. This nebula spans around 30,000 light-years across, and its distinct “helmet-like” structure is created by the star at its core—a massive hot Wolf-Rayet star, designated WR 7. Wolf-Rayet stars are huge, rare, and have intense winds that blow away their outer layers, shaping the nebula around them.

This color palette gives Thor’s Helmet a dynamic and vibrant look, as different parts of the nebula shine in various shades depending on the density and composition of the gas. The overall result is a mesmerizing scene.

Like all planetary nebulae, Thor’s Helmet will eventually fade away as the central star exhausts its remaining fuel and ceases to ionize the surrounding gas. Over thousands of years, the nebula’s brilliant glow will dim, and it will disperse into the interstellar medium, enriching the surrounding space with elements that will be incorporated into future generations of stars and planets.

In the case of WR 7 stars, however, its fate will likely be a more spectacular one. As a Wolf-Rayet star, it is expected to eventually explode into a supernova, an event that will release vast amounts of energy and matter into the surrounding cosmos. This final explosion will be the culmination of the star’s life cycle and could lead to the creation of a black hole or a neutron star.

And let us take note that today is the First of March. Meteorological spring is upon us!

Figure 1 – Messier 7, Ptolemy Open Cluster, image take with iTelescope,net T72 in Chile. (c) DEWolf 2023

When you first get involved in amateur astronomy and start searching for Messier objects with a visual telescope, everything looks like a grey fuzzy and you think that there are four types of Messier objects: globular clusters, open clusters, nebulae, and galaxies. Never make a statement like that without checking the web first and needless-to- say there are formally six types: open clusters, globular clusters,  diffuse nebulae,  planetary nebulae, supernova remnants, and galaxies. So put a fine point on it!

Aesthetically, each form has its own appeal. And it’s like the old almond joy commercial: “Sometimes you feel like a nut. Sometimes you don’t.” Two years ago I encountered Messier 7 the Ptolemy (Open Cluster). Nestled in the deep Milky Way portion of Scorpius, we see it against an amazing array of stars!

Messier 7 is referred to as the Ptolemy Cluster in honor of the ancient Greek astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, who first recorded it in the 2nd century. Charles Messier cataloged it in 1764 as part of his famous Messier Catalog, a list of astronomical objects that helped astronomers distinguish between comets and fixed stars.

Messier 7 is an open star cluster situated approximately 980 light-years away from Earth. Open clusters, unlike globular clusters, consist of stars that are loosely bound together by gravity, and they are often found in the spiral arms of galaxies. M7 contains around 80 stars, and its most noticeable feature is its relatively young age, at only about 200 million years old a mere blink in the vast timeline of the cosmos.

I’ve imaged it with my Seestar 50s, not yet my Celestron Origin. This was a pretty pathetic image; so I am anxious to give it a try with the Origin this summer.

However, I did photograph it with the iTelescope T72 a fabulous 510 mm telescope (T72 3411 mm f/6.8 PlaneWave L-500 + FLI ML16200) in Deep Sky Chile at Rio Hurtado Valley, Chile. That is Figure 1 revealing Messier 7’s in all its celestial beauty. Now here is another important point. T72 is at 30°31’34.712″ South latitude and altitude 1710 m above sea level. M7 is the Messier object with the lowest declination, -34° 47′ 43″. It is always very low in New England skys. But it transits near the zenith in Chile. So clear skies high telescope altitude, and high celestial altitude. It’s a winning combination all around.  

Figure 1 – The Flaming Star Nebula IC 405 in Auriga, (c) DE Wolf 2025

There is a second wonderful flame Nebula in the winter sky, the Flaming Star Nebula, or IC 405, located in the constellation Auriga, the Flaming Star Nebula is a fascinating cosmic laboratory that offers insight into the birth and death of stars.

Like the Flame Nebula it is an emission nebula and is located is an emission nebula located approximately 1,500 light-years from Earth. It is named for its fiery, star-like appearance, which is created by the intense radiation emitted from a massive star at the heart of the nebula. This is the fundamental characteristic of emission nebulae, an intense radiation source, ionizing gases and causing them to emit light.

Indeed, at the center of this nebula lies AE Aurigae, a hot, blue giant star. This star, which is responsible for illuminating the surrounding gas and dust, is around 2 million years old—relatively young in cosmic terms—and is part of a group of stars known as the Auriga OB1 association. The star’s radiation ionizes the surrounding hydrogen gas, causing it to glow in brilliant hues of red and blue, creating the nebula’s striking appearance.

In addition to the red glow of ionized hydrogen, the nebula also displays blue and green hues, which are a result of other elements like oxygen and sulfur being excited by the radiation. These elements release light at specific wavelengths, contributing to the nebula’s colorful appearance. The nebula’s intricate, wispy structures are often seen as filaments or tendrils of gas and dust, creating the illusion of a burning star surrounded by an ethereal cloud.

Like so many deep-sky objects the Flaming Star Nebula was discovered in 1827 by Sir John Herschel. It is likely however, that it was seen by other observers earlier.

This was one of the first objects, where I recognized the need for at least a 60 min 360 frame exposure with my Celestron Origin. That is becoming my standard MO, and probably as I move into summer I will try longer exposures still!. The words for me are “flame out.” I see in IC 405 a sense of birthday candles being blown out! It was a nebula that I was unfamiliar with and in that sense a birthday surprise.

Figure 1 – The Horsehead Nebula, Barnard 33, Celestron Origin, a 60 min, 360 frame exposure. (c) DEWolf 2025.

Today I’d like to continue our tour of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex with the Horsehead Nebula or Barnard 33. It is one of my all time favorites, indeed the favorite of many people. Figure 1 is an image that I took of it with my Celestron Origin, a 60 min, 360 frame exposure. You can see it clearly positioned close to the Flame Nebula

The Horsehead Nebula is a dark nebula, which means it is a dense cloud of gas and dust that obscures the light from stars and other objects behind it. Within this complex, the Horsehead Nebula stands out due to its distinct shape, which is formed by a dense, cold cloud of dust and gas. It spans about 3,000 light-years in length, with the Horsehead itself measuring about 1,500 times the size of our Solar System.

Despite being a dark nebula, the Horsehead is illuminated by the nearby star Alnitak, which is part of the Orion Belt. The radiation from Alnitak causes the surrounding gas to glow, contributing to the nebula’s glowing red appearance in many photographs. The Horsehead Nebula owes its distinctive shape to the way light interacts with the dust and gas in the region. The Horsehead silhouette is formed by a thick concentration of dust and gas that casts a shadow on the glowing emission nebula behind it. This shadowy region is particularly dense, blocking much of the light from the stars and other gas clouds in the area, and giving it its signature look.

In photos, you often see the Horsehead Nebula in a striking combination of red and black. The reddish hue comes from the ionized hydrogen gas in the nebula, which glows under the influence of ultraviolet light from nearby stars. The dark, black shape of the nebula contrasts with the glowing gas, making it appear almost like an otherworldly creature—hence the name “Horsehead.”

Within the nebula, there are regions of intense gravitational collapse, where the dust and gas are coming together to form protostars. These protostars are still in their early stages of development, but they are the building blocks of future stars.

The Horsehead Nebula was first noticed in the early 20th century. However, its “discovery” wasn’t as a result of visual observation with the naked eye, but rather through photographic techniques that were becoming more advanced during that time.

The nebula was first photographed in 1888 by the American astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard, who is often credited with its discovery. Barnard was one of the pioneers in using long-exposure photography to capture celestial objects, and it was this technique that allowed him to detect the faint, dark nebula in the Orion Molecular Cloud. And it was long exposure that was key to contrasting dark regions against faint brighter ones.

Indeed, we can consider Figure 2, which is an 18 min exposure that I took with my Seestar 50s. This image required considerable image processing using Topaz Camera AI and even so is a little fuzzy or noisy. With the Seestar I find that the images benefit from three processes: sharpening, denoising, and upscaling, where the AI increases the number of pixels and fills them in.

Figure 2 – Horsehead Nebula Seestar 50s 18 min exposure (c) DEWolf 2024

Basically, I think that you will agree that Figure 2 is less distinct and sharp than Figure 1. This begins a not so much complicated as subtle and shaded discussion of signal-to-noise. But let me just concentrate here on the issue of signal. After all the famous signal-to-noise ratio is brightness divided by something. How much brighter is the Celestron Origin than the Seestar 50s.

I heard in a YouTube tutorial that it was about 25 x brighter and I wondered where that came from. (This little mathematical calculation is for those of you who care!).

Suppose that the flux at the surface of the telescope objective is X (Watts/in²) then

(Light collected by Origin/light collected by Seestar) = X (5.98²-2.48²)/X 2² = 7.40.

This is because, Origin has a 5.98 ” objective and the camera occludes a 2.48 ” circle, while the Seestar has a 2 ” objective.

Next, we have the collection efficiency inside the telescope which is determined from the solid angle

(Collection eff. Origin/Collection eff. Seestar)=(f/#Seestar/f/#Origin)² =(5/2.2)² = 5.17

Finally, we have to consider that ratio of light collected by an Origin pixels to that collected by a Seestar pixel. This is given by the ratio of the areas of the two pixels

(Pixel Collection Origin/Pixel Collection Seestar) = (2.4 um x 2.4 um)/(2.9 um x 2.9 um) = .685

Thus, the brightness ratio  = .685 x 5.17 x 7.40 = 26. You heard it here first! Typically with my Seestar 50s I would take something like a 26 min exposure. You can capture this many photons in 1 min with the Celestron Origin. Astrophotography is a game of how many photons you can collect.

Figure 1 – Messier 42 – the Great Orion Nebula, Jan. 1 , 2025, Sudbury, MA (c) DEWolf 2025

As I write, I am looking out at a foot of snow; now turning to rain and misery. There are no clear skies, which has been common this winter – drives one to thought. And I am thinking about the deep sky glories of the northern winter sky.

Most dramatic of these is most certainly is Messier 42 the Great Nebula in Orion. This must be called a cosmic marvel and has fascinated astronomers for centuries. But what exactly makes this nebula so captivating? Messier 42 is a massive cloud of gas and dust located in the constellation of Orion, approximately 1,344 light-years away from Earth. It’s the closest region of massive star formation to our planet, making it a perfect laboratory for studying how stars—and planetary systems—are born. The nebula spans about 24 light-years across and contains a vast number of stars at various stages of their life cycle. It is often referred to a stellar nursery, where young stars are born from the surrounding gas and dust.

The Orion Nebula is easy to spot with the naked eye and can be found just below the three stars that form Orion’s “belt.” It is one of the brightest nebulae in the sky, with a distinct, glowing appearance. This is due to the ionized hydrogen gas in the nebula, which emits a characteristic red glow when exposed to the ultraviolet radiation from nearby hot young stars. Seeing the color in deep-sky objects often require the collecting power of a telescope or binoculars.

Within the vast expanse of Messier 42, hundreds of young stars are in the process of being born. The nebula’s high concentration of gas and dust provides the perfect conditions for new stars to form. The energy from the intense ultraviolet light emitted by the newly formed stars heats the surrounding gas, causing it to glow brightly. This interaction between newly born stars and the gas around them creates a stunning cosmic display.

The most massive and brightest stars within the Orion Nebula are located at the nebula’s heart, within a small region known as the Trapezium. These stars are hot, young, and full of energy, and their radiation creates the ionized gases that give the nebula its characteristic glow. Interestingly, some of the stars in the Trapezium are only a few million years old, which is extremely young in stellar terms. Over the next few million years, the Orion Nebula will continue to evolve, with stars being born, dying, and scattering heavier elements into the surrounding space.

With smart telescopes the scene always starts out a bit real-time weak. And then for M42 in particular, the first integrated image of typically ten or twenty seconds comes through and “bam!!!” There’s that word again. You are suddenly greeted with a bright and spectacular image. Let it integrate for a half hour or more and you have a image of beauty. Figure 1 is a 30 min, 180 exposure image on the Celestron Origin, one of my “first light” images. I now would do at least twice as long.

But, you know, I remember as a teenager standing by New York’s East River and wondering what it would be like to see these great Messier objects against an unpolluted sky. It is truly magical!

The Rosette Nebula, Sixty Minute Celestron Origin Image (c) DEWolf 2025.

Today let’s talk about another rose nebula, this one with “bam!” One of the most spectacular sights in the night sky is the Rosette Nebula. Known for its striking beauty and its role as a stellar nursery, this giant cloud of gas and dust captivates astronomers and stargazers alike. The

Rosette Nebula is a large star-forming region located in the constellation Monoceros, about 4,500 light-years away from Earth. It spans about 50 light-years in diameter and is home to a young, open star cluster called NGC 2244, whose stars are just a few million years old. These stars have formed from the gas and dust that make up the nebula.

The nebula’s name, like that of Caroline’s Rose comes from its resemblance to a rose or in this case a rosette, a flower-like shape formed by the nebula’s intricate arrangement of gas clouds. The glowing gas and dust are illuminated by the bright, young stars at the heart of the nebula, giving it the appearance of a cosmic bloom.

At its core, the Rosette Nebula is a stellar nursery, a place where new stars are being born. The intense ultraviolet light from the newly-formed stars heats the surrounding gas and dust, causing the nebula to shine. In some parts of the nebula, the gas is dense enough to collapse under its own gravity, triggering the birth of new stars.

The most massive stars in the nebula have short lifespans and are known to have significant impacts on their environments. These stars emit powerful stellar winds, which can blow away the surrounding gas and dust, creating gaps and holes in the nebula. These energetic winds, combined with the ultraviolet radiation, shape the nebula into the stunning structure we observe today.

At the center of the Rosette Nebula lies NGC 2244, an open star cluster of around 2,000 young stars. These stars formed from the gas and dust that surrounds them, and their bright ultraviolet radiation and strong stellar winds have shaped the nebula into its current form. NGC 2244 is a relatively young cluster, only about 4 to 5 million years old, which is just a blink in the timeline of the universe.

The stars in this cluster are responsible for much of the nebula’s bright, glowing appearance. The cluster itself is held together by gravity, but over time, the stars will drift apart as they age, and the nebula disperses into space.

The Rosette Nebula is composed of both emission nebulae and dark nebulae. The emission nebulae are the parts of the nebula that glow brightly due to ionized gas being energized by the ultraviolet radiation from nearby stars. The most prominent part of the nebula is a vast region of ionized hydrogen gas, known as H II regions. These glowing hydrogen regions make up the majority of the nebula’s brightness.

On the other hand, dark nebulae are dense regions of gas and dust that block the light from stars and other bright nebulae behind them. These dark patches form a striking contrast against the brighter areas of the nebula, adding depth and complexity to the structure.

The image of Figure 1 was taken with my Celestron Origin and is a sixty min exposure composed of 360 ten second frames. You need that to grow the image from a faint cloud with little detail to the relatively high signal to noise image of Figure 1. More on Signal to Noise at a later date, but let’s just say it is key to good astrophotographs.

People always ask me about the color. There is not much monkeying going on with that, just histogram equalization and then a tad of improved color saturation. This is the same as that I do with my bird photographs. More on that subject as well is to come.

I just do want to pose the question. With all this bam is it still sublime? I think that the answer is yes!

Figure 1 – Caroline’s Rose NGC 7789 Open star cluster, Celestron Origin (c) DE Wolf 2024.

Deep-sky objects seem to come in two flavors: the breath-taking and the sublime. I want to talk today about an example of a sublime deep-sky object NGC 7789 referred to as Caroline’s Rose, see Figure 1 – not bam in your face but subtly beautiful nonetheless. . Caroline’s Rose is an open cluster in Cassiopeia ~ 1.6 Billion years old and ~ 7,600 light years away. It was discovered the night of November, 1 1783 by Caroline Herschel, the sister of William. So there’s a story there and that’s part of what makes this stellar white rose sublime.

Caroline Herschel was an astronomical trailblazer. She was born in 1750 in Hanover, Germany. Her early life was shaped by a series of challenges, including an overbearing family dynamic ( her brother rescued her from an overbearing mother, who did not believe in wome’s education.) and an enduring illness that left her small and fragile in stature. Despite these obstacles, Caroline’s mind was a vast universe of curiosity. Her brother, William Herschel, a prominent astronomer in his own right, recognized her intelligence and enlisted her help in his astronomical work.

Caroline’s contributions to science were groundbreaking. She discovered several comets, including the famous Herschel 1, which is now known as Comet 35P/Herschel-Rigollet. She also worked with William Herschel on the first comprehensive catalog of nebulae, helping to expand humanity’s understanding of the night sky. In 1787, Caroline became the first woman to receive a salary as an astronomer from the British government, an achievement that cemented her place in history. Caroline’s story isn’t just about her astronomical achievements. It’s also about resilience, passion, and a deep connection to the world around her. Caroline’s Rose serves as a beautiful tribute to a woman who not only reached for the stars but helped humanity understand them in profound new ways.

Pointing ever to the power and long history of the psychological phenomenon of pareidolia, things that look like in astronomy, the white rose requires some study to discern. Can you make out the petals? Through Caroline Herschel’s life it is a symbol of the revolution that she had launched, really a war against sexism and the confines of the Victorian Age. It is perhaps reminiscent of the medieval War of the Roses, between the Houses of York and Plantagenet. Roses are a symbol of love and for white roses of purity and harmony. It is with sublime, peace, purity that this majestic star cluster hangs beacon in its celestial sphere, reminding us forever of the origins of the astronomy.

Prick not your finger as you pluck it off,
Lest bleeding you do paint the white rose red
And fall on my side so, against your will.

William Shakespeare, Henry the Sixth, Part 1

Figure 1 – The Tarantula Nebula photographed with iTelescope.net’s T30 telescope in Siding Spring Australia (c) DE Wolf 2024

The other form of astrophotography that I have been doing is to control remote telescopes on a fee for basis. I have used Skygems-observatories and iTelescope.net. In general, these offer whatever level or degree of control you want. When you watch step-by-step what the telescope is doing you gain a humbling understanding of the true complexity of the astrophotography process. I typically take my FITS image stack, then register the stack and recombine it into an RGB using astropixel processor. This is topped off with a bit of processing in Adobe Photoshop including the Topaz Photo AI module. The latter being used for noise removal and what is referred to as upscaling. On top of everything else, this approach gives us Northern hemisphere astrophotographer access to amazing telescopes and the Southern celestial sky with its rich deep-sky offerings.

Case in point Telescope, T 30, is located at Siding Spring Observatory is located in New Sout Wales, Australia. It is gorgeous in every sense of the word! It is a Planewave 20″ (0.51m) Corrected Dall-Kirkham Astrograph with an aperture of 508mm and a focal length of 2262 mm, thus f/4 and a FOV of 27.8 x 41.6 arc-mins. Figure 1 above is an RGB created from three 120 second exposure in each RGB color plane of the Tarantula Nebula NGC 2070.

The Tarantula Nebula, also known as NGC 2070, is la star nursery located in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a neighboring galaxy to our own Milky Way, Stretching across 1,000 light-years and containing some of the most massive stars ever discovered, the Tarantula Nebula is a hotbed of star formation. The nebula’s name comes from its resemblance to a spider’s web, with sprawling filaments of gas and dust woven throughout the region. The nebula’s bright red hue comes from hydrogen gas being ionized by the intense ultraviolet light of these newborn stars. Observations of the Tarantula Nebula with telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope and the Very Large Telescope have revealed intricate details of the nebula’s structure, including vast pillars of gas and dust and regions, where stars are actively forming.

When you spend time working on a particular object creating an astrophotograph you develop a kind of artistic intimacy with the subject. The same I find is true with bird photography. Once bitten by this particular spider you never forget it!