NGC 2237 The Rosette Nebula

The rosette nebula NGC 2237 is a H-II emission region in the constellation monoceros (unicorn). Its distance to our solar system was measured to be roughly 5.200 light years and its diameter to about 130 light years. A mass estimate yields approximately 10.000 solar masses.

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Imgage data: Telescope Skopos f=560x0,8=448mm @f/5.6, Camera Atik 460EXM, 17x600s Ha, 12X600s O[III], 51/52/53x120s RGB

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Revealing Asteroid (4)Vesta

Have you ever been sitting at your computer playing with the planetarium program where you can load the current orbits of thousands of asteroid by a mouse click? And yes, they all line up nicely on the screen then, in denser swarms around the ecliptic - as one would expect since many are fragments within our planetary disc around the sun. But when looking at the sky at night - are they really out there? Or are they just propaganda to drive space agencies observation programs? Let's check that ourselves with an object that should be nominally easy to find: the asteroid (4) Vesta is one of the larger pieces and therefore brighter and easy to detect even with a binocular. Since I had time and gas nebula could not be easily imaged in the early morning hours from my location in February, I used the opportunity and pointed my telescope at Vesta which should be wandering through the constellation Lion this morning (according to a button press result in my sky charts program). The observations were all done by the camera and the mount automatically and assembling the frames reveals the "trojan star":

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Image Data: Telescope Scopos 80, f=560mm, f/7, Camera Canon EOS60Da, 2021-02-14_02h21-4h50UTC

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NGC 300

NGC 300 is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Sculptor in a distance of roughly 6 million light years. It's appearance with hydrogen-alpha emission areas indicating star formation activities resembles one of our nearest neighbor galaxies, the triangulum galaxy M33 in approx. 2.7 Mio. light years distance.

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Image data: telescope Takahashi FSQ106ED @f/5, Camera Atik 460EXM, L: 28x600s, Ha: 6x600s, RGB 6x300s per channel, Atik 460EXM, September 2019, Farm Tivoli, Namibia

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NGC 2070 The Tarantula Nebula

The Tarantula Nebula NGC 2070 (Object No. 2070 in the New General Catalogue) can be found within the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) in the constellation Dorado.

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Image Data: Telescope Takahashi SQ106ED @f/5, Camera Atik 460EXM, 15x600s Ha, 12X600s O[III], 9x300s RGB

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