Home Observatory: Background

After 11 years of visual astronomy, traveling to darker skies and hoping for good weather were yielding too few actual nights under the stars. It was time to build a home observatory: The Robservatory was born.

By far, the biggest challenge for amateur and professional astronomers worldwide is the rapid and relentless disappearance of dark skies as a result of light pollution. To counter this effect, the imaging of certain objects which transmit light at special frequencies (typically emission nebula, planetery nebula, and some galaxies) can be done through narrowband filters, which transmit light only at these very specific, narrow wavelengths, while blocking broaderband light from sources such as streetlights, house lights, and even the moon.

All images on this site have been captured at The Robservatory, located 12 miles west of Manhattan, under some of the worst light pollution on the planet.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

The Veil Nebula (Click to enlarge)












The Veil Nebula is the remnant of a supernova explosion that occurred about 5 - 10,000 years ago.
It is located 1,400 light years away in the constellation of Cygnus. (Text source: apod.nasa.gov/apod)
Posted by at No comments:

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

M27: The "Dumbell Nebula" (click to enlarge)


Known by the popular name of the Dumbbell Nebula, the beautifully symmetric interstellar gas cloud is over 2.5 light-years across and about 1,200 light-years away in the constellation Vulpecula. The hydrogen emission is seen as rust-red (H-alpha) and ionized oxygen shows up in fainter bluish hues. (Text source: apod.nasa.gov/apod)
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)