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.
Emission nebula IC 410 lies about 12,000 light-years away in the constellation
Auriga. The cloud of glowing hydrogen gas is over 100 light-years across, sculpted by
stellar winds and radiation from embedded open star cluster NGC 1893.
Formed in the interstellar cloud a mere 4 million years ago, bright cluster stars are seen just below the prominent dark dust cloud near picture center. Notable near the 7 o'clock position are two relatively dense streamers of material trailing away from the nebula's central regions. Potential sites of ongoing star formation, these cosmic tadpole shapes are about 10 light-years long. (Text source: apod.nasa.gov/apod)
