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, January 17, 2010

The Soul Nebula (Click to Enlarge)


The Soul Nebula is an active region of star formation, located 6500 light years away in the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way galaxy. Ionized hydrogen gas is represented by the reddish tones, and ionized oxygen is depicted in cyan. Total exposure time consisted of 30, 30 minute images captured between October 2009 and January 2010 and combined into a single, 15 hour image. North is up.
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