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.

Monday, December 23, 2013

NGC 281: THE PACMAN NEBULA


NGC 281 is an H II region in the constellation of Cassiopeia and part of the Perseus Spiral Arm. . Colloquially, NGC 281 is also known as the Pacman Nebula for its resemblance to the video game character. (Wiki).  Total exposure for this image was 42 hours through narrowband filters.
(Click to ENLARGE)

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Saturday, March 16, 2013

The Monkey Nebula

NGC 2174 (also known as Monkey Head Nebula) is an H II[1] emission nebula located in the constellation Orion and is associated with the open star cluster NGB2175.  This image is a composite of 3.5 hours of Hydrogen-alpha, 4.5 hours of Oxygen-III, and 4.5 hours of Sulphur-II.


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