Those Do Not Look Like Much, But They Are, To The Best Of My Knowledge, Herbig-Haro Object (to Left:

Photo of the NGC 2237, the Rosette nebula and the star cluster inside it, NGC 2244.

The star cluster, which is estimated to be about 5 million years old, is responsible for the ionisation of the surrounding gas. The mass of the nebula is estimated to be about 10 000 times the mass of our sun, which is relatively massive for a diffuse nebula.

This image uses a SHO palette, I quite like the colours I manage to get, both as the normal and starless images.

I also tried using the Foraxx palette, I think it's a bit less interesting visually, but the dark dust structures seam a bit more visible.

(Image taken using a CarbonStar 150/600 newtonian telescope with a 0.95 coma corrector, ZWO ASI294 monochrome camera ZWO LRGB filters and Baader 6.5nm SHO filter. 5x120s image for each colour filter (RGB), 15x300s for the Ha filter 20x300s for the SII filter and 18x300s for the OIII filter, total imaging time 4h 25min, stacking and processing done in PixInsight.)

Listen to the sound of wikipedia

This is a way to listen to changes to wikipedia. You are literally listening to knowledge being added to the world.

Pluck sounds are an addition, strings are subtractions, and the pitch says how how big the edit is. My heart shudders at this I love it so much.

This is a photo of the Andromeda galaxy I took nearly 5 years ago. The dark parts of the galaxy are gigantic clouds of dust and gas in which no stars and planets are born. This galaxy is one the closest one to our own, and yet it's 2.55 million light years from us, It's composed of about 1000 billion stars, in a few billion years it will collide with our own galaxy.

The two lighter blotches around Andromeda are two satellite Galaxys that orbit around Andromeda and are also composed of millions of stars.

Those numbers are so big they start to get inconceivable, and that's only a small fraction of what exists out-there. We are not much in the grand scheme of the universe, but when you look at the night sky and the wonders of the universe you can feel at least for a little while that you're part of it.

Perseus double cluster, had still some time left at the end of the night after the main sequence of photos and before dawn so I took the opportunity to capture about 25 minutes of photos of the double cluster. This is a pair of open clusters of stars (NGC 884 left and NGC 869 right), both are composed mostly of young blue giants and a few red giants in NGC 884. Both clusters have most likely formed from a single gas cloud and are only separated by a few hundred light years. This pair of cluster is relatively bright and can be viewed with the naked eye or a pair of binoculars in dark locations, in those cases, the clusters appear as nebulous region, with a couple of stars resolved with binoculars.

For those not in the US wanting to search for dark skies near you, this website is quite useful.

The black areas represent the remaining natural dark skies in the United States

This is a picture of the hydrogen and dust cloud surrounding the star Sadr (the bright white dot near the center) also known as IC 1318. The bright parts represent hydrogen clouds and the dark parts dust clouds. Those types of clouds are the birthplace of new stars. This particular photo is in black and white because it was made by using a filter that lets only the light emitted by ionised hydrogen (the H alpha spectral line) pass through it. This increases the visibility of the hydrogen clouds. Since this light is at 656 nm, it would appear bright red if coloured. Together with H beta (496 nm) also from hydrogen and O III (around 500 nm) from oxygen both cyan in color, they represent the majority of light emitted by gas clouds. So in conclusion if you were able to see this gas cloud directly it would appear a reddish-magenta color (H alpha being the dominant emission).

I think one big reason why we don't consider the stars as important as before (not even pop-astrology anymore cares about the stars or the sky on itself, just the signs deprived of context) is because of light pollution.

For most of human history the sky looked between 1-3, 4 at most. And then all of a sudden with electrification it was gone (I'm lucky if I get 6 in my small city). The first time I saw the Milky Way fully as a kid was a spiritual experience, I was almost scared on how BRIGHT it was, it felt like someone was looking back at me. You don't get that at all with modern light pollution.

When most people talk about stargazing nowadays they think about watching about a couple of bright dots. The stars are really, really not like that. The unpolluted night sky is a festival of fireworks. There is nothing like it.

Photo a few galaxies, M81 / bode's galaxy (centre), M82/the cigar galaxy (left) and NGC 3077 (right)

In addition to those three galaxies, there are many other (much) smaller ones hidden among the stars (a few examples):

The red-ish filament visible around M82 are ionised hydrogen gas and dust pushed outwards by galactic-superwind

Those are tough to be a combination of solar winds created by young stars and the shockwaves of frequent supernovas. They mostly occur in starburst galaxy a type of galaxies that experience heightened stars formation generally due to recent gravitational interaction with other galaxies, in the case of M82 the trigger is most likely its neighbour M81.

(Image taken using a CarbonStar 150/600 newtonian telescope with a 0.95 coma corrector, ZWO ASI294 monochrome camera ZWO LRGB filters and Baader 6.5nm Ha filter. 12x180s image for each colour filter (RGB), 6x300s for the Ha filter, total imaging time 2h 54min, stacking and processing done in PixInsight.)

Photo of the Pleiades (Messier 45) I took to test my new telescope. This is an open cluster of stars situated about 440 light years from earth, the brighter stars of the cluster are visible with the naked eye (around 5 to 10 stars visible depending of the light pollution, weather and eye accommodation do darkness). Unfortunately, the nebulosity, which I composed of dust clouds reflecting the light from the bright stars, is only visible in photos or with (relatively) large telescope. The cluster is about 100 million years old which is young (for an astronomical object), the more visible stars are hot blue giants, but many other, less visible, stars are present in the cluster. This cluster due to its high visibility has taken an important place in many cultures and mythologies.

(as a fun fact the name of M45 in Japanese is Subaru, and yes the car brand dose gets its name for this star cluster (which explains the logo of the brand))

Picture of M27, the Dumbbell nebula (aka the Apple Core Nebula), I took at the end of last month. This is a planetary nebula, it's the result of a star similar to our sun, that had turned into a red giant at the end of its life, ejecting its outer layer of gas and plasma into space. A planetary nebula is probably a relatively ''short'' phenomena, lasting around 10 000 years. Once the central star has ejected most of its hydrogen/helium and that the nuclear fusion in it has stopped, the nebula will start to cool down and disappear while the star turns into a white dwarf. Planetary nebula have an important role in redistributing some of the matter from dead/dying stars in the interstellar medium.

I personally think that photo is good, but some of the more faint external structures are barely visible, might take another picture of it and/or more photos to stack later in the month.