The Lagoon Nebula
The Lagoon Nebula is a giant interstellar cloud in the Saggittarius constellation, about 5,000 light years away.
Stars are being created here in the dark spots, known as 'Bok globules", where dark proto-stellar material is collapsing. Newborn stars are illuminating the bright centre of the nebula.
This image was created in August 2024 from a composit of 345 narrowband and LRGB exposures totalling 20 hours to bring out both the colours visible to the human eye and ionised gases that are not.
The Great Barred Galaxy
This must be the most beautiful object I've photographed,
The galaxy is about 70 million light years away and it stretches about 300,000 light years across.
The central bar is a common feature found in many galaxies and here it's thought be be sweeping gas and dust into a star-forming maelstrom. The beautiful spiral arms sweep in a wide curve, forming an almost circular halo.
This image is in natural colour and it is created out of 180 two minute exposures taken in December 2023 and January 2024.
The Horesehead Nebula
Located in the Orion constellation, the Horsehead Nebula is a dark cloud of gas and dust.
The dark horsehead shape in the centre of this image is caused by thick dust blocking the light of the stars and the glowing strip of deep red ionized hydrogen behind. The hydrogen marks the edge of the enormous Orion molecular cloud, this area illuminated by the nearby bright star Sigma Orionis.
A favourite target of astrophotographers, I captured this image in January 2022.
Comet Leonard
This image is of Comet C2101A1 Leonard, captured in December 2021.
It won a prize!
The image was awarded the Astronomical Society of Victoria's inaugural CJ Merfield prize for Solar System objects.
Sculptor Galaxy
At around 11 million light years away, this is one of the most distant objects I can image. Described as a spiral 'starburst' galaxy, it contains large areas where new stars are forming and is characterised by dust lanes and areas of great complexity.
Carina Nebula
This nebula is about 8,000 light years away and one of the largest in our skies.
It's also one of the largest star-forming regions in the Milky Way. The biggest and brightest star, located near the centre, is Eta Carinae which is thought to be about 100 times as massive as our Sun and may be one of the most massive stars in our galaxy, radiating about 5 million times more energy than the Sun.
The massive stars that populate this nebula are creating powerful stellar winds and ultraviolet radiation causing the gasses to glow.
This image was captured with narrowband filters, and in processing I have dimmed the stars a little to highlight the amazing patterns of the nebula.
The Rosette Nebula
This stunning place is about 5,000 light years from us in the constellation Monoceros, in the southern hemisphere, this is just to the right of the three close stars of Orion’s belt early in the year.
To show up the different elements, I have used narrowband filters to capture the gases of the nebula and mapped the colours to the ‘Hubble palette’, where Sulphur is shown as red, hydrogen is green and oxygen is blue. These are clouds of mostly ionised gases energised by the nearby stars, along with interstellar dust.
In the centre of the rose it’s a different story - NASA has studied this nebula with the Chandra Xray telescope and explains “…lurking inside this delicate cosmic rosebud are super hot stars, called O-stars, whose radiation and winds have collectively excavated layers of dust…and gas away”.
Captured on February 17 and 19 from the Mornington Peninsula.
The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy
Just like a catherine wheel spinning out there in space, The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, catalogued as M83, is a whole other Milky Way sitting out in space 15 million light years away and is a gem of our southern skies.
Classified as a 'grand design barred spiral' galaxy, it is about 120,000 light years across and contains no fewer than six supernovae. The hot blue areas on the leading edges of the spiral arms indicate lots of star-forming activity.
Along the bottom of this image, very small, you can make out two very distant galaxies. The galaxy on the right in catalogued ESO444-085 and is an incredible 640 million light years away. The light that formed this image left that galaxy around the time of the formation of the first animals on Earth,
This image was created from approximately 270 individual two minute exposures in April 2024.