LATEST PHOTOS
Jack Schmidling Productions, Inc.
18016 Church Road ~ Marengo IL 60152
Phone:815 923 0031 ~ Email:arf@mc.net
NGC7814 is a spiral galaxy seen edge on. The most conspicuous features are the very bright central core and the dark dust lane passing through the entire galaxy.
It lies at a distance of 46 million light years and is about 80,000 light years across, about half the size of the Milky Way Galaxy.
The Horsehead is a giant dust cloud which happens to be between us and a much larger bright emission region which makes it visible to us as a silhouette.
For the complete Orion tour see:
Orion Complex
NGC 3486 is spiral galaxy seen face on toward us. It's spiral structure is very evident in this image displaying many spiral arms.
It lies at a distance of 30 million light years and is about 60,000 light years across or about half the size of our Milky Way.
This group was once the center of a raging controversy. Seems that one of the members appears to be much closer than the others but shows evidence of interacting with one of the more distant members. This would imply that something is fundamentally wrong with the way we measure extragalactic distances.
It's not clear to me what the fuss was all about as a quick check of the redshifts indicate that the two that seem to be overlapping are about the same distance and the one to the upper left that is obviously in the clear is about one tenth the distance of the rest.
Although only January, this may be the most photogenic comet of the year.
V1 was discovered in November of 2002 by the Near Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) program. It is unlikely that anyone we know has or ever will see this comet before or again. It is traveling in an orbit that brings it around to our vicinity every 37,000 years.
It passed closest to Earth on December 24 at about 74 million miles. It is approaching perihelion and will come closest to the Sun on Feb 18 when it will be an amazing one million miles from the Sun at that time.
For more information and images see.....Comet V1
On the night this image was taken, V1 was about 81 million miles from the Earth. You can still see this comet in the Western sky just after sunset.
NGC 5907 is another example of a spiral galaxy seen edge-on. The dark dust
lanes through the middle are very similar to the dark patches that obscure the Milky
Way.
NGC 5907 is about 50 million light years distant and about 85,000 light years across, roughly half the size of the
Milky Way.
NGC 891 is a striking example of a spiral galaxy seen edge-on. The dark dust
lanes through the middle are very similar to the dark patches that obscure the Milky
Way.
NGC 891 is about 30 million light years distant and comparable in size to the
Milky Way.
This giant galaxy lies at a distance of about 100 million light years and is receding from us at a speed of about 2400 kilometers per second.
NGC772 is about 200,000 light years across which is considerably larger than our own Milky Way.
The bright smudge at the bottom center is the eliptical galaxy NGC 770. It lies at about the same distance as 772 and is presumed to be a member of the same group if not a satellite of NGC772. It's apparent size would indicate a size of only about 40,000 light years.
The Ring belongs to a class of objects known as "planetary nebulae" which have nothing whatever to do with planets. They were called that back in the days of crude telescopes because their small disk shapes resembled planets and the name has stuck.
A planetary nebula is actually a large cloud of gas which was previously expelled from the central star. Having lost much mass to the cloud, the central star compresses to a very dense and hot star that illuminates the gas cloud via ultraviolet radiation in much the same
way as electric current lights up neon in a sign.
M57 is probably the most looked at and most photographed object in the sky. Much of it's popularity rests on the fact that it can be seen in almost any sized telescope. It's appearance as a tiny ring of smoke in a dark sky is a sight not soon forgotten.
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Even in small telescopes, it is a dramitic sight. It is a swarm of easily resolved stars dominated by a red giant, several magnitudes brighter, right in the center.
For the complete tour, click...Milky Way Tour
Galactic clusters are distinguished from the globulars by their location in or near the galactic plane as opposed to populating the spherical halo surrounding the galaxy. They also contain far fewer stars and are more loosly structured.
Just below the northern edge of the Scutum Star cloud lies M11, one of the brightest galactic star clusters in the sky.
M11 contains about 900 stars and lies at a distance of about 5500 light years. An observer living on a planet near the center of the cluster would be able to see several hundred stars of the first magnitude in contrast to just several from Earth's location.
This image was a 30 second exposure with the MX7C through the 16" telescope and replaces the monochrome image in the Index.
To the left of the planet in this image can be seen Neptune's largest moon, Triton orbiting at about 355,000 km from Neptune. The dimmer smudge just above Neptune is probably an incidental background star.
Neptune is the 8th planet from the Sun and the most distant of the "gas giants". It's diameter is about 50,000 km and it orbits the Sun at a distance of about 4.5 billion miles or 30 times the Earth to Sun distance. The atmosphere consists of approximately 74% hydrogen,25% helium,1% methane.
This image was a 3 second exposure under very poor seeing conditions with the MX7C and the 16" scope at efl=200".
NGC 6946 had been a subject of controversy in the past as to whether or not it was a member of our own "Local Group" of galaxies.
At a distance of about 15 million light years, it now appears to be one of the nearest galaxies outside the Local Group.
This earlier monochrome image was taken with the MX516 camera through the same telescope.
Exposure time was 40 minutes.
This image was a 30 min exposure with the MX7C through the 16" telescope.
M107 is a not so spectacular member of a group of objects known as globular clusters.
It lies at a distance of about 22,000 light years and is about 65 light years in diameter.
To get an idea of how globulars fit into the grand scheme of things, see "Galactic Wanderer" 
M13 is probably the most looked at and most beautiful object that can be seen
in the Northern skies. Even modest amateur telescopes show it as a blazing ball
of stars.
The complete album and information on M13 can be found at M13 andHERCULES
The object of this image is to demonstrate the difference between the one-shot color of the MX7C camera and color produced using a monochrome camera and a set of color filters.
This image was an LRGB composite of 2 min exposures taken with the 16" Newt and the MX516 camera.
It certainly is not as pretty as the one-shot but is probably more representative of the "true" colors.
This large spiral galaxy lies in the constellation Serpens. It is receding from the Earth with a velocity of about 2000 kilometers per second and when this is converted to red shift, we get a distance of about 88 million light years.
It is about 75,000 light years across, making it nearly as large as our Milky Way Galaxy. Several other galaxies are also visible in this image.
NGC 7635 is one of the most dramatic objects in the sky. As with the Horsehead Nebula, the name Bubble says it all.
I was always under the impression that this object was a planetary nebula but the paragraph quoted below from NASA does not seem to indicate this explanation. Nevertheless, I will add it to the planetary nebula page.
For more images and info on planetary nebulae,
click... PLANETARY NEBULAE
This film photo shows the location of the Bubble
with reference to the galactic star cluster, M52.
The following is the text from the NASA Photo of the Day which featured a new Hubble image:
Explanation: What created this huge space bubble? A massive star
The referenced image can be found at:
HST Bubble
The Dumbell Nebula is the most conspicuous of the Planetary Nebulae. It lies at a distance of about 900 light years and is about 2 light years across. If the Sun
were the central star, the glowing gas would extend almost to our nearest stellar
neighbor, Alpha Centauri.
M27, THE DUMBELL NEBULA
For more images and info on planetary nebulae,
click... PLANETARY NEBULAE
Many people wonder what sort of place I use to do my astrophotography so I thought I would devote a web page to a description of it.
We live on a wooded country estate about 50 miles NW of Chicago. We call our home Schmidling Hall and the park to the rear of it, Marilyn Park. The observatory is situated in a small clearing a few hundred yards north of the Hall.
The yellow circle shows the location of the observatory. The roof just to the south of it is my laboratory and shop and the Hall is totally hidden in the trees a bit farther to the SW.
For the complete tour, click... OBSERVATORY
We will examine the more interesting parts of this side of the Veil with high resolution color views.
The location of this week's high resolution image is #2.
The bright star in the center is 52 Cygni.
I find this woven texture a most dramatic display of random beauty.
For the most recent Astrophotos of
the Week... RECENT PHOTOS
We will examine the more interesting parts of this side of the Veil with high resolution color views.
The numbers identify the locations of the two areas we will explore.
The bright star in the center is 52 Cygni.
THE VEIL NEBULA IN CYGNUS
NGC 6960
The Western Veil Nebula
This week we continue our tour of the Bridal Veil Nebula in Cygnus. We move West to the so-called Western Veil Nebula.
The image at the left is a wide field view of the "Western Veil" taken with the 4X5 AstroCam on TechPan film, through the 16" telescope. About two or three fields to the left of this object lies the "Eastern Veil" discussed in the past three weeks.
Seen in the context of the larger image, this amazing little grouping of stars, appears to me like a diamond crown in the hilt of a dagger.
We solved the first problem by moving to a site with 10 times the storage space. To deal with the second problem, you will now find a "BIG PIC" next to images that I feel are worth displaying in higher resolution. Just click on the link and it will take you to a bigger picture and use your back button to return.
All film photos taken with the...JSP ASTROCAMERA
