The following images were taken by members of the Astronomy 101A class and friends. Unless otherwise noted, the images were taken through a clear filter, 60 second exposure, from 8 - 10 pm on 29 September 2006, at the A-Wing Observatory on the University of Washington campus. The instruments used were a 12" Meade LX200 GPS and an SBIG 8XE camera, chip cooled to -10 Celsius, and controlled by the program Equinox 5.3. Images were saved directly in TIFF format, and no processing at all has been done on them in order to speed up the image taking. Approximately 30 students took part in this fun activity, where we also used our star finders to locate constellations. The weather was clear. Seeing was hampered by the cooling of the observation deck after a very warm day, but improved as the evening progressed. Of course, the observatory is also located in a metropolitan area of close to one-million people, is beneath a flight path to Sea-Tac airport, and troubled by light pollution. Nonetheless, the students should all be very proud of their success in this first venture into the wonderful objects of the night sky! (The only adjustments to these pictures were in brightness and contrast.) We will be doing this again!

This image shows the very center part of the Andromeda galaxy, a spiral galaxy located 2.5 million light years from the Milky Way. Also known as Messier 31, the Andromeda galaxy is part of the Local Group of galaxies.

This is the same image as above, but the contrast has been adjusted to bring out the dust in the lower part of the image. For more detailed and dramatic images (in other words: taken with a larger telescope, under much better conditions, with a longer exposure time, and maybe at a different scale and image angle), see http://www.seds.org/messier/m/m031.html

The Pinwheel galaxy, also known as Messier 33 and the Triangulum galaxy, is also part of our Local Group of galaxies. At about 3.3 million light years away, we are seeing this spiral galaxy "face-on." This is a 120-second exposure, but the galaxy is still too faint to see much detail in the spiral arms. For more detailed and dramatic images, see http://www.seds.org/messier/m/m033.html

The Ring Nebula, Messier 57, a planetary nebula. Planetary nebulae represent stars that were once like our star, the Sun, but at a much, much later stage in their lives. If you look closely at the center of the nebula in the larger image, you will see a small white dot. This is the white dwarf, what's left of the core of the star. It contains about 60 - 70% the mass of the original star, but is approximately the size of the Earth. These objects are very hot and very dense. For more information on all planetary nebulae see http://www.seds.org/messier/planetar.html and http://www.astro.washington.edu/balick/WFPC2/index.html

The Dumbbell planetary nebula. All of these images are at the same scale and represent 16 arc minutes in width and 11 arc minutes in height of the sky. For comparison, the full Moon is one-half of a degree, or 30 arc minutes, in diameter. These measurements refer to the angle that the object takes up in the sky (their angular size). If you measure from horizon to horizon on Earth, that would be 180 degrees or 10,800 arc minutes.

The Saturn planetary nebula. If you look closely at the larger image, you may notice small "ring-like" projections from the longer ends. Under telescopes such as the one we used, more detail cannot be seen, and so this nebula got its name because it reminded the discoverer of the planet Saturn and its rings. Notice how it and the next two planetary nebulae are much smaller in angular size. Is this because they are at the same distance from us and a lot smaller physically? Or, does it mean that they are about the same size as the Dumbbell but much farther away? These are questions that keep astronomers busy!

The Blue Snowball planetary nebula.

The Cat's Eye planetary nebula.

Messier 92 globular cluster. In the larger image, the center region seems really bright but that is because the telescope could not resolve all of the 100,000's of stars there, and combined the light from them. For more information on globular clusters, see http://www.seds.org/messier/glob.html. You will find out that they contain many, extremely old stars, and orbit the center of the Galaxy much differently than the solar system does.

Messier 13, the Hercules cluster. You will notice that even though this is the same kind of cluster as Messier 92, it looks different. The stars seem more spread out, and it appears larger. Closer? Physically larger? Why the difference in "compactness"?

Messier 2 globular cluster.

Messier 12 globular cluster.

The Swan nebula, Messier 17. You've perhaps figured out by now that the meaning of the word "nebula" is indeed "nebulous" in astronomy. There are dark nebulae (dust), emission nebulae (hot gas and plasma), and reflection nebulae (material that is reflecting light from stars near it in our direction). The Swan nebula is a star-forming region. To the upper left of this image you see a grouping of a large number of stars, all born at roughly the same time, and maybe only a few million years old. The bright nebulosity is due to hydrogen gas that is emitting red light. One can also see some dark nebulosity due to dust -- carbon, silicon, and other material cooked up through nuclear fusion in stars that died long ago and recycled some of their material back into the interstellar medium. Be sure to check out this image: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap960829.html

The Eagle nebula, Messier 16. In the upper right-hand corner of this image, you will see the "Pillars of Creation" (the famous Hubble Space Telescope image made covers of Time and Newsweek), seen here as dark shadows. In reality, these dust columns may be 2 - 3 light years long! The grouping of bright stars in the center of the image represent the young stars just emerging from their birth. [The dark, circular rings along the bottom right are "shadows" due to the dust on the filter of our telescope.] Compare this image to those found linked from http://www.seds.org/messier/m/m016.html. When we observed the Eagle nebula, it was barely above the southern horizon, over Capital Hill. With the naked eye, we could see maybe 1 or 2 of the brightest stars. Not so bad under our circumstances!

The planet Uranus, the bright thing at the center right. This was a 10 second exposure. Even so, the planet saturated the chip, and thus looks a lot brighter than it would be. The features that seem to be going up and down from the planet are due to there being too much light in this exposure, but we wanted to show the stars that were also in the field.

Two images of the Moon combined. The images were 10 seconds long, and were taken through a red filter to cut down the light. The features on the Moon are slightly fuzzy because the telescope, while focused through a clear filter, was not focused when the red filter was used. Cheap filters.