Classic | GaryLopezPhotography

Classic

Classic renditions emphasizing structure and dramatic composition

Islands in a Radiant Sea

In the center of the Heart Nebula, in the constellation, Cassiopeia, are snaking clouds of dust and gas, sculpted by the stellar winds and radiation from a newborn cluster of massive, supergiant stars. Only 1.5 million years old, the stars are scattered in a sea of atomic gases that glow and silhouette the dark dust clouds.

This is one of my favorite deep-space objects. This image was my third attempt to capture this spectacular region of space. Previous efforts, in 2017 and again in 2018, fell short due to equipment problems, smoke from wildfires in the western U.S., and uncooperative weather. In 2019 the “astrogods” gave me a break. Through the Fall I have collected more than 30 hours of exposures. This rendition is composed of hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur emissions.

20.6 hours total exposure of ionized hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur emissions.

There are several cosmic objects in this wide angle image, including Cone Nebula (top), the Christmas Tree cluster of stars (below the Cone), and Fox Fur Nebula (surrounding the Christmas Tree cluster). The large, blue star in the top center of the field is S Mon, a young, highly energetic star whose light and hot matter is causing the surrounding interstellar dust to form the odd conical and stretched shapes, including the fur-like folds.

This is a wide angle view using a 336mm telescope. I framed it and processed the color and values to reveal the range of textures created by the cosmic dust in this remarkable area in the constellation Monoceros.

19.5 hours total exposure of ionized hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur emissions

Elephant Trunk Nebula

The Elephant Trunk Nebula is a concentration of interstellar dust and gases 2,400 light-years from Earth. The "trunk" structure meandering into the disc is a chamber lined with dense gases that are ionized by energy from a brightly glowing nearby star. This region is thought to be a star forming area and it contains several recently ignited stars (less than 10,000 years old).

In this image, the gold color is hydrogen and sulfur, and the blue and cyan is oxygen. I blended the colors and values to reveal the complex, flowing architecture of chambers and passages that honeycomb this cloud of gasses and dust.

15.2 hours total exposure of ionized hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur emissions

Ball of Scarlet Lightening

Known as the Spaghetti Nebula, is a large supernova remnant straddling the border between the constellations Auriga and Taurus. The glowing gas filaments cover nearly 3 degrees of the sky, a cloud of stellar debris that is about 150 light years across. The explosion occurred about 40,000 years ago, the light reaching Earth a few thousand years later. A spinning neutron star or pulsar is all that remains of the original star’s core.

This image is an HaRGB rendition, combining hydrogen emission with visible light (RGB). The exposures were collected over a four week period in November and December 2019, during three clear nights between rain storms. This is one of the faintest objects that I have attempted. I found that I needed to collect more than 25 hours of hydrogen exposures to visualize the detail and control the noise in this object.

20.8 hours total exposure of ionized hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur emissions

Summer Butterfly

In the heart of Cygnus, near the bright star, Sadr, is the Butterfly Nebula. It flies an arc across sky on summer evenings in Northern California. While its wings appear to be two separate nebulae, it is actually a single nebula bisected by a 20 light-year long dark lane of dust that forms the body of the butterfly.

This image is composed of a strong Ha emission signal, and weaker SII and OIII signals. Relentless night time overcast here in Monterey meant that I was only able collect a few hours of imagery at a time during occasional and brief weather break during the two two month timeframe of this project. Finally, the weather cleared, and I got the last couple of hours of the 20 hours total needed for this image. For me, it was worth the trouble.

19.6 hours total exposure of ionized hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur emissions

California Rainbow

Drifting through the Orion Arm of the Milky Way is the California Nebula, a cloud of hydrogen and sulfur glowing red, orange,and yellow, with a whispy blue veil of oxygen. More than 100 light-years long, this "California shaped" mass is not far from the Pleiades star cluster in the constellation Perseus.

I shot this image with a 550mm refracting telescope, a tight framing to reveal the swirling structure of the gases. I composed the image in a portrait orientation, with the cloud rising across the frame to emphasize the movement of the nebular folds.

21.1 hours total exposure of ionized hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur emissions

Fish Jumping From a Starry Pool

The Fish Head Nebula is part of a complex region called the Heart Nebula. In this image you can see the fish with its gill arch leaping from a turquoise pool of stars and light. This collection of glowing gases and dust is about 6,000 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. To give you a sense of its size, the "fish" is 70 light-years long.

In this composition I used a standard Hubble Space Telescope (HST) color palette, with sulfur assigned red, hydrogen assigned green, and oxygen assigned blue. In blending the colors I emphasized the blue-green liquid translucency of the "pool" from which the fish is escaping.

25.1 hours of total exposure RGB (visible light), and ionized hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur emissions

This image features a collection of objects called Bok globules, the dark, well defined patches. Bok globules were first observed by Bart Bok at Harvard University Observatory in the 1940's. He and his colleague, Edith Reilly, hypothesized that they were areas undergoing gravitational collapse that resulted in the formation of new stars. It is now thought that a typical Bok globule is about one light-year across and contains material equivalent to about 10 solar masses. The current theory is that a Bok globule results in double- or multiple-star systems.

This image was a long time coming. I decided to attempt this framing in June 2018, after I collected wide angle imagery for this nebula. My efforts were thwarted by weather and smoke from fires in 2018. A year later, a night in June the night sky crystal clear and I was finally able the capture the last five hours of Ha exposures I needed to create this image.

19.7 hours total exposure of ionized hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur emissions

About 1,500 light years away in the constellation Auriga is the bright nebula, The Flaming Star. The glowing blue region at the center of this image is created by the light from a massive, blue dwarf star, AE Auriga, reflecting off of the surrounding dust. AE Auriga was not formed in this location. It is a “runaway star” that was ejected two million years ago from the area of the Trapezium Cluster (Orion’s Sword) in a collision of two binary stars.

In this image exposures taken in two different years with two different telescopes were combined. To enhance the detail of the nebular structure only the best one-third of the exposures were used.

31 hours total exposure of RGB (visible light), ionized hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur emissions

The Golden State

Drifting through the Orion Arm of the Milky Way is the California Nebula, a cloud of hydrogen and sulfur glowing red, orange, and yellow, with a wispy blue veil of oxygen. More than 100 light-years long, this "California shaped" mass is not far from the Pleiades star cluster in the constellation Perseus. In this rendition I see the Sierra Nevada mountains represented by the nebular ridges along the northeastern edge of the object, while the blue Pacific Ocean is represented by the veil of glowing oxygen fanning out from southwestern edge.

For this image I used a telescope with a field of view wide enough to frame nearly all of the swirling perimeter structures of this beautiful nebula. I was fortunate to have clear, good quality skies for three successive nights, allowing me to collect more than 25 hours of excellent exposures. This rendition is presented in a standard Hubble Space Telescope palette, a good choice to reveal the nebular folds and details of the main body of the object, and revealing the wispy veil of oxygen.

22.3 hours total exposure of hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur emissions.

It is one of the most photographed objects in the deep sky. It is bright, beautiful, complex, and elegant. For many of us, making a yearly image of the Rosette is a tradition, like an annual reunion with an old friend. Reviewing each of your Rosette images going back through time is a chronicle of your experience as astrophotographer. Each year your Rosette image is different, a reflection of your changing equipment and improving processing skills. Some years you are blessed with perfect skies, and others it is a struggle to acquire enough data for a decent image. And each season you look forward to the return of the Rosette for one more picture.

Here is my 2020 Rosette Nebula. The weather was difficult, but not impossible, and I was able to collect about 11 hours of good data. I acquired a new 925mm FL refractor a few months ago, so I aimed it for the first time at the Rosette for a close-up look at the familiar folds, swirls, and Bok globules of the core. This image is an SHO rendition, using sulfur, oxygen, and hydrogen signals for color mapping.

11.1 hours total exposure of hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur emissions.

In the constellation Monoceros, the light and hot matter from a cluster of energetic stars forces the interstellar dust and gas to fold, twist, and stretch. Intense gravity makes a funnel-shaped chamber, the birthplace of new stars.

For this image I combined 19 hours of 2018 narrowband data taken with a 336mm telescope with 9 hours of 2020 hydrogen emission data taken with a 925mm telescope. The color mapping was done with the 2018 data and the new 2020 data were used as a luminance layer to bring out the detail.

28.4 hours total exposure of hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur emissions.

Cosmic Mountain Range

The Cygnus Wall is a ridge of star-forming gas and dust about 20 million light-years long in the North American Nebula. Like a mountain range carved by the erosion of water and wind, the Cygnus Wall is shaped by the energetic radiation of the young, hot stars nearby. The dark shapes that snake through the ridge are cooled gases and dust, the birth place of new stars.

The data for this image were collected in only two sessions. While the nights were clear, the atmosphere was variable and unstable which results in fuzzy pictures. Only about half of the exposures I collected were used to make this image. This is one of my favorite deep-sky objects with its craggy spine and the dusty veil sweeping across the middle of the ridge. I really like the pronounced three-dimensionality of this object created by the juxtaposition of shadow and color caused by the layers of gases. For me its appearance marks the beginning of the summer astro season.

11.1 hours total exposure of ionized hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur emissions

In the constellation Cygnus is a chaotic lace-work of glowing filaments, remnants of a super nova explosion whose light reached Earth about 5,000 years ago. It is called Pickering's Triangle, named for Charles Pickering, the director of Harvard College Observatory and part of the Veil Nebula complex. It has been argued that this object should really be called Flemming's Triangular Wisp since it was identified by Pickering's assistant, Williamina Flemming. She is credited with discovering 10 novae, over 310 variable stars, and 59 gaseous nebulae.

After three months of cloudy nights, the sky began peeking through, an hour or two at a time. The transparency of the atmosphere was inconsistent which meant that while I collected more than 20 hours of exposures for this project, I used only 11.5 hours for this image. All in all, it was worth the effort as the resulting image has nice detail and shows both the characteristic ribbons of glowing Ha and OIII, as well as faint diaphanous sheets of gas and dust.

11.5 hours total exposure of RGB (visible light), and ionized hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur emissions

This is a young star-forming region in the constellation Cepheus. This area encompasses the emission nebula and a small star cluster. The complex includes one of the hottest star near Earth, BD+66 1673, which is 100,000 time more luminous than our Sun. It's this very hot star that fuels the glowing gases of this nebula and shapes the pockets and channels that are the nurseries for new star formation.

It was a long haul to gather enough exposures to make this image. I was lucky to have five clear nights in September, a good month for astrophotography at my observatory in Monterey.

23 hours total exposure of RGB (visible light), ionized hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur emissions

The Orion Nebula is a very active star-forming region only 1,500 light years from Earth. The swirling shapes in the massive cloud of hydrogen and dust are created by solar winds from the stars that are ignited at its core, the white area at the center of the cloud on the right. On the left side of the image is the Running Man Nebula, a reflection nebula with several bright star shining through the dust and illuminating a siloutte of a person in stride.

This exposures for this image was collected with an astro-modified DSLR and a fast Newtonian telescope. Orion Nebula has a very wide dyamic range so I did two sets of different exposures to capture the faint details of the dust, as well as the brilliant luminance of the core.

3.3 hours total exposure

The Rosette Nebula is an active stellar nursery. At its center is a cluster of young star, occupying a open area thought to be caused by solar winds generated by igintion of new stars. About 50 light-years across and 5,000 light-years from Earth, the Rosette Nebula is located in the constellation Monoceros.

This is one of may favorite nebulas, a wonderful visitor every winter in the dark sky over Big Sur to the south of my observatory. This is a "bicolor" image, where I used emission spectra from hydrogen (red) and oxygen (blue) to colorize the picture. There is so much dynamism in the structure of the Rosette that clean and simple coloration is all that is needed to reveal its intricate texture.

10.4 hours total exposure of ionized hydrogen and oxygen emissions

This is the remnant of a super nova located in the constellation Gemini. Its common name is the "Jellyfish Nebula" because of it undulating shape. A super nova occurs when a star explodes and scatters chemical elements that were created during its lifetime into the surrounding space. In this image you can see the layers of gas expand from the point of the explosion in shells of glowing lattice structures. What we see is the light from an event that happened about 30,000 years ago.

I framed this image to feature both the billowing gases of the super nova, as well as the trailing ejecta snaking out from the bow wave of the explosion.

19.2 hours total exposure of ionized hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur emissions

In the constellation Cassiopeia is a bright emission nebula commonly called “Pacman Nebula.” In the center of the nebula is a star cluster whose young, hot stars are generating intense solar winds that are sculpting channels and pockets in the surrounding gas and dust. Along the perimeter are a collection of star-forming globular chambers, as well as a large dust cloud that forms a dark slash into the cloud.

Collecting the exposures for this image was frustrating. While I was fortunate to have a string a clear nights, the quality of the sky made for very uneven imagery. In total I captured nearly 30 hours of exposures, but used only the best 17 hours for this image.

17.6 hours total exposure of hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur emissions.

Andromeda Galaxy

Andromeda is our nearest neighbor galaxy, only 2.5 million light-years from Earth. Andromeda is 50% larger than our galaxy at 220,000 light-years across, and contains 1 trillion stars, twice as many as Milky Way. On clear dark nights you can see Andromeda as a faint glowing smudge. The red area in the disc are concentrations of hydrogen gas, star forming regions. The blue regions are concentrations of new, young stars, recently ignited. Our galaxy, Milky Way, and Andromeda are on a collision course and will come together in about 4.0 billion years to form a single, giant galaxy. When that happens, the night sky on Earth will be much brighter, illuminated by the light of many more stars.

This image combined data from both an astro-modified DSLR and a cooled CMOS camera . The color was provided by the DSLR (RGB), while the detailed structure was provided by the cooled CMOS camera (luminance).

7 hours total exposure

In 1959 astronomer Stuart Sharpless wrote a catalog of nebula in the Milky Way based on images from the Palomar Sky Survey. This is the 115th object in the Sharpless catalog. It is a complex expanse of hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur with ridge, folds, and pockets created by the energy of nearby stars and gravity. At the top left is a round object, originally misclassified as a planetary nebula, now thought to be a sphere of gas concentration.

17.8 hours total exposure of ionized hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur emissions

The Bat Nebula is a super nova remnant in the constellation Cygnus. The source of the super nova was a star 20 times more massive than our Sun. The blue and red ribbons of light are glowing oxygen and hydrogen emanating from the explosion about 8,000 years ago. This image shows only a small portion of the remnant which covers an area of the sky 36 times larger than the full Moon.

Many things can go wrong in astrophotography, including equipment failure, software miscues, and, of course, the weather. This image was challenged by all three. Nearly two years were needed to collect the more than 18 hours of exposures required to make this image.

18.6 hours total exposure of ionized hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur emissions

The Soul Nebula is a star-forming emission nebula in the constellation Cassiopeia. Scattered through the nebula are small star clusters.

Most of the astro images I shoot are the result of long-term planning. Not this one. An unexpected string of clear nights had me scrambling to find a target. My criterion was simply "what offered the greatest time above the horizon to maximize the collection of data to build the image." Soul Nebula was the best candidate, even though it was not on my "long-term target list." Lucky for me that serendipity took over because I really like the image. It reminds me to twin lagoons of tropical seawater. I think there may be a lesson here. While careful planning is a big part of astrophotography, sometimes the best images are those offered up by the night sky.

18.6 hours total exposure of ionized hydrogen, oxygen and sulfur emissions

Dancing Galaxies

Bode's Galaxy on the left and the Cigar Galaxy on the right are just northwest of the Big Dipper in the constellation Ursa Major. Although they are separated by 150,000 light-years, the two galaxies interact, with hydrogen streaming between them. This activity is thought to account for the enormous amount of star forming activity seen in the Cigar Galaxy as the fountains of red emanating from its core.

I collected exposures for this image over a two year period. It combines the exposures from an astro-modified DSLR with a cooled CMOS camera. The hazy appearance in the area between to the two galaxies is called integrated flux nebula (IFN), very faint gas and dust that is part of our galaxy, Milky Way.

8.8 hours total exposure RGB (visible light), luminance, and hydrogen emissions

The Heart Nebula

Beating in the body of the mythical queen of Aethiopia, Cassiopeia, is the Heart Nebula. Nearly 200 light-years across and 7,500 light-years from Earth, this bright emission nebula spans about 2 degrees of the night sky, an area about four times the diameter of the full Moon. The young, massive star cluster at the center of the Heart energize the surrounding gases dominated by hydrogen, with lesser measures of oxygen and sulfur.

I was fortunate to have exceptionally clear and dry weather when I captured the exposures for this project. To visualize the intricate structures of this nebula I acquired about 30 hours of data, emphasizing the very strong hydrogen signal (nearly 20 hours). In this rendition I have used a standard HST palette, where sulfur is red, hydrogen is green, and oxygen is blue. For my taste, this palette reveals the beauty of this spectacular nebula.

27.8 hours total exposure of hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur emissions.

The Horse and the Flame

About 1,000 light-years away in the constellation Orion, these iconic nebula glow with ionized hydrogen caused by the ultraviolet light from the large nearby star at the left of the frame, Alnitak. In addition to the horsehead siloutte in the glowing red hydrogen veil and the swirling orange tongues of the Flame Nebula on the left, in the center of the frame there is also a bright blue star shining through the dust and gas, the emission nebula.

I shot this image with a small, Ritchey Chretien design telescope, the same design at the Hubble Space Telescope. Long, 600 second exposures were required to gather enough light through the slower telescope and DSLR combination.

3 hours total exposure

The Seven Sisters are an open cluster of hot, blue stars, so brilliantly luminous they are easy to spot in the night sky. The textured nebulosity is dust illuminated by brilliant star light.

This image was shot with an unmodified DSLR and a fast Newtonian telescope. While the image does not have the fine detail afforded by a cooled CMOS monochrome camera, it has a more natural look, like watching the star twinkle on a summer night.

2.9 hours total exposure

This group of three spiral galaxies found in the constellation Leo are 35 million light years away. Their catalog designations are M65 (top right), M66 (bottom right), and NGC 3628 (bottom left). M66 and NGC 3628 are interacting, gravity pulling materials from each to the other. M65 show no evidence of interacting with the other members of the trio.

One of the powerful things about modern astrophotography is that exposures taken at different times with different equipment can be combined to create a single image. This image is a combination of DSLR data and cooled CMOS data taken two years apart. The color in this image comes from the DSLR, while the detailed structure comes from the cooled CMOS.

7.6 hours total exposure

Flower in a Cosmic Field

Springing from the rolling dust and gas in the constellation Cygnus is the Tulip Nebula. The dark channels burrowing in from its base are areas of star formation.

This image posed a difficult processing challenge. The Tulip was a small feature lost in a large scene dominated by waves of nebular clouds. In addition, the star field was so intense that it overwhelmed the fine structure of the nebulas. After many weeks of different approaches I finally landed on this image where the Tulip is a bright, delicate feature in a field of somber, rolling clouds.

9.9 hours total exposure of ionized hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur emissions

Dust Lanes in Cygnus

This large, faint nebular region in the constellation, Cygnus, is criscrossed with lanes of dust. In this image, I assigned the color red to sulfur, green hydrogen, and blue to oxygen, which resulted in these streaks of color crisscrossed by lines of obsuring dust.

This is not a popular target among astrophotographer. In fact, on either side of this area are the very often photographed Cygnus Wall and Pelican Nebula. There is something about the texture created by the cross hatching of dust lanes that I find compeling.

14.2 hours total exposure of ionized hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur emissions

Near the bright star Sirius in the constellation Canis Major is the enrormous swath of gas and dust that is known to astronomers as the Seagull Nebula. This region is dominated by glowing hydrogen and is an estimated 3,800 light-years from Earth.

Storms had been rolling through one after another without much of a break for weeks, until suddenly the sky was visible for a few hours over two night. Since Seagull Nebula rises only 20 degrees or so above my house and tree line for about four hours a night, I was able to capture 8 hours of narrowband and a bit of RGB data. The coloring is the traditional Hubble Space Telescope palette.

8.4 hours total exposure RGB (visible light), and ionized hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur emissions

The Needle Galaxy is a spiral galaxy that we see edge on. It's about 40 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1785 and has been a favorite target of astronomers ever since. It is a large galaxy, similar in size to Andromeda Galaxy.

Another image where I combined DSRL imagery for color with cooled CMOS imagery for structure and detail.

4.2 hours total exposure

Fishhead Nebula

The Fishhead Nebula is a knot of gas and dust on the western edge of the Heart Nebula. This bright nebula is 7,500 light years way, located in the Perseus Arm of our Milky Way Galaxy. The object is dominated by dust and hydrogen gas, with good measures of oxygen and sulfur gas.

In October 2018 I collect 25.1 hours of Ha, OIII, SII emission light, and RGB data for a wide view of this region (1.84 degrees X 1.39 degrees) . This year I collected an additional 10.6 hours of Ha data with a tighter field of view (1.09 degrees X 0.83 degrees). In this image, I combined the two data sets using the new, narrower field of view exposures to crop the 2018 exposures to this close-up view.

35.7 hours total exposure of hydrogen, oxygen, sulfur emissions, and RGB