In October 2024, I figured it was about time I took a picture of the Pleiades - that famous star cluster that's been known throughout the world since ancient times. In Greek mythology the stars in this cluster are known as the seven sisters - the daughters of Atlas and Pleione. The cluster is easily visible without the aid of a telescope, and as a kid I was told that if you could make out at least six stars, then your eyesight was pretty good. If you are familiar with the constellation of Orion, then you can find the Pleiades by following a line drawn through the three stars in Orion's belt.
Just like the seven sisters, the stars in the Pleiades are also siblings - having formed from the same stellar nursery only about 100 million years ago. Since that time, they've traveled through space together. Currently they are making their way through an interstellar dust cloud about 450 light years from us. The area is brightly illuminated by blue-white starlight from the sisters, reflecting off the cloud.
In case you are interested, you can locate the seven sisters as follows: The two bright stars at the bottom of the image are the parents, Pleione and Atlas. The large star above the parents is Alcyone. Moving upward and slightly to the right, the next sister we encounter is Merope. A little higher, and over to the left is Maia, the eldest daughter. To the left of Maia are two stars close together - the top one is the sister Asterope. Moving upward again and to the right, the next big star is Taygeta, followed by Celaeno; and finally the large star top and center is Electra.

This image of the Triangulum Galaxy (M33) is composed of 232 individual frames taken over a couple of weeks around November 2024. It's the third largest galaxy in our local group, after Andromeda and the Milky Way. If you have super clear skies, and good vision, you might just barely be able to make this out with the naked eye. At 2.7 million light years away, it is, in fact, the most distant object that can be seen without the aid of a telescope.
The nucleus of the galaxy holds an abundance of ionized hydrogen, which is a usually an indicator of star formation. Unlike most other large galaxies there is no evidence of a supermassive black hole in the center of this one. M33 is chock-full of star forming regions; clouds of mostly hydrogen which show up in this image as reddish-pink blotches. In fact, the rate of star formation in M33 is far higher than in our largest neighbor, Andromeda.

There are two prominent galaxies in the foreground - Bode's Galaxy (M81) the Cigar (M82) - but if you look closely you can see several other more distant galaxies in the background. When I first processed this photo, I was surprised to see a lot of wispy web-like filaments throughout the image. At first I thought maybe they were clouds, or perhaps a processing artifact of some sort, especially as this wispy stuff didn't show up in other photos I've seen of the region.
It turns out that this is a real phenomenon, called the IFN - Integrated Flux Nebula. It's caused by the faint glow of light from the Milky Way reflecting off tenuous extragalactic strands of dust. It's so faint, in fact, that IFN wasn't identified until the 1990s. I think it adds a sort of eerie sci-fi effect to the image, and I am also pleased to have been able to detect it from a relatively light polluted neighborhood - which is why I haven't cropped it out.
If you zoom in a little on the galaxies, you can more clearly see the beautiful spiral pattern of M81 on the right, and the pinkish red starburst plumes of M82, that look as though they are draped around the Cigar like a scarf.
They are both about 12 million light years from us and relatively close to each other. In fact, the intense starburst activity of M82 is due to the gravitational influence of M81.

This might not look like much - just a bunch of stars, right?
Agreed. But I thought it might be fun to point my scope away from the Milky Way for a change, to peer a little deeper into the intergalactic void. The region you are looking at here is the result of focusing for about 9 hours on a small patch of sky in the constellation of Pegasus, which for me was in the western sky around November 2024. We are looking away from the Milky Way, at an angle of about negative 33 - which means our line of sight is about 33 degrees below the plane of our galaxy. That gives us a better view of more distant galaxies, way in the distance.
To see these galaxies, you'll need to zoom-in quite a bit, and you probably won't see much if you are using your phone. If you download this and view it on a bigger screen, then you might just be able to make out some of these faraway galaxies, which appear very small in this image, but are distinguishable by their spiral or elliptical shapes.
These galaxies look so tiny because they are so much farther away than all the stars you can see in the foreground. While the stars are mostly in the range of a few hundred to maybe a couple of thousand light years away, the galaxies in the image are several hundred million light years distant. Also, while my f/2.2 astrograph had excellent light-gathering power, it consequently gave us a reasonably wide field with very little magnification - hence the other reason these galaxies look so tiny. Perhaps at some point, I will revisit some of these distant places with my new f/11 imaging system.
If you hunt around for a bit, you should be able to find some galaxy clusters - there is one especially beautiful cluster in the upper right quadrant of the image.

My holiday offering for 2024 was the Butterfly Nebula in the Sadr region of the sky - not to be confused with NGC 6302 - a planetary nebula that also looks like a butterfly. I photographed this area back in June 2024, but because I was centered on the big star Sadr, I only captured the tail of the butterfly. Here you can see the insect in its full glory. The dark nebula running up the middle forms the butterfly's body, with the bright wings stretching out to the sides, showing up in a sort of teal color. The dark nebulae essentially consist of opaque clouds that obscure whatever is behind - making them look like spooky black voids in space. The stars that seem to be suspended in these voids are in fact closer to us, in front of the dark clouds. Such is the case with astronomical photos that it's difficult to appreciate the three dimensional aspect of what we are seeing, because everything is flattened into a 2D image.
As you examine this region, most of the bright visual stuff is emission nebula - so called because it consists of gas that emits light when it is irradiated. There are also the dark nebulae mentioned above, which are the inky black areas in the center. I am a big fan of the clumps, filaments and globules which are indicative of star formation, and as a bonus I was delighted to see some lovely star clusters visible here too, distributed around the nebula like colorful glistening pearls, and more than a match for any holiday decorations!

In December 2024, I pointed my telescope at this little spot in the constellation of Auriga, in the hope of capturing a number of interesting targets within a single frame. Honestly, I wasn't expecting to see such a spectacular vista. There is a lot going on in this image, including two very dramatic, dusty nebulous regions and a few dazzling star clusters thrown in for effect. Starting in the lower left corner at a distance of 12 thousand light years there are the tadpoles, so called because, well, there are two quite noticeable tadpoles swimming toward the dark patch in the middle of the nebula. These tadpoles are actually very similar in nature to the "pillars of creation" from the famous Hubble image of the Eagle Nebula - areas of dense nebulous material that's been excavated by radiation from the central star cluster. Lighter gaseous material is blown back by these stellar winds toward the perimeters, leaving behind these sinuous shapes. The tadpoles will likely continue to be a source of star formation into the future. Moving diagonally upwards and to the right takes us to another large nebula, 10 thousand light years distant, known as the Spider. While the spider shape is not as obvious as the tadpoles, it's not too hard to make out the creature's legs extending outward on both sides of the bright central region. There is a lot of active star formation in this nebula too, especially in the oval clumps and the knotted strands in the surrounding bluish gas clouds. Two the right of the spider are two rather lovely star clusters, labeled NGC 1907 and NGC 1912. These are a little closer to us, at distances of 4.5 and 3.5 thousand light years respectively.