Gemini, the Jelly Fish and Monkey Nebulae

The Jelly Fish Nebula IC443 and open star cluster Messier 35 - Canon 600d DSLR and Samyang 135mm fixed lens at F2. Stack of 30x2 minute sub lights at ISO800.

 

A widefield image showing the location of M35 at the foot of one of the twins.

The same image shown top - with added infra-red from the WISE space telescope. Credit: Kurt Thrust, Astrometry.net and NASA.

The constellation Gemini the twins is home to a number of interesting astronomical nebula and open star clusters which can be seen and imaged with a small telescope or camera lens. The open star cluster, Messier 35 can be seen through a pair of 10x50 binoculars. - Kurt Thrust current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

IC443 The Jelly Fish Nebula -COAST Robotic Telescope with SHO filters. Credit:: Open Observatories, Open University telescope.org

NGC2174 The Monkey Head Nebula -COAST Robotic Telescope with SHO filters. Credit:: Open Observatories, Open University telescope.org

Comet144P Kushida and Aldebaran

 

The bright alpha star in the Constellation  Taurus -Aldebaran and the periodic comet 144P Kushida February 2024. Composite image - using data from the COAST robotic telescope on Mount Teide, Tenerife and the Canon 600d DSLR at the Jodrell Plank Observatory. Credit : Pip Stakkert and Open University, Open Observatories, telescope.org The bright star in the middle of the image is Aldebaran and the fuzzy green ball upper right edge is the comet.
 

"We had planned to image the comet's close visual encounter with Aldebaran from Lowestoft and had programmed the COAST Robotic telescope to take a similar image as a fall back if the weather at Lowestoft was poor. For the period of time the comet was close to Aldebaran the weather in Lowestoft was atrocious. Sadly Mount Teide was also crowned with cloud and our programmed image was delayed until the weather improved. By the time the COAST telescope captured an image, the comet had moved out of the robotic telescope's relatively small field of view, leaving just a picture of Aldebaran and the surrounding stars.

Not to be thwarted, we decided to make a composite image using cometary data that we had captured a week ago using our Canon 600d DSLR and a Samyang 135 lens and the COAST image of Aldebaran  using BVR filters. The difficult bit was determining the exact location of the comet against the unchanging star field. We did this by consulting on-line planetarium software and by studying images taken by other UK astro-imagers. We hope our composite imagery hits the spot.

Aldebaran is just over 65 light years distant from our Solar System whilst Comet 144P Kushida is much closer at approximately 112 million kilometres. This equates to being six light minutes away and virtually on our doorstep. As a periodic comet, Kushida never leaves our Solar System following an elliptical orbit. It visits the inner  most part of the Solar System approximately every 7 years. So all being well, we shall see it again in our 'neck of the woods'  in 2031".- Joel Cairo CEO of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

Messier 1, The Crab Nebula

 

Messier1 or Crab Nebula and expanding volume of ionized gas created when a star went supernova some 1000 years ago in the constellation Taurus. The image was taken through Sulphur11, Hydrogen alpha and Oygen111 filters (with Sulphur plotted to the red cannel, Hydrogen to the green channel and Oxygen to the blue channel - SHO) COAST Robotic Telescope Mt Teide, Tenerife Credit: Open University and telescope.org - Pip Stakkert data reduction.

We have previously posted an image like this before but unfortunately it has come to light that the team on Mount Teide had mis-labelled the H alpha and Oxygen111 filters. See even professional astronomers may make mistakes! Our previous image was therefore OSH and not HSO - Joel Cairo CEO of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

The above image with a luminosity layer added from a BVR filtered COAST image and then cropped and enlarged.

The central region of the BVR filtered image of M1 cropped and enlarged by Pip Stakkert.

 Somewhere within this maelstrom is a pulsar, a neutron star spinning 30x per second and left over from the collapse of a massive star in supernova 1000 years ago.

The Crab Nebula  previously published - HSO  OSH narrow band palette- Open University, telescope.org COAST robotic telescope. Credit Pip Stakkert Jodrell Plank Observatory