October 2024: Aurora Borealis again in Àger!

On Thursday 10 October 2024 we had the opportunity to see a new aurora borealis in Àger, 42º north latitude, for the second time in the year!!

The first episode was on 10 May this year. The first image is an unprocessed capture ,…Read more

M 76 the Little Dumbbell Nebula

Messier 76  (also known as M76, the Little Dumbbell Nebula or NGC650/651) is a planetary nebula in the constellation Perseus. 

This nebula was discovered by the French astronomer Pierre Méchain in 1780, and was included in the Charles Messier's catalogue of comet-like objects as number 76 as a double nebula without stars (for this reason, it was also catalogued as ,…Read more

New exoplanet transit: HAT-P-16b

HAT-P-16b is a gas giant exoplanet orbiting HAT-P-16, an F- type star with an apparent magnitude of 10.9 and a size close to that of our Sun (Mass = 1.22 Msun, Radius = 1.24 Rsun).

Located in the constellation Andromeda, it is 739 light-years away from us and takes only 2.8 days to complete one orbit around its star. Its discovery was announced in 2010. 

Its mass is 4.19 times that of Jupiter, and the distance to its star is 0.0413 AU.

Transit taken remotely on 14/09/2024 (with Moon at 85%) with TOA-150 telescope and STL-11000M camera (110 120-second exposures). 

More information about exoplanets and other transits here.

LBN 251

This image shows a very crowded area in Cygnus. At the centre of the image is LBN 251, whose core is bluish due to a high concentration of ionized oxygen. 

The field shown in the first image (North is up) reveals many other nebulae such as LDN 892, LDN 891, LDN 894,…Read more

Sh2-174 Planetary Nebula

This nebula, popularly known as Valentine Rose Nebula, has both Sh2-174 and PK 120+18.1 as catalogue designations. 

It is therefore an unusual object: the fact that an object shares…Read more

Elephant's Trunk Nebula

IC 1396 is a large and fascinating gas ionized region in constellation Cepheus, 3000 light years from Earth. Among the intriguing dark structures in the interior of IC1396, the Elephant's Trunk Nebula certainly stands out.

The nebula is so named because of …Read more

Starless images, StarNet2 and StarXTerminator

In my last image of M16, I decided to present it in a version without stars to focus attention on the "Pillars of Creation". To arrive to the starless version I used in this image, StarXTerminator from Russell Croman.

Two years ago, I made some kind of comparison between StarNet2 and StarXTerminator …Read more,