Astronomy photos from the Dwarf 3 telescope

First night out in a long while between health and weather. Returned to M 51, The Whirlpool Galaxy. Wikipedia says - What later became known as the Whirlpool Galaxy was discovered on October 13, 1773, by Charles Messier while hunting for objects that could confuse comet hunters, and was designated in Messier's catalogue as M51.[13] William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, employing a 72-inch (1.8 m) reflecting telescope at Birr Castle, Ireland, found that the Whirlpool possessed a spiral structure, the first "nebula" to be known to have one.[14] These "spiral nebulae" were not recognized as galaxies until Edwin Hubble was able to observe Cepheid variables in some of these spiral nebulae, which provided evidence that they were so far away that they must be entirely separate galaxies.[15] The advent of radio astronomy and subsequent radio images of M51 unequivocally demonstrated that the Whirlpool and its companion galaxy are indeed interacting.

A nice Gibbous Moon on a cold November night.

The skies stayed clear at 11 PM last night and I grabbed 300 thirty second images of the Monkey Head Nebula. The NGC 2174 nebula has a very particular shape and has been nicknamed "monkey head" precisely because it shows the vague appearance of a monkey's head seen in profile. In reality this celestial object, which is located about 6400 light years from us, is an area of star formation, a cloud of gas - mainly hydrogen - and dust within which there are some young, very bright stars. It is precisely their ultraviolet radiation that illuminates the nebula, ionizing the hydrogen of which it is composed and thus giving it that typical reddish color.

From my driveway, with every neighbor's exterior lighting on at 5 AM this morning. Not bad. I was concerned as to whether or not the comet was high enough but the Dwarf's Atlas said it was 35 degrees above the horizon, so all trees were easily cleared. Below Comet Lemmon and on the right side, is NGC 3180, The Small Pinwheel Galaxy.

NGC 7789 or Caroline's Rose is an open cluster in Cassiopeia that was discovered by Caroline Herschel in 1783. Her brother William Herschel included it in his catalog as H VI.30. This cluster is also known as the "White Rose" Cluster or "Caroline's Rose" Cluster because when seen visually, the loops of stars and dark lanes look like the swirling pattern of rose petals as seen from above.

Some sunspots visible today.