Catalogue
Deep sky
Everything farther away than the solar system: emission nebulae, planetary nebulae, supernova remnants, star clusters and galaxies. Every image is astrometrically solved, every circle sits on a catalogue position. One click leads into the image and its crops.
Objects in our Milky Way
Nebulae, star clusters and stellar remnants within our own galaxy.
C27 Crescent
NGC 6888 · Crescent Nebula — how WR 136 sweeps up its own past
★★★★★Barely three degrees southwest of Sadr, in Cygnus, hangs a structure that looks at once like a crescent, a jellyfish and a crumpled brain. It is no quiet nebula but the frozen collision of two stellar winds from two …
NGC 7000
NGC 7000 & IC 5070 — two O stars, a continent of dust, and the wrong map in the sky
It takes little imagination to see a map in this nebula: North America on the left with its Gulf coast and Central America, a pelican with beak and neck on the right. The finest twist is that almost none of these …
IC1396A
IC 1396A · a trunk of dust, shaped by starlight
The Elephant's Trunk is usually portrayed up close. This image does the opposite: it places the globule IC 1396A in the landscape that explains its shape in the first place — in landscape format across 3.63 × 2.57 …
IC 1805
IC 1805 · Heart Nebula — stellar winds, dust and star formation in stages
This field shows the Heart Nebula not as an isolated red silhouette but as part of the larger W3/W4 complex in the Perseus arm. At the center lies the cavity of W4, cleared out by young massive stars; along its edges …
NGC7380
NGC 7380 · Wizard Nebula — Caroline Herschel's last find and star birth in waves
The wizard is a figure that only forms in the mind: depending on the rotation you make out a hood or a pointed hat in the bright rims and dark dust lanes, a raised arm and a billowing cloak. “Wizard Nebula” is a modern …
NGC 281W
NGC 281 · Pacman Nebula — how young stars eat their own birth cloud
At first glance the story is quickly told: a red disk, a dark notch for a mouth — there is the Pacman Nebula. The nickname arrived only with the character from the 1980s video game. The far better twist, though, is that …
NGC 7226
NGC 7226 in the field of Sh2-132 · a small cluster, a large Lion Nebula
The imaging plan was called NGC 7226, and that open cluster really is in the frame — but only just: a small, dense group of stars at the top edge, slightly right of center. The image belongs to a different object. …
NGC 6992
The whole Veil Nebula — a 120-light-year ring, four panels, and a star that merely stands in front
The Eastern Veil on the left, Fleming's Triangle at the top, the Witch's Broom on the right and the barely visible threads in between: this mosaic shows not several nebulae but almost the entire visible shell of a …
IC 1318 Panorama
IC 1318 panorama · from the Butterfly to the Crescent — four degrees of Cygnus in one frame
This is not a portrait of NGC 6888. The Crescent sits only as a small, turquoise-rimmed bubble at the lower right of a panorama 4.27 × 3.58° across. The real subject is a whole section of the Cygnus emission landscape: …
M42
M 42 · Orion Nebula — a stellar nursery uncovering itself
The Orion Nebula is not a quiet cloud but a torn-open surface. Behind the visible glow lies the dense Orion A molecular cloud; in front of it, the ultraviolet light of young massive stars has carved out an ionized …
M27
M 27 · Dumbbell Nebula — the first planetary nebula ever found
When Charles Messier noted an oval patch in the constellation Vulpecula on July 12, 1764, he catalogued — without knowing it — an entirely new class of object: M 27 was the first planetary nebula ever discovered. The …
IC434
IC 434 · Horsehead and Flame — Orion's most famous silhouette
The Horsehead may be the best-known nothing in the sky: a small dark notch, discovered in 1888 by Williamina Fleming on a Harvard photographic plate — the same observer to whom this gallery already owes Fleming's …
M45
M 45 · Pleiades — seven sisters in dust that is not theirs
No star cluster has kept humanity company longer: the Pleiades appear on the Nebra sky disk, they mark the sowing season in Hesiod's farming calendar, and in almost every culture they carry a name of their own — Seven …
M57
M 57 · Ring Nebula — the hourglass, seen pole-on
The sky's most famous smoke ring is a matter of viewing angle. M 57, the Ring Nebula in Lyra, is like the Dumbbell M 27 the cast-off shell of a Sun-like star — spatially an hourglass, except that here we look almost …
NGC 2237
Rosette Nebula · NGC 2237 — a cosmic bloom made of several catalogue numbers
The Rosette is not a single, neatly bounded bloom. Its familiar look arises from a large H II region, dark dust lanes and the young star cluster NGC 2244 in the hollowed-out center. The red glow is recombining hydrogen; …
NGC 6888
Crescent, Soap Bubble and the ring around WR 134 · Three Wolf-Rayet stars, P Cygni and the light of oxygen
Three Wolf-Rayet stars, one luminous blue variable, two planetary nebulae, a distant star-forming bubble and four open clusters — all in a field of 3.5° × 2.3° south of Sadr. The best-known resident is the Crescent …
sh2-157
Sh2-157 · Lobster Claw Nebula — a Wolf–Rayet star, a bubble and the stellar nursery NGC 7538 in the Perseus Arm
Three degrees of Cassiopeia, containing three very different ways in which massive stars reshape their surroundings. On the left, Sh2-157, the Lobster Claw Nebula, fills a third of the image: red hydrogen emission on …
LBN437
LBN 437 · Gecko Nebula — Lacerta OB1, a Herbig star at the tip and galaxies behind the Hα veil
Lacerta is an unassuming corner of the autumn sky, which is precisely why it reveals something lost in brighter fields: a star-forming region that is almost finished. The silvery-gray, dusty shape at upper left is LBN …
Sh2-129 / Ou4
Sh2-129 and Ou4 – the Squid within the Flying Bat’s wings
A red arc stretches across the star field in Cepheus: Sh2-129, the Flying Bat Nebula. This time, its glowing wings are not the only attraction. Within them, Ou4, the Squid Nebula, emerges as a turquoise, two-lobed …
NGC 6871
NGC 6871 and the Tulip Nebula – islands of light in dark Cygnus
A thin veil of red light stretches across the star field, interrupted by branching dark veins, broad shadows and tiny, almost black tips. At lower left, the Tulip Nebula, Sh2-101, provides a bright accent; higher in the …
Galaxies
Other stellar systems beyond the Milky Way – from our neighbours to distant galaxy fields.
NGC 7331
NGC 7331 – a star explodes in the light of a distant spiral
A small bluish-white point beside the bright centre turns this image into a record of a changing sky: SN 2026aaiv, a new supernova in NGC 7331. The marked source belongs to the distant galaxy. Its light reaches us after …
M 31
M31 — our neighbor galaxy, its two companions, and a ring of glowing hydrogen
Andromeda is the nearest large galaxy and, at magnitude 3.4, the brightest thing in the sky that does not belong to the Milky Way. Some 2.5 million light-years lie between us and M 31. The light in this image was …
M 33
M 33 — spiral arms and stellar nurseries in an Askar mosaic
M 33, the Triangulum Galaxy, lies beyond the Milky Way and shares the Local Group with it and M 31. Its relatively open view makes its disk an instructive counterpart to highly inclined Andromeda. It lacks a prominent …
NGC 6946
NGC 6946 – star formation in the Fireworks Galaxy
Blue arms, pink knots and brown dust lanes curl around a bright centre. NGC 6946 presents its disc almost face-on. Unlike the narrow silhouette of NGC 891, it allows us to follow the branching spiral pattern as it …
NGC 891
NGC 891 – one galaxy on edge, others in the distance
A slender spindle of light stands almost upright on the left, divided lengthwise by a dark, uneven stripe. NGC 891 presents its disc nearly edge-on. Its bright central swelling and the fading light towards the ends …
NGC 6952
NGC 6951 / NGC 6952 – a bar and two sweeping arms
A warm, elongated centre lies between two blue-toned arcs, with dark dust traces following the inner spiral. NGC 6951 is small within the dense star field, yet the contrast between its bright middle and loosely sweeping …
