All photos are © Marshall Faintich In December 2024, I began imaging with a Celestron 8-inch telescope on loan from the Charlottesville Astronomical Society, and in January 2025, I began remote imaging with MSRO Science/RAC Observatory telescopes. In September 2026, I began remote imaging using iTelescope equipment located in Australia, Chile, Utah, and California.
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Click on photos below to see my Solar System astrophotos
 Planets  Sun, Moon, & Aurorae  Comets, Asteroids, & Meteors |
Note that any image with MSRO in the image file name designates raw image data captured remotely with one or more telescopes located at the MSRO Science/RAC Observatory. My contribution to any MSRO final image on my web pages is processing raw image data collected by others, merging such raw image data with my images, or in most cases, my operating the telescopes remotely. (Raw image collection credits: Myron Wasiuta; Pete Laky; Shannon Morgan) |
Types of Deep Sky Objects (DSOs) DSO Examples Click on links below | ||
Nebulae are clouds of interstellar gas where stars are born as the gaseous material condenses into a tightly packed mass. Emission nebulae have one or more bright stars nearby that cause the gases to emit energy primarily in the reddish hydrogen-alpha part of the spectrum. Reflection nebulae have one or more bright stars nearby but not close enough to cause emission, and only bluish light from the stars is reflected. Dark nebulae do not emit or reflect light, but can be seen if they are in front of bright nebulae.   The Summer Sky | ||
Planetary nebulae are tiny and not like the large emission and reflection nebulae where stars are born. A planetary nebula is a type of emission nebula consisting of an expanding, glowing shell of ionized gas ejected from a star late in its life, and only exists for a few tens of thousands of years. They are also not related to planets, but were given this name when first discovered in the 1700s because they resembled the size and shape of planets.   The Autumn Sky | ||
Galaxies contain hundreds of billlions of stars, and are millions of light-years from Earth. They sometimes are gravitationally bound with other galaxies to form clusters.   The Winter Sky | ||
Open star clusters are loosely bound by mutual gravitational attraction.   The Spring Sky | ||
Globular clusters are spheroidal conglomerations of stars, and can contain more than a million stars in a single cluster.   The Celestial Poles |
 Orion  The Summer Milky Way  The Milky Way in Cygnus | ||
 Pons-Brooks 28 March 2024  Venus, Mars, Jupiter & Mercury 6 July 1991  Comet Lemmon (C/2025 A6) 3 November 2025 |
 Eta Carina, omega Centauri, Southern Cross, and False Cross |
 International Space Station 27 September 2017  Airplane and Moon 26 February 2023 |
 My first attempts at astrophotography using the 12" diameter, 15 foot long refractor telescope at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Observatory. This telescope was built in 1896. The middle frame shows me using this telescope in 1968. The third frame is a modern photo of this telescope, and I have superimposed my second astrophoto - Saturn - taken in 1968 with this telescope. My first astrophoto was of the h&chi double cluster in Perseus, but I do not have that image. |
 Charlottesville Astronomical Society  MSRO Science/RAC Observatory  Cloudy Nights Astronomy Forum  Stellarium Planetarium Software |
