Guillermo Ferla

Dark storm clouds loom over a mountain range

A beautiful cluster of stars in deep space

a blue object in the middle of a black sky

This planetary nebula is classified as Abell 39, and it’s one of the most uniform spherical shells amongst planetary nebulas that we’ve identified, with a shell estimated at approximately 2.8 light years in diameter. The nebula is estimated to be approximately 3,800 light years from Earth. The term “planetary nebula” is actually a misnomer, as this is an example of what happens to stars of one to eight solar masses after becoming red giants and losing their atmosphere, after which the core ionizes the ejected material. This star had a substantial component of oxygen which ionizes as blue. Our

a very large star in the middle of the sky

The Trifid Nebula, or Messier 20 (M20) The blue portion is a reflection nebula in which the stars backlight the gas but lack the ability to ionize it. The red portion is an emission nebula. The radiation from young stars ionizes hydrogen gas creating H II emissions, which glow red. The dark veins are concentrations of stardust and are classified as dark nebulae. The region around the nebula is considered an open star cluster, with the largest star estimated to be 20 solar masses and being surrounded by over 3,000 stars. The nebula is estimated to be 4,100 light years away from us.

Draco Trio It’s three galaxies known as the Draco Trio, which I find interesting because of the combination and diversity of the edge-on spiral galaxy (NGC 5981), the elliptical galaxy (NGC 5982 - estimated to be approximately 100 million light years in diameter, slightly larger than the Milky Way), and the somewhat face-on galaxy (NGC 5985). Though they appear as a group from our vantage point, the distances to each may vary from as much as 80 to 130 million light years from us, so they are probably not connected at all. I also like the smattering of far more distant galaxies visible through

Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) on July 21st, 2020 at 10:30 – 11:00PM MDT

50 stacked 20s exposures


The Triangulum Galaxy glowing with blue star clusters among scattered stars in space

M33 - Triangulum Galaxy

Second time around with a slew of improved gear.

Triangulum galaxy with blue star clusters

Waning gibbous moon (63%) from June 11th, 2020

brown and white bird flying during daytime

NGC 7293 – Helix Nebula

A fairly well known target (Eye of God, Eye of Sauron), the Helix Nebula is one of the closest planetary nebulae to Earth, estimated to be around 655 light years away in the constellation of Aquarius. Planetary nebula is a misnomer, as they are the ionized gases released from an intermediate star as it expands at the end of its life and unrelated to planets. This is what will happen to our sun in about 5 billion years, but well before this stage in our sun’s evolution the Earth will have been incinerated. Our sun is too small to go supernova, instead it will expand as 