Peter Oshkai photography

In addition to a supermassive black hole in its centre, which is 40 million times as massive as the Sun, this fascinating spiral galaxy contains an active nucleus – a compact region that emits luminosity not produced by the stars. It’s also a home of two recent supernovae, observed in 1981 and 2014.

M106 can be found in the Canes Venatici (Hunting Dogs) constellation, along with many other galaxies that all fit neatly into the field of view of my 478 mm-long telescope connected to a full-frame camera. NGC4217, seen from the edge in the top right part of the image, is a possible companion of M106. It’s located 60 million light-years away from us. 

This photo is a 4.5-hr, f/5.9 LRGBH exposure, collected over two nights in the beginning of May 2025. The light from M106 took 24 million years to reach my yard in Victoria, BC.

Taking a break from shooting galaxies far-far away: this colourful globular cluster is located within our galaxy, although in isolation – 38,800 light-years from the centre of the Milky Way and far above the galactic plane. M3 contains more than 500,000 stars, at least 274 of which are variable, which is more than any other known cluster. The brightness of variable stars fluctuates with time, making them useful for estimating their distances.

This image is a 4-hr LRGB exposure, taken at the end of April, 2025 in my yard in Victoria, BC. It took this light 34,000 years to travel here.

his is one of my favourite galaxies. It is one of the largest and brightest in the observable sky from my latitude, and it’s full of fascinating details. The pink glowing spots are the nebulae consisting of ionized hydrogen, where the new stars are formed. Clusters of these new hot stars are visible as the bright blue dots in the spiral arms.

The Pinwheel is nearly twice as large as our Milky Way galaxy – about 170,000 light-years across, and it contains trillion stars. Their light travelled for 21 million years to reach my camera in Victoria, BC.

This image is an integration of 5.5 hours of exposure, collected over two nights April 2025. 

This month, I was able to photograph nebulae in another galaxy! The bright red spots in the spiral arms of NGC 2403 are clouds of ionized hydrogen, where new stars are being born. The galaxy is also the place of the most recent observed death of a star – a supernova SN 2004dj was discovered in one of its arms by an amateur Japanese astronomer in 2004. A massive star exploded at the end of its life, shedding the outer layers of gas and sending them away from its collapsed core.

I think it’s incredible that we can observe these amazing deep-sky events from our backyards. This light travelled for 11 million years before reaching my camera in Victoria, BC. This photo required a processing approach that was new to me. It’s a 4 hours of total exposure, collected over two nights. The H-alpha light emission from the nebulae was captured through a separate narrowband filter and integrated into the LRGB (Luminance-Red-Green-Blue) image using the continuum subtraction technique.