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.
