Peter Rowe
I live on Mt. Budmore, off Centerville Hwy, close to the High Prairie Community Center (I can see the center from my house). All of the three attached astrophotographs were taken from our house within the past week. Here is a little about each of them in case they are of interest to you:
1) Andromeda Galaxy
This is our nearest Galaxy and contains over 100,000 million stars. It is 2.5 million light years away which means the light we photograph today has been traveling to us for 2.5 million years. Our Milky Way galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy are expected to collide in around 4–5 billion years. The Andromeda Galaxy is visible to the naked eye as a faint smudge close to the W-shaped constellation Cassiopeia. It is the furthest item that the human eye can see.
2) Rosette Nebula
The Rosette Nebula is in our Milky Way Galaxy at a distance of 5,000 light-years from Earth. The blue, yellow and red colors use what is called the ‘Hubble Color Palette’ and come from the radiation of approximately 2,500 young stars. It is not visible to the naked eye. Fun fact: in 2019 the Oklahoma Legislature passed HB1292 making the Rosette Nebula as the official state astronomical object.
3) Horsehead Nebula
The Horsehead Nebula is a small dark nebula with a red background of hydrogen dust and gas. It is an easily identifiable nebula because of its resemblance to a horse’s head, which you can see if you zoom in. It is 1,375 light-years away and was discovered by the Scottish woman astronomer Williamina Fleming in 1888. Another (male) astronomer named E. E. Barnard described it and so it was named ‘Barnard 33’. The Horsehead Nebula is not visible to the naked eye but it is located right next to the left-most star in Orion’s belt, named Alnitak.