§ After hours · 2024–2026

The cosmos,
from a Dublin backyard.

8 captures of galaxies, nebulae, and comets, shot through a small refractor under Bortle 7 skies. Stacked over hours, processed in Siril and PixInsight, then left to speak for themselves.

01 Andromeda 02 Orion 03 Pleiades 04 Heart 05 Crescent 06 Dumbbell 07 Bode & Cigar 08 Comet Lemmon

01 / 08

M31 · Galaxy

Andromeda

Integration: 665 × 10 s, ~1 h 50 m total
Location: Dublin, Ireland

Our nearest large neighbour, 2.5 million light-years out. A spiral holding roughly a trillion stars, comparable in size to the Milky Way. Gravitationally bound to us and almost certainly merging with us in a few billion years. The two smaller companions visible nearby are M32 and M110.

02 / 08

M42 · Emission nebula

Orion

Integration: 9 × 10 s, ~1 m 30 s total
Location: Dublin, Ireland

The nearest stellar nursery, 1,344 light-years away. The four bright stars at its heart, the Trapezium, are only a few million years old and still lighting up the gas they were born from.

03 / 08

M45 · Open cluster

Pleiades

Integration: ~50 min total
Location: Dublin, Ireland

Young, hot, and close: a cluster of roughly 100-million-year-old blue stars 444 light-years away. The wispy blue haze is interstellar dust drifting past the stars, lit by reflection rather than emission. Known to every culture that has looked up.

04 / 08

IC 1805 · Emission nebula

Heart

Integration: 858 × 10 s, ~2 h 20 m total
Location: Dublin, Ireland

A vast cloud of ionised hydrogen in Cassiopeia, 7,500 light-years out. The open cluster at its centre, Melotte 15, is doing the lighting. Shaped, if you squint, like a human heart.

05 / 08

NGC 6888 · Emission nebula

Crescent

Integration: 87 × 10 s, ~14 m 30 s total
Location: Dublin, Ireland

A Wolf-Rayet star, WR 136, throwing off its outer layers at 1,500 km/s and slamming into the shell of gas it expelled earlier in life. 25 light-years across, 5,000 light-years away in Cygnus. It will end in a supernova.

06 / 08

M27 · Planetary nebula

Dumbbell

Integration: 340 × 10 s, ~50 min total
Location: Dublin, Ireland

The first planetary nebula ever catalogued (Messier, 1764). What's left of a sun-like star about 10,000 years after it ran out of fuel and exhaled its atmosphere. The faint hot dot at the centre is the surviving core, a white dwarf.

07 / 08

M81 / M82 · Galaxies

Bode & Cigar

Integration: 662 × 10 s, ~1 h 50 m total
Location: Dublin, Ireland

Two galaxies locked in a gravitational tug-of-war, 12 million light-years away in Ursa Major. M81 kept its spiral shape. M82, a 'starburst galaxy', got shredded by the tidal stress, kicking star formation into overdrive.

08 / 08

C/2025 A6 · Comet

Comet Lemmon

Integration: 105 × 10 s, ~18 min total
Location: Dublin, Ireland

A long-period comet discovered on 3 January 2025 at the Mount Lemmon Survey in Arizona. Dragging a coma of diatomic carbon and a faint ion tail as it works through its inner-solar-system pass.