A cosmic September - A Month of Deep-Sky Photography with the DWARF 3
September turned into one of my busiest months yet for astrophotography.
Whenever the Welsh weather gave me a clear enough window in the evenings, the DWARF 3 was outside in the garden pointed upwards. Over the course of the month I photographed everything from planetary nebulae and vast stellar nurseries to an open star cluster, our nearest large galactic neighbour and, of course, the Moon.
One of the things I continue to enjoy about the DWARF 3 is its ability to make deep-sky photography remarkably accessible. Many of these objects are either extremely faint or completely invisible to the naked eye from my garden, yet by accumulating a succession of exposures the telescope gradually teases structure and colour out of what initially appears to be an empty patch of sky.
By the end of September I had built up quite a collection.
8 September – The Crescent Nebula
NGC 6888 • Caldwell 27 • Sharpless 2-105
I started the month with the Crescent Nebula that is in the constellation of Cygnus
Approximately 5,000 light-years away, NGC 6888 is being created by the immensely powerful stellar wind from the Wolf-Rayet star WR 136. Material currently racing away from the star is colliding with gas shed during an earlier stage of its life, producing the glowing shell that gives the nebula its distinctive crescent shape.
It is effectively a photograph of a tremendously violent period in the life of a massive star – rather more dramatic than its delicate appearance suggests.
11 September – The Wizard Nebula
NGC 7380 • Sharpless 2-142
Three nights later I turned the DWARF towards Cepheus and the wonderfully named Wizard Nebula.
At its heart is the young open star cluster NGC 7380, discovered by Caroline Herschel in 1787. The surrounding cloud of glowing gas, catalogued as Sh2-142, stretches for roughly 100 light-years and lies around 7,000 light-years from Earth.
The energetic young stars embedded within it are illuminating and sculpting the surrounding gas. Once you know where the name comes from, it is surprisingly easy to convince yourself that a cosmic wizard really is lurking amongst the nebulosity.
14 September – The Beehive Cluster
Messier 44 • M44 • NGC 2632 • Praesepe
Nebulae dominated my September photography, but on the 14th I tried something completely different.
The Beehive Cluster, or M44, is one of the nearest open clusters to Earth at around 600 light-years away. It contains hundreds of stars and is roughly 600–700 million years old. It has been known since antiquity and was even described by Ptolemy as a nebulous patch in Cancer. Galileo later turned a telescope on it and resolved the mysterious glow into individual stars.
Photographically it makes a lovely change from the glowing clouds of hydrogen that had occupied so much of my observing time.
15 September – The Ring Nebula
Messier 57 • M57 • NGC 6720
The following night I went after something tiny by comparison – the famous Ring Nebula in Lyra.
M57 is a planetary nebula, although the name is slightly misleading because it has nothing whatsoever to do with planets. Instead, we are looking at material expelled by a dying star.
At the centre lies the exposed stellar remnant, while the surrounding gas forms the beautiful ring-like structure that makes M57 one of the most recognisable objects in the northern night sky. NASA and the James Webb Space Telescope identify it as M57 / NGC 6720.
There is something rather humbling about photographing the remains of a star entering the final stages of its life.
20 September – The Gulf of Mexico Nebula
21 September – The Moon
Earth's natural satellite – no Messier, NGC or IC designation required!
After spending so much time photographing objects measured in thousands or even millions of light-years, I briefly came rather closer to home.
The Moon is an obvious target for any telescope, but that certainly doesn't make it a boring one. Its battered surface records billions of years of Solar System history in the form of impact craters, ancient lava plains and vast basins.
It also gave the DWARF 3 a very different photographic challenge from the faint deep-sky objects I had been concentrating on throughout the month.
21 September – The Elephant's Trunk Nebula
IC 1396A – within the larger IC 1396 complex
Later that same date I was back in deep space with the extraordinary Elephant's Trunk Nebula in Cepheus.
IC 1396A is a dense concentration of gas and dust within the much larger IC 1396 emission nebula, around 2,400 light-years away.
The dark trunk is being shaped and eroded by intense radiation from nearby massive stars. Rather wonderfully, however, it isn't simply being destroyed. Deep inside the dense cloud, new stars are being born.
The trunk itself extends for roughly 25–30 light-years – quite an elephant!
23 September – The Dumbbell Nebula
Messier 27 • M27 • NGC 6853
Next came another planetary nebula and another famous Messier object.
The Dumbbell Nebula lies in the little constellation of Vulpecula, the Fox, around 1,240 light-years from Earth. It was discovered by Charles Messier in 1764 and has the distinction of being the first planetary nebula ever discovered.
Like the Ring Nebula, it represents material expelled from a star approaching the end of its life, illuminated by the intensely hot stellar remnant remaining at its centre.
Its alternative name, the Apple Core Nebula, is perhaps equally appropriate when you look at its shape.
24 September – The Ghost of Cassiopeia
IC 63 – with nearby IC 59
With autumn approaching, it seemed appropriate to photograph something a little spooky.
The wonderfully named Ghost of Cassiopeia is principally IC 63, although nearby IC 59 is often included when the region is photographed.
IC 63 lies only around 550 light-years away and is being blasted by ultraviolet radiation from the brilliant blue star Gamma Cassiopeiae. The radiation causes hydrogen within IC 63 to glow red, while dust also reflects the star's blue light.
Together IC 59 and IC 63 really do look like ghostly clouds drifting through space. Gamma Cassiopeiae is only a few light-years from the nebulae and is responsible for sculpting their extraordinary appearance.
26 September – The Harvest Moon
September also provided another lunar opportunity.
The Full Moon on 26 September 2026 was the Harvest Moon, the name traditionally given to the Full Moon occurring closest to the autumn equinox.
The origin of the name relates to the unusually short interval between successive moonrises around this time of year, historically providing extra evening light during the harvest season.
It made a very bright change from hunting faint nebulae!
26 September – The Andromeda Galaxy
Messier 31 • M31 • NGC 224
The same evening I photographed an object on an entirely different scale.
The Andromeda Galaxy is around 2.5 million light-years away and is the nearest major galaxy to our own Milky Way. It is also the most distant object that many people can see with the unaided eye from a sufficiently dark location.
Its apparent size is deceptive. Although we generally notice only the bright central region, the complete galaxy extends across an area of sky roughly six times the apparent diameter of the Full Moon.
Photographing M31 always gives me a particular sense of scale. The fuzzy patch captured by the telescope isn't a nebula or star cluster within our galaxy – it is another enormous galaxy containing a vast population of stars.
And the light recorded by my little telescope began its journey towards Earth roughly 2.5 million years ago.
That is quite a thought.
27 September – The Bubble Nebula
NGC 7635 • Caldwell 11 • Sharpless 2-162
My penultimate target of the month was the spectacular Bubble Nebula in Cassiopeia.
The almost perfectly circular bubble is approximately seven light-years across and lies around 7,100 light-years from Earth. It is being inflated by an extremely powerful stellar wind pouring from the massive star BD+60°2522. NASA estimates that the star is around 45 times the mass of our Sun, with its stellar wind travelling at millions of miles per hour.
That wind crashes into the surrounding interstellar material, sweeping it into the extraordinary shell we see as the bubble.
It is one of those astronomical objects that looks almost too perfect to be real.
28 September – The Lobster Claw Nebula
Sharpless 2-157 • Sh2-157
I rounded off my September deep-sky photography with another target in Cassiopeia – the enormous Lobster Claw Nebula.
Catalogued as Sh2-157, this sprawling emission nebula is a huge region of ionised hydrogen shaped by the radiation and stellar winds of massive stars. Estimates of its distance vary, but place this great stellar nursery many thousands of light-years away in the Perseus Arm of our Milky Way.
Its sweeping arcs of nebulosity produce the claw-like appearance responsible for its memorable nickname.
Rather fittingly, the region of sky surrounding the Lobster Claw also contains the Bubble Nebula that I had photographed the previous evening – another reminder that many of these apparently separate photographic targets are actually parts of enormous and complex star-forming landscapes.
A Productive Month Under the Stars
Looking back through the photographs, I hadn't quite appreciated how much astronomy I had managed to squeeze into September.
In just three weeks the DWARF 3 had captured planetary nebulae created by dying stars, enormous clouds where new stars are being born, an ancient open star cluster, our Moon, and another galaxy 2.5 million light-years away.
That's quite a range for a small telescope sitting in a garden in South Wales.
There is also something addictive about smart-telescope astrophotography. You select what initially appears to be an unremarkable patch of dark sky and then watch as successive exposures accumulate. Slowly, almost magically, faint wisps begin to appear. More data arrives, structure develops, stars multiply and eventually an object that has travelled across hundreds, thousands or even millions of light-years materialises on the screen.
September has certainly demonstrated just how capable the DWARF 3 can be.
And with the long autumn and winter nights now approaching, my list of objects still to photograph is getting longer rather than shorter.
I suspect the little DWARF is going to be spending quite a few more nights outside beneath the stars.
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