The Herschel 400 Astronomical League Project is underway
It’s not too late to join. We are about 30 objects into the Herschel 400. Hope to get another session in soon. Please subscribe to the YouTube channel so you get notifications on LIVE STREAMS.
Angels in Monoceros: The Monoceros M2 Complex
The Monoceros R2 molecular complex (often shortened to Mon R2) is a massive giant molecular cloud and one of the nearest active star-forming regions to Earth. It's a dynamic stellar nursery embedded in dense gas and dust, where new stars—particularly massive ones—are actively being born.
Key Facts
Location: Southwestern part of the constellation Monoceros (the Unicorn), near the border with Orion. It's part of the larger Orion-Monoceros cloud complex.
Distance: Approximately 2,400–2,700 light-years (around 830 parsecs).
Size and Structure: The main dense core is relatively compact (a few light-years across), but the overall molecular cloud and associated nebulae span a wide area—reflection nebulae alone stretch up to about 2° in the sky. It's situated well below the galactic plane, which makes it stand out in certain observations.
Age and Activity: Star formation here began roughly 6–10 million years ago. It hosts an OB association (young, hot, massive B- and A-type stars) that illuminates surrounding dust, creating prominent reflection nebulae with bluish hues. There's also significant emission from ionized gas (red glows) and dark nebulae that appear as shadowy silhouettes blocking background light.
Notable Features:
A central hub of massive star formation with embedded clusters, molecular outflows, and HII regions.
Infrared observations (like those from VISTA or 2MASS) penetrate the dust to reveal hidden young stars and protoplanetary disks.
It's a key site for studying early stellar evolution, variability in young stellar objects (YSOs), and the interplay between massive stars and their natal clouds.
The most famous and photogenic part of Mon R2 is the region around NGC 2170 (the Angel Nebula), a striking reflection nebula with wing-like dust structures, glowing blue from scattered starlight, mixed with red emission and dark lanes. Wider views of the complex reveal a richer tapestry of colorful gas, dust filaments, and star clusters.
Credit: GROK 2/28/26
Click on image for larger view.
New Astro Camera: OM-3
Join me for a LIVE conversation about this new astro camera coming to the market. Is this the best option for you? How does it compare to other options? https://www.earthandskyphoto.com Correction: when discussing Bulb mode with Canon, I incorrectly said it had a limit of 30”. I meant to say manual exposure has a max of 30”. In bulb, you need to use a remote control or app for exposure time control. The problem is you can’t set exposure time for stills in the camera menu. I was made aware that Olympus no longer owns the OM system. It is owned by Japanese industrial Partners, a private equity firm. For content on the OM-3 for astrophotography, please see Ben Chapell’s Narrow Band channel. https://youtube.com/@TheNarrowbandChannel?si=GcWY-BM9skG9LPhY
iPhone camera fun
It is nice to always have a camera on you nowadays. The images from the camera phones are great ways to share images with friends and family via Facebook and Blogs. What has been interesting are the iPhone apps and what they can do to enhance the usability of the in-phone camera. I have the iPhone 3G and the camera is 2 megapixel with a slightly larger than pinhole camera lens. The camera works pretty well in brightly lit scenes. I have been experimenting with the a couple of the panoramic construction apps.
The first was PanoLab Pro ($2.99). This app attempts to make a pano out of already captured images. It does a nice job, but I found the interface wanting and slow and the construction of the panos to fall short most of the time.
I then found Pano ($2.99) by Debacle Software. What I like about this software is that it works live with your camera capture. What this means is that you load the app and it presents to you the live camera view on screen. You take the first frame of the pano and then the next view of the live screen has the first frame at a slightly reduced opacity so that you can align in real-time the second frame of the pano. This really makes for well aligned panos and maximizes your frame capture. You can work either in landscape or portrait mode, but not both at the same time. So you can construct a pano, but not a mosaic.
Here is one of my first experiments with the program from my living room. This is straight out of the camera. 
It is hard to believe this was captured and constructed within a cell phone! Just a few short years ago Photoshop had a hard time with this or couldn't even do it automatically. We were using complicated manual alignment programs like PanoTools with very clunky interfaces to achieve good landscape panoramas.
The next example is further complicated by the very dark scene, but the pano came together pretty nicely. I would never have thought of attempting a panoramic image at a rock concert, but it worked pretty well. I had to take 3 stabs at it to capture the lighting just right as the scene would change rather quickly from capture to capture. I believe this is a 3 frame capture and it was all accomplished while in the concert, a total of about 3 minutes. Again, straight out of the camera. 
Now here is a panoramic that proved to be too challenging for PanoLab Pro. 
I subsequently brought all of the images into Photoshop and the automated merge function pieced the pano together nicely.
Pano Lab Pro will only work with already captured images. Pano will work with the images while you capture them. I find Pano to be the better alternative for in-camera processing. They both can do some very nice things for images that are destined for Facebook or blogs.
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