Space 'n' Stuff

These are some of the images I took with the telescope at the Stone Edge Observatory in Sonoma, California.





Messier 3 - a Globular Star Cluster, 33.9 kilo light-years away.
It has a radius of about 90 light-years.






Messier 51 - The Whirlpool Galaxy, about 23 megalight-years (23 million light-years) away.
The radius of this sucker is about 38,000 light-years across. Its mass is estimated to be about 160 billion solar masses (that is, 160 billion times the mass of our Sun).








Messier 81 - Bode's Galaxy, about 11.8 megalight-years away. If you look up at the night sky, it appears as a "star" in the constellation Ursa Major.






Messier 101 - The Pinwheel Galaxy, about 27 megalight-years away. This one has a radius of about 85,000 light-years, making it nearly twice the size of the Milky Way.