M1, (Crab Nebula)
Date: January 12, 2026
Name: Crab Nebula
Constellation: Taurus
Distance from Earth: ~6,300 ly.
Fun Facts: Chinese astronomers actually witnessed the star explosion in the year 1054.
The “M1” label comes from Charles Messier who was a fellow in France hunting for comets in the late 1700’s. He was getting many false positives from other fuzzy objects, such as galaxies and globular clusters. So…in an effort to remove the confusion and make record of previous observations he started naming the objects M1, M2 etc. There are a total of 110 Messier objects, with the vast majority located in the northern hemisphere. I believe C.M. resided near Paris.
IC410, (The Tadpole Nebula)
Date: February 11, 2026
Name: The Tadpole Nebula
Constellation: Taurus
Distance from Earth: ~12,000 ly.
Capture Details: This image consists of 170, 2-minute exposures captured over two evenings in early February using an Ha/OIII narrowband filter. The frames were stacked and processed in PixInsight.
