Draco the Dragon

I chose the constellation of Draco to image in this week because it is high in the sky, but the smoke from forest fires has taken it's toll on my images this week. I was able to image some galaxies and planetary nebula. When smoke or haze is thick in the air the images are noticeably reddened  as you may notice below, but the images are interesting anyway. Several Perseid meteor's flashed through some of my images, but I didn't hit the save button quickly enough to record them.

 Messier 102 is a missing galaxy in the Messier Catalog. It is thought that it may have been referring to NGC 5866 shown here.

NGC 4965 is a nice edge on and was discovered in 1788 by William Herschel using a nearly 19 inch reflecting telescope.

 NGC 6503 is a spiral galaxy, about 17 million light years distant and 30,000 miles in diameter.

NGC 6543 is a Planetary Nebula, just barely visible in this image. In much longer exposures it forms a ring around the bright star near it. It was created when an old sun blew off it's outer layers.

NGC 6742, a small faint round bluish ring near the middle of this image is also a planetary nebula.