Active Region on the Sun — This image by Jeff Barton shows an active region which includes two large sunspots, active flares, and filaments. The solar telescope has a bandwidth of about one-half angstrom and is tuned to the wavelength of hydrogen alpha light.

Image by Tom Heisey

Waxing Crescent Moon — This image by Jeff Barton is of the Moon, about 7 days after New Moon. We like to view the Moon during the growing crescent to Gibbous phase because the shadows make the surface features show up very well. The smallest crater you can see in this image is a few miles across. The large, round, gray feature near the left edge of the Moon in this photo is Mare Crisium, which is very nearly the same size as the state of Oklahoma.

This image by Jeff Barton is the giant planet Jupiter. The horizontal bands are clouds, which stream out into long stripes because of Jupiter's rapid rotation (the planet spins once in just under 10 hours). This photo was made using one of 3RF's 6-inch apochromat telescopes (a Stellarvue 152).Mars — Saturn — Shadow Transit — Jupiter, using a 6-inch telescope

Image by Jeff Barton using a 6-inch telescope shows M1, the Crab Nebula, which is a supernova remnant. When a star a few times more massive than our Sun ends its life it will blow itself apart. The remains of the star often form quite beautiful clouds of gas and dust. These nebulae seed the surrounding regions of space with the raw materials needed to form new stars. Buried near the center of this sprawling cloud lies a rapidly-spinning neutron star, the first Pulsar discovered.