Deep sky object (DSO) is a term used often in amateur astronomy to denote objects in the night sky other than solar system objects (such as planets, comets and asteroids), single stars and multiple star systems. Generally these objects are not visible with the naked eye, but the brightest of them can be seen with a small telescope or even with a good pair of binoculars.
A deep sky object: the peculiar spiral galaxy ESO 510-13 in Hydra. Its equatorial dust plane is considerably warped. The galaxy is 170 million light-years from earth and 100,000 light-years across.
For more information click on the picture.
Types of DSO's:
- Star clusters
- Open clusters
- Globular clusters
- Nebulae
- Bright nebulae
- Emission nebulae
- Reflection nebulae
- Dark nebulae
- Planetary nebulae
- Bright nebulae
- Galaxies
- Quasars