The California Nebula

The California nebula is in the constellation of Perseus and is an emission nebula that is supposed to resemble the state of California. Its glowing red due to the large star at the top of the image named Menkhib, which is one of the hottest stars in the night sky at six times the temperature of the Sun. Its relatively close, between 1000 and 1500 light years away and only just fits in the frame.
I use an ASTRONOMIK CLS VISUAL Light pollution CLIP-FILTER in front of my Canon 40d astro-modded sensor which blocks light pollution like street lights but allows H-Alpha wave lengths which are red in colour such as ionised hydrogen.

M33 Triangulum galaxy or NGC 598

M33 Triangulum galaxy is sometimes called the Pinwheel galaxy. Its a spiral galaxy 3 million light years away in the constellation of Triangulum. It contains some 40 billion stars and is about 60,000 light years across.Triangulum is the third largest galaxy in our local group after Andromeda and The Milky Way. It is just visible to the naked eye but only with very good vision and  very dark skies.Its currently interacting with Andromeda and in a few billion years may collide with it and us.

NGC 891 (Caldwell 23) Edge on Barred Galaxy

Whilst the Andromeda Galaxy is only 2.5 million light years away, this little gem is 30 million light years away (so the light hitting my telescope has travelled for 30 million years to reach me). Scientists believe that this galaxy closely resembles our own galaxy The Milky Way.
Discovered in October of 1784 by William Herschell its found in the constellation of Andromeda and is part of a group of galaxy's called NGC 1023. Its very faint with an apparent magnitude of 10.8, so cannot be seen with the naked eye.
This image was taken at ISO 800 with a total exposure time of 1hr 44 minutes.