Photography of "far away things" - space, but I may also want to include anything in our atmosphere or just nice landscape shots.
Sunday, 28 December 2008
Jones 1
How many galaxies can you spot?
Venus, Jupiter and a Plane
Looking back to the summer sky in an icy winter wind
Using my f/10 SCT at f/4
Wednesday, 3 December 2008
A fire in space
Mae'n dda gen i gyda hyn Lluniau y Niwl Ffagl. Mwynhau.
Ich bin mit dieser Abbildung des Flamme-Nebelflecks sehr erfreut. Genießen Sie.
Είμαι πολύ ευτυχής με αυτήν την εικόνα του νεφελώματος φλογών. Απολαύστε.
Je suis très heureux avec cette image de la nébuleuse de flamme. Appréciez.
Sunday, 30 November 2008
M1
Monday, 24 November 2008
Orion is back. Hail winter!
Saturday, 1 November 2008
A Hallowe'en night moon.
The observatory scope has just been recollimated, which enabled me to visually spot Titania, a magnitude 14½ moon, 20 arc-seconds below the 6th magnitude planet Uranus, which appeared at 200x as a very clear bright green disk, wobbling around in the atmosphere. I thought I'd have another go at some pictures of the moons, and there were some surprising background stars right behind the planet. I saw 2 moons, stacked 6 5 second pictures and revealed a 3rd. So here are Titania, Umbriel and Oberon. We quite like the effect of the starburst cross on the planet, which is 3000 times brighter than the moons. Incidentally, we had a little bother identifying the moons using astronomy software, as it didn't allow for the almost 3 hour light time and they move significantly in this time!
Thursday, 30 October 2008
Cosmic Catherine Wheel
I went galaxy hunting the other night. This is a closer up version of the pinwheel galaxy or M33, shown below when I tested my 400mm camera lens. I got 6 30 second pictures on the 20" scope, all were very trailed in different ways, but I detrailed them all seperately, painstakingly! Then I stacked them, hoping that the trail artefacts left over would somehow "average out". Anyway there was a lot of red background noise, so I had to make the colour a bit bluish for the galaxy to stand out - as its light is very spread out. Good result I think?
A distant galaxy cluster
This is the faintest thing I've tried to take a pic of so far. It's 4 exposures combined from 15 seconds to 1 minute on the f/4.8 20" scope, at ISO 1600 (fastest film setting) on my Canon Camera. It looked good considering it's a collection of 14th magnitude galaxies. It is in Pegasus, near NGC 7331 and is called Stefan's Quintet. I've even picked up one galaxy on the image that's not in the PGC/UG catalogue on the far lower left! Impressive for such a short exposure, but not good for traces of trails left from my de-trailing
Monday, 13 October 2008
An autumn gem
Shakespeare's characters reveal themselves
Sunday, 12 October 2008
How far south can you comfortably go?
20" Mirror Test - part 2 small targets
20" Mirror Test - part 1 deep sky
Monday, 29 September 2008
Our overlooked galactic neighbour
Uranus
Monday, 25 August 2008
New lens test.
Saturday, 23 August 2008
A fantastic composition... a culmination of many natural sights!
Moon with Earthshine, Dawn twlilight, Noctilucent Clouds (very high ice clouds caused by meteoric dust), and the Pleiades cluster (M 45). 3 second exposure 75mm (x35/25) zoom lens, manual focus, rested on the roof of a car (with the engine switched on), without a cable release.