Full Moon

This is the last one tonight. I have along shift tomorrow. What a wonderful sight.

Eerie full moon over Watton

Rising over the trees was the rusty coloured full moon, slowing loosing it's battle to the gathering storm clouds. Taken at 21.49 this evening

Summer Triangle

High above us in July we can see 3 of the brightest stars in the summer sky. They form an astronomical "asterim" ( an imaginary) triangle that cuts into the soft glow of the milky way.The closest of the three is Altair 16 light years away and 10 times as bright as our Sun. Secondly is Vega 25 light years away and featured in the Jodie Foster film "Contact" as a possible source of
intelligent life. Our final giant is Deneb. It appears only slightly dimmer than the other two but fires up at a massive 70,000 times brighter than the sun and a mind
blowing 1550 light years or 26 times the distance of Vega. As you are aware this composite of of course not to scale.

Ngc 6888 The Crescent Nebula

Some targets just need a little more than a DSLR can deliver. I think the crescent nebula is one of them. Last year I tried this target, never published the image because I was not happy with the result.
Despite the guiding working well and subs of 5 minutes I am still not entirely happy with the amount of data collected. There is some indication of some tenuous nebulosity surrounding the nebula.

Sol

The Sun Saturday. You can just make out the sun spot AR1791 centre left. They are caused by interactions with the Sun's magnetic field, But a sunspot is somewhat like the cap on a coke bottle: shake it up, and you can generate a big eruption. Sunspots occur over regions of intense magnetic activity, and when that energy is released, solar flares and big storms called coronal mass ejections erupt from sunspots. I may invest in a solar continuum filter. Those using them appear to show granulation in the surface. I would be grateful for a bit of feedback if you use one. This image was taken through a avi video file from my DSLR through the 90mm refractor Approx 1000 frames stacked in Registax and colour corrected from a white light filter.

Alberio

In the heart of the summer triangle floating in the sea of stars from ourown milky way's spiral arm lies Albireo . A close binary star system resolved here
and appears to make the star egg shaped. At approx 430 light years away. Visually
this yellow star has a wonderful companion that is a striking Blue. This 50 minute exposure
has drowned the faint colour away. Sorry!!

Perhaps a bit more aggressive processing will bring out some colour.

M 52 & a Bubble

Picture the scene, France was bathed in a period of mourning for

King Louis XV a struggling economy and battle scarred France

decended futher into dissaray from decades of war that was soon

to fall to the people in the French Revolution . Meanwhile French

astronomer and comet hunter Charles Messier had found another faint object to add to his expanding catalogue of (non cometary bodies), whilst observing a comet in the same region .Catalogued as galactic open star cluster (M52) Approx 5000 light years away and 35 million years old, this collection of approx 200 stars has shone for countless eons of time. You will also notice a bubble of glowing gas, at more than twice the distance of M52 this shockwave of expanding gas & dust was created and illuminated by the energetic radiation from a

massive star. This image was taken last night or should I say early this morning for what was an all nighter. The guiding worked well all night allowing for 5 minute sub frames to give me this 1hour 15 minute shot. Focus was a few microns off though.