This must have been the 4th Tuesday in a row for me to get over to the Observatory at Great Ellingham. A great opportunity was taken with good seeing I set about to image Mars. I was not happy with the images taken the previous week, Seeing was very poor and @f20 offered no image stability. So gave it up as a bad job. This Tuesday gone was however a surprising and welcome change. Still low on the horizon at the point of capture. Details teased and flashed with clarity on the screen. Registax processing and some work in Photoshop has revealed a pleasing result. Syrtis Major the largest dark feature demonstrates perfectly the dichotomy of the region as the vast expanse of Arabia Terra extends all the way to the Northern polar cap. Terra Meridiani sweeps across the bottom of the image and out of shot, as Hellas basin also appears bright . Overall I am happy with this image. Visually you can see why astronomers like Giovanni Schiaparelli back in 1877 thought there were canals on the surface. Optical illusions and the seasonal changes gave this impression of a changing living surface. It was only the Mariner probes in the 60's and 70's that finally dispelled the myths and legends of little green men from Mars.
Friday, 18 April 2014
Monday, 14 April 2014
A bay of rainbows
Without a doubt my favourite area on the lunar surface. Every capture of the bay of rainbows I try to tease out a little more detail. Not the most favourable of seeing as I ran 3000 frames. Processed in registax with my favoured wavelets setting. I think this is the most detail I have managed. My William Optics GT81mm 5 element Apo was the scope of choice with a 2 x barlow and the ZWO ASI120MC camera. Capturing around 40 frames per second for a huge 10.3 Giga bite AVI.
Tuesday, 8 April 2014
Deep, Deep,Very Deep
My previous post of M97 & M108 required further inspection as I could see numerous faint fuzzies about 20 in all. I have highlighted the brightest in boxes and spent a great deal of time finding a desiganation for them. trawling through known to me and some obscure catalogues like MCG Morphological catalogue of galaxies, Holmber galaxies and the VV catalogue Vorontsov Velyanimov of interacting galaxies.
but my greatest surprise was a 20th mag capture of a distant, sorry I mean VERY VERY VERY distant quasar [VV2006] J111005.6+553532 confirmed in position by Carte du Ceil. This is certainly a record for me that will last a while capturing a z=3.54642 Redshift Quasar an incredible 11.9 Billion yes you read it correctly 11.9 Billion light years away. That equates without a great deal of maths, the light from the earliest universe when it was just 1.7 billion years old. To say I am stunned is an understatement. Framed again against M108 who seems to just get bigger. Is the faintest couple of pixels I have ever captured. No enhancement of this image exept levels & curves in Photoshop.
I was amazed to find a remote galaxy a bright one at that mag 14.6 named
MCG+09-19-018 A galaxy with active galactic nucleus, With a redshift of z=0.03475
we are Looking back time: 467 million light years a new record in distance capture for me.
we are Looking back time: 467 million light years a new record in distance capture for me.
Position confirmed again by Cartes du Ceil.
My image framed nicely with the glorius M108 shows this rather bright galaxy.
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Just when I thought it could not get any better.
SDSSCGB 24289.1 breaks my distance record with a whopping 2.02 Billion light years. I can safely say that is the first time I have broken the billion light year barrier.
I have framed this small fuzzy against the Owl nebula. Position confirmed again by CDC
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The best was yet to come.
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I am just wondering what I can do next to top this.
Wednesday, 2 April 2014
M97 & M108
First of all this will be my 200th post and I just want to thank all those who are new and regular visitors to my blog.
Despite being circumpolar for us in the UK and visually through the scope an easily detectable pair I have never imaged The very photogenic pair of M108 & M97.
We will start with M108 (Ngc3556). It seems At 46 million light years away, There is a lot going on with this Barred spiral galaxy. Viewed nearly edge on from our perspective. Close examintion shows expanding shells of hydrogen gas giving rise to many star forming regions. Chandra X ray observatory also detects a number of X ray sources hinting of an intermediate sized black hole in the galaxies heart.
Despite being circumpolar for us in the UK and visually through the scope an easily detectable pair I have never imaged The very photogenic pair of M108 & M97.

Moving now 10,000 times closer we move within our own galaxy to the aptly named OWL nebula on M97 (Ngc3587) Discovered in 1781 early drawings were likened to an owl and known as that since then. A wonderful example of a planetary nebula, An expanding shell of material thrown off from a dying star around 8000 years ago. The progenitor star is around 14th magnitude and easily visible in my 2 hour capture.
Unfortunatly there seems to be a little interference from the nearby star Merak producing some definatly unwated light rays across the image. Other than that I quite like it .......Twit Twooo........
Saturday, 29 March 2014
M88
Between 50 to 60 million light years away lies M88 a member of the virgo cluster of galaxies. An Sbc galaxy inclined by 64 degrees to our line of sight. My 3 hour 20 minute image shows some nice structure in some tightly wound spiral arms.
A dozen plus more Ngc & Ic galaxies have been captured here down to 16th mag.
Saturday, 22 March 2014
More Mosaic fun
Taken 8th March with my home set up using the FLT-110 and the ASI 120MC.
This was the first test and I had set the gain to 0. It has made the capture lack detail and contrast and also underexposed. So a little experimentation will be required to increase the level of details captured during exposure.
This is a 2 pane mosaic of the Norhtern Appennine mountains.
Not my best effort but a capture of a very nice area.
This was the first test and I had set the gain to 0. It has made the capture lack detail and contrast and also underexposed. So a little experimentation will be required to increase the level of details captured during exposure.
This is a 2 pane mosaic of the Norhtern Appennine mountains.
Not my best effort but a capture of a very nice area.
M101 Galaxy
The Pinwheel Galaxy, M101, NGC 4547 was discovered in 1781. The observation was subsequently passed onto Messier who confirmed it's position and was one of his final additions to the catalogue. Estimated to be approx 70% larger than our own galaxy at a distance of 21 Million light years. I am happy with this capture of 3 hours 20 minutes in 20 minute sub exposures. calibrated in Maxim DL and processed in photoshop. Ha regions can be seen and I am very pleased with the detail all the way to the core of this beautiful showpiece galaxy.
Thursday, 13 March 2014
Celestron C9.25


My first lunar target was Clavius after another de-misting. A run of just 38 seconds a @ 16 frames per second size of 1280 x 960 is the largest size, this does slow up the frames per second though. Like I said a learning curve and a lot of practice needed to get things right!!!
Watching the capture on the screen was amazing. Moments of perfect seeing were staggering as craters came into perfect focus. Only 600 frames capture and the best 80% stacked gave me this one.

The Vallis Alpes or the Alpine valley is a valley feature that bisects the Montes Alpes range. Running for 166km and at it's widest is 10km. Not the best illumination here as there is no shadow or contrast to show the escarpment.
A bit of wandering around landed me on top of Crater Archmedes. Same resolution as before for this 83km crater. No central peaks like Copernicus suggest that the crated floor filled with lava to conceal any peaks. No ejecta ray system either that is usaually associated with the younger craters, telling us of it's early formation. Not so happy with this image, again only a few hundred frames.
I have caught some of the craterlets on the lava fllor so that also takes care of number 83 of the lunar 100.....
Friday, 28 February 2014
Fire in the sky.
Came home from work to a starry sky above. Whilst eating my tea weather forecast came on. Look out for tonight Aurora they said seen as far down as Devon.
I am quite lucky to have fields behind my house and a un polluted sky. So I grabbed the camera and took these. My first Aurora from Norfolk.
Taken with the Canon 40d 18-55mm lens at 18mm f5.0 Various exposure lenths from 30 seconds upwards
I am quite lucky to have fields behind my house and a un polluted sky. So I grabbed the camera and took these. My first Aurora from Norfolk.
Taken with the Canon 40d 18-55mm lens at 18mm f5.0 Various exposure lenths from 30 seconds upwards
Friday, 21 February 2014
Near Earth Asteroid 2014 CR
A near-Earth object (NEO) is a Solar System object whose orbit brings it into proximity with Earth. 2014CR pictured here in the little box was captured by me tonight It will pass the earth in the next 2 days approx 8.3 times further than the moon. Not considered a hazard to us, but if it were at
an estimate of 130 metres it could do a great deal of damage travelling at 27.000 MPH. When you consider that the meteor crater in Arizona was formed by an object
just 50 metres across. Food for thought hey...................
Cropped image from the original below.

Full Frame with no darks/ flats used. hence the dust donuts.
Stellarium screen print from 21.00 hrs tonight.
Thursday, 20 February 2014
Lunar 100
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