Hunter's Moon over Tyldesley (17/10/24)

 

Hunter's Moon Over Stoodley Pike in West Yorkshire

Stoodley Pike is a 1,300-foot hill in the south Pennines in West Yorkshire in northern England. It is noted for the 121-foot Stoodley Pike Monument at its summit, which dominates the moors of the upper Calder Valley and the market town of Todmorden. 

The monument was designed in 1854 by local architect John Green, and completed in 1856 at the end of the Crimean War

Unfortunately this shoot didn't turn out as planned because when the supermoon was behind the Pike it was covered in cloud. What ya gonna do?

A Return to Mooning

I went out comet-hunting last night but this was all I got due to heavy cloud in the west. 

The Waxing Gibbous Moon.

Acquisition Details 

• Nikon D500 crop sensor camera with Nikon 500mm f/4 lens and 2x teleconverter 
• Tripod with a gimbal head 
• Single shot: 1/60s @ f/11 and ISO 100 
• Processed in Adobe Photoshop Elements 2024 with Topaz AI DeNoise and Sharpen

Aurora Borealis Over Rivington (10/10/24)

Here are some shots of the second major aurora event over the UK this year.  I went up to the West Lancashire moors to a spot on the road between Rivington and Belmont for these.

Well, well.  It's been over a year since I last posted anything here.  I've maintained my Facebook groups fairly well during this time but my Blogger and Flickr accounts have been sorely neglected, not that anyone is really bothered except me. 

Much of this has been to do with the prolonged poor nighttime weather and losing my mojo because of this.  But I'm also dealing with some difficult personal circumstances that are affecting me more than anybody realises. It's not that I haven't done anything at all in the last year], I just haven't got round to posting about about the few things I have done. 

Anyway, I'm hoping to restart this blog with astro photos soon and so for now I will be posting a small backlog of images that I have managed to take since when I last posted in July 2023.  I can't believe I didn't even upload any photos of the aurora borealis in May this year - it was quite something and I'll be posting them soon.

Moonlight on the Water

Here is my first image as it appeared on ITV Granada Weather tonight

Sunspots (3/7/23)

 

!!! UPDATE NEEDED - UPDATE NEEDED - UPDATE NEEDED !!!

Tut, tut! Was it really April when I last posted anything this blog? I've not done than much since but I'd better get on with updating it now then.  As usual I'll start by posting the images and adding text later.

Here's a list of what I still need to do:

• ZWO ASI 294mm mono cooled camera, filter wheel and LRGB/SHO filters purchase
• Various Venus shots
• My M51 reprocessed by various people (30/5/23)
• Heart and Soul Mosaic in Mono (1/6/23)
• Labelled Moon Segments (1/6/23)
• Mosaic Moon (29-31/5/23)
• Bodes's Galaxy (31/5/23)
• First Quarter Moon and segments (27/5/23)
• Waxing Cresecnt andf Waxing Gibbous
• Moon and Venus over house (24/5/23)
• Sunspots (26/4/23)
• M51 reprocessed (30/4/23)
• ISS (22/5/23)
• Waxing Crescent Moon (24-25/5/23)
• Supernova in M101 (23/5/23)
• Thin Crescent Moon (22/5/23)
• Crater Love (8/6/23)
• Waxing Gibbous (1/5/23)
• Soul Nebula (30/4/23)
• Waxing Crescent (26/4//23)
• Using the C6se for DSO's (M51, M101) 20/4/23
• Heart and Soul (9/4/23)
• Lots of Ha rich DSO's
• Andromeda reprocessing
• Early evening moon (2/3/23)

!!! From a previous update memo !!!

Well, we're well in to 2023 now and I've still not updated this blog for many months.  It's mainly because the weather has been so depressing here in the UK and I really haven't done that much astrophotography for ages.  That said, I have bought some new equipment and taken a few images and so I'm going to list the backlog here and then try to make my way though this list and post images to start with. I'll do write ups where possible at at later date.

February 2023

• 24/2/23 - Uranus
• 22/2/23 - Moon, Venus and Jupiter Alignment in Dumfries and Galloway
• 22/2/23 - Orion in Dumfries and Galloway
• 13/2/23 - Comet
• 12/2/23 - Comet and Venus
• 09/2/23 - Venus

January 2023

• Comet
• Reprocessing

For missing 2023 images and posts, please see the previous 'Update' post below!

Waxing Crescent Moon

Waxing Crescent Moon (26/6/23)

The Sun's Active Regions (22/6/23)

The Solstice Moon and Venus

 

M27 - The Dumbbell or Apple Core Nebula

Here's another go at imaging a DSO (Deep Sky Object) with my Celestron C6SE SCT on an EQ6-R Pro equatorial mount rather than the scope's own NexStar alt/az mount.  This time it's M27 planetary nebula also known as the Dumbbell or Apple Core Nebula (I prefer the latter). Once again I've not used a focal reducer in order to make the image as large as possible and I don't think that the image suffers too much because of it.

I've seen this large planetary nebula portrayed in several different colours so here's a version which has been processed slightly differently:

Waning Gibbous Moon

Waning Gibbous Moon (9/6/23)

M51 - The Whirlpool Galaxy - C6se with No Reducer.

 

Various Deep Sky Object Test Shots

Here are a few test shots using my Celestron C6se SCT telescope without a focal reducer.  Although this gives me a focal length of 1500mm, it is not generally recommended as the scope works natively at f/10 and a reducer takes this down to f/7 - so not using a reducer means that a lot less light is gathered for the same exposure time. My reducer also flattens the field of view making stars better shapes on the edges of the image.  However, as I am still cropping all these galaxies to some extent, I can remove poor stars at the edges in the process.  I think that these images show that it is possible to work at f/10 but that a lot more data is needed, and this is something will try as the dark nights get longer.

The Needle Galaxy

The Sunflower Galaxy

M106 - 'The Galaxy with No Name'

M106 annotated by Astrometry.net

More Sunspots

 

Strawberry Moonscape

I went out tonight looking for a good location to photograph the full 'Strawberry' Moon.  Unfortunately  my ideas for locations didn't work out as I had hoped and so I had to settle for this image taken from the guided busway in Tyldesley looking south over Tyldesley, Astley and towards the mosses. The moon really was this colour due to being so low on the horizon and perhaps exacerbated by smoke from the wildfires currently burning in the US.

This was shot hand held and wasn't intentional, but I quite like it!

 

Antares and the Moon

 

Nearly Full Moon

 

M82 - The Cigar Galaxy