Lagoon

A new view of the Lagoon Nebula (Messier 8) captured with my TeleVue60is refractor and MinCam8 with R,G,B filters. Two hours each with 3 minute subframes. A nice red rich image in this case.

Markarian's Chain

The Markarian Chain of galaxies stretches across the sky near the tail of the lion, Leo. So many galaxies in one image.

Burning Horse

The Horsehead (Barnard 33) and Flame (NGC 2024) nebulae together with Alnitak. My best image so far of this wonderful region of sky. Taken with red, green and blue filters on a monochrome miniCam8. Also my first colour image from filters, possibly my first proper astrophotograph. It still needs more time and effort to develop into a propper image (if you go pixel peeking there is too much noise). But I am happy with this effort from my trusty old TeleVue60is refractor. And of course, the SetiAstro Pro processing software from Franklin Marek, best open source astro software on the planet.

Pleiades M45

The beautiful Pleiades cluster glows among a molecular cloud of gas.

Andromeda M31

The great Andromeda Galaxy (M31) fills more than my little sensor can fit. This one will require some careful mosaic stitching to piece it together.

Fornax A

Fornax A galaxy NGC 1316 in Fornax is around 67 million light years away. Information in this image started its journey to earth just prior to the dinosaur extinction. This was 60 minutes of data.

Horsehead Nebula

You can see the difference here now that 62 minutes of luminance data has been captured, more detail, better contrast, fanter streams of gas becoming visible. Ahh the journey of learning monochrome astrophotography, time makes all the difference.

Monochrome Horsehead

The horsehead nebula in monochrome, just 10 minutes of 30 second subs on luminance for a first test.

Europa's Shadow Part 2

A reprocessing of the Jupiter image has led to this slightly more crisp and better colour balanced image of the passing of Europa's shadow across Jupiter.

Orion M42

The great Orion Nebula (M42) and the Running Man Nebula (NGC1977) in Orion. Not bad for a 60% moonlit night on the Summer Solstice here in the southern hemisphere. This was one hour of light capture followed by too many hours of image processing in my new favourite app, Siril.

Trifid And Lagoon Revisited

A reprocessing of the Trifid and Lagoon Nebulae from this shot in 2018. Astrophoto processing for amateurs has a come a long way in a mere five years. This was taken with my TeleVue 101is, Canon 60D at 30 second exposures, unguided, then processed in Siril.

First Light

Testing a ZWO camera to set up a night sky meteor watch.

Star Trails

Star trails on the sky, left by the rotation of Earth on our axis.

Comet 21P B&W

Comet 21P this time in black and white from the RAW camera frames. I think I prefer this shot to the colour. The Canon 60D has a little too much noise in the sensor to make a crisp colour image of this comet.

Comet 21P Giacobini-ZInner

A shot of Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner from this morning about 4am. This one is in colour and stretched to try to bring out the tail a little more. A stack of about 20 frames, 20 seconds each, ISO3200 and assembled in Nebulosity. Taken with my TeleVue 101is at 540mm focal length. The cluster M35 is on the right of frame.

Lagoon Nebula

A closer crop of the Lagoon Nebula M8.

Trifid Nebula

A closer crop of the Trifid Nebula. The dark dust lanes are clearly visible, including detail in columns of glowing gas.

Lagoon And Trifid

A stack of photos of the Lagoon and Trifid Nebulae taken at Camp Duckadang Astrofest.

Galactic Core

The rich galactic core of our Milky Way Galaxy, bejewelled with nebulae, star clusters and clouds of gas and dust. A spectacular sight under a dark sky. Of course, this photograph reveals far more than the eye can see as it is 30 seconds of exposure at f2.8.

Star Rise

The stars are barely visible here fighting against the light of the near full Moon. The moonlight is so bright it scatters in the air and makes a near daytime appearance of the evening sky. In this image looking south above a young Bunya Pine is the Eta Carina nebula and toward the right, the Large Magellanic Cloud.