Jupiter

A nice view of our largest planet. Taken at the end of September the southern equatorial belt is still absent.

Perseid meteor from night of 12 Aug morning of 13 Aug

A couple of Perseid meteor shots. Not brilliant, not had much luck so far this year but will keep trying.

Sunspots on 5 August 2010 2 days after the big Coronal Mass Ejection that lead to the spectacular Aurora display on Tuesday night, which I couldn't see because of cloud cover, typical!

M27 rework

M27 again. Same lights and darks as the earlier one just been reworked in CS2 to bring out more detail.

M27 taken using my new IV Field Flattener. Not a brilliant shot only 12 light frames of 120 seconds (clouds ruined play) taken using W/O Megrez 102 and a Canon EOS450D camera.
The field flattener has certainly done its job, no coma on the stars at the edge of the frame. This is a full frame photo there has been no cropping whatsoever done to this.

Sunspots taken on Thursday 22 July 2010
Canon EOS450D
ED80 with RG4 Solar film filter

One of the Little Owls that has been visiting with us at Breckland Astronomical Society dome over the last few months.

NLC taken 9 July 2010

M13 The Hercules Globular Cluster

Discovery and visibility

M13 was discovered by Sir Edmond Halley (the discoverer of Halley's Comet) in 1714, and catalogued by Charles Messier on June 1, 1764.

It is located at right ascension 16^h 41.7^m and declination +36° 28'. With an apparent magnitude of 5.8, it is barely visible with the naked eye on a very clear night. Its diameter is about 23 arc minutes and it is readily viewable in small telescopes. Nearby is NGC 6207, a 12th magnitude edge-on galaxy that lies 28 arc minutes directly north east. A small galaxy, IC 4617, lies halfway between NGC 6207 and M13, north-northeast of the large globular's center.

Characteristics

M13 is about 145 light-years in diameter, and it is composed of several hundred thousand stars, the brightest of which is the variable star V11 with an apparent magnitude of 11.95. M13 is 25,100 light-years away from Earth.

Arecibo message

The Arecibo message of 1974, designed to communicate the existence of human life to hypothetical extraterrestrials, was transmitted toward M13. The reason was that with a higher star density, the chances of a life harboring planet with intelligent life forms, were higher. Even though the message was transmitted, M13 will no longer be in that location when it arrives. The sending of the message was more of a technological demonstration, rather than an actual attempt to contact life.

Just a photo of my latest setup now that I am the proud owner of a Celestron C925.
Celestron C925 Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope
William Optics ED102 Megrez
side by side mounted on a Skywatcher EQ6 Pro

Here are some of the moon taken with the new camera, enjoy!

Here it is in a wider field of view.

Venus

Here is Venus captured with my new Opticstar PL-131C lunar/planetary imaging camera. Definitely my best Venus to date!

Here is a photo of Saturn taken using a Megrez ED102, Toucam Pro and an Imagemate x4.

More news from the astro shed. I acquired a pier the other day at a very good price. Spent most of Saturday installing it, leveling it and fitting the EQ6 Pro mount along with my ED102 and ED80. The roof will not clear the scopes now as I slide it back and forth. I need to lift the front of the roof over the scopes as I slide it back and forth. Still small price to pay so I don't have to break my back to look through the scopes and cameras when attached. The pier stands at 45 inches tall whereas the original tripod stood at a mere 30 inches. It may be only 15 inches difference but by the time you add the EQ mount the lower scopes eyepiece is now at face height instead of naval height that it was. No more getting down on my knees to look through the scope.

Mars again!

My latest go at Mars.

Here is a composite both were taken using my Megrez ED102 and a Toucam Pro.
The first one using an Astro Engineering x4 Imagemate
The second one using a Tele Vue x5 Powermate which is actually closer to x7 than x5

Well the new roll off roof observatory is now finished. Unfortunately I made a mistake in my calculations with regards to my 10" SN scope or light bucket as I call it.
When the mount and scope were assembled they wasn't enough room for me to get behind the scope to use the finder scope to check alignments when doing a 2 or 3 star setup. Bugger. So I had to revert to just using my William Optics Megrez ED102 and my Skywatcher ED80 scopes instead.
Its a real pity because I have looked through many different scopes and nothing I have viewed through can touch my 10" Schmidt-Cassegrain scope for deep sky fuzzies.
As you can see from the photos the 10" scope nearly fills the doorway so when the scope points south there is about 7" of room between the scope and the back wall of the shed.
As for rails I used Dex-ion. I didn't bother with wheels as the point of contact between the roof and the Dex-ion is just the thickness of the Dex-ion (approx 2mm) there is very little friction and the roof slides back and forward very easily.

Hi everyone! Not been doing too much astrophotography lately the weather not been good enough. So I have been keeping busy building my new roll off roof observatory. I used to use a roll shed where the whole shed moved, but due to a one man crime spree around here I was not happy with the old setup. It was not secure enough for my new EQ6 Pro and William Optics Megrez 102, so I decided to build a new one. The only thing left to do now is make the rails for the roof to slide along and install an alarm system. I will post photos when it is finished.

Moon Jupiter & Neptune?

Took this Sunday 17 Jan, Canon EOS 350D and 70-210mm zoom lens set at about 80mm

Bahtinov Masks For Sale

Get in touch with me and I will give you a quote for a Bahtinov Mask for your scope. You can see them on ebay as well. Mine are the ones with a square corner with reflective tape so you can see them in the dark.