Swansea Astronomical Society Blog

Multiple targets taken with an ASI533MM Pro camera and a SW Esprit 80ED triplet refractor. Data integrated and processed in Pixinsight and Adobe Photoshop 2025:

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Witch Head nebula (IC 2118):

On the evening of the 4th Feb I set about capturing a two pane mosaic of the Witch Head nebula (IC 2118) in the constellation of Eridanus. This large reflection nebula lies to the right of the supergiant star Rigel in Orion which provides the light source to illuminate this extremely faint patch of nebulosity which is believed to be the remains of an ancient supernova. Unfortunately due to cloud I was only able to complete one section of the mosaic, but did manage some more data the following night during much better conditions. Due to the target being low in the sky however, I had to cut the capture session short due to my guide camera being located on the lower side of the mount being partially obscured by some bushes. With the imaging camera higher up on the other side of the mount, I was able to continue imaging until the last of the foliage blocked the light from the remining guide star! This only allowed Red and green data to be collected, so a further data capture will therefore be needed to complete the data for that part of the mosaic. I used the data collected thus far to compile the mosaic.

UFO Galaxy (NGC 2683):

The clear conditions of the 5th lasted all night which allowed me to capture data from several more targets; including additional Green, Blue and Ha data on the UFO galaxy that I had started s few nights previously and had taken only Red data. Completing the 3 hour data set allowed me to compile an RGB/Ha composition of this distant galaxy, but due to the objects small size in our skies restricted how much detail was able to be captured..

The Double Cluster (NGC 869):  

This bright cluster in Hercules lies just 7.600 LY away and is one of the best sights in the northern sky. As such tis cluster is a favourite of mine and always looks spectacular in a wide angled eyepiece through some of the fine telescopes we use at the observatory at Fairwood.  Due to the brightness of this object I reduced my exposure to just 20 seconds per sub frame and collected just over an hour of LRGB and Ha data.

 The Spider & Fly nebula (IC417):  

I next slewed the scope to the Spider and Fly nebulae located in the constellation of Auriga. The pair are around 7 and 1000 LY away and contain faint areas of emission nebulae that glow weakly in Hydrogen and  Oxygen.  I took two hour long data sets in RGB and SHO and was surprised at the amount of nebulosity I was able to capture in such short captures; especially in RGB. A longer exposure data set will be needed to improve the signal to noise ratio further.

SHO

The Phantom of the Opera nebula (Sh2 173 ): 

Located in Cepheus this unusual nebula does indeed resemble the famous mask from the “Phantom of the Opera” being an emission nebula lying 8,800 light-years from Earth. I took just one hour of SHO data to bring out the ghostly apparition!

The Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) and companion NGC5195: 

I was able to get 3 ¼ hours of LRGB/Ha data on this spectacular pair of interacting grand-design spiral galaxies that lie in the constellation of Canes Venatici. The pair lie some 31 MLY away. Several other tiny edge on spiral galaxies were also captured in my wider field images which I annotated to show their positions.

The Blaze Star t Corona Borealis (t CrB): 

With a small amount of night left I was able to finally slew the scope to the so called “Blaze Star” in Corona Borealis, which seems to be taking its time to cooperate by impressing us with its 80 year outburst which has been expected for the last twelve months or so. This 16 minute set of 60s LRGB exposures shows that the star has still not increased in brightness (but may well do soon!) The annotated image shows the location of this variable nova.

Chris Bowden

posted by astroimager  # 6:49 PM 0 Comments

An Altair Starwave Ascent 60 ED doublet refractor with Field flattener-reducer and a Pegasus FocusCube V2, and fitted with an Altair 2” Magnetic filter holder with an L-eNhance filter and a prototype SC715C OSC camera, was mounted on a Celestron AVX mount. An SVBONY SV165 guide-scope fitted with a QHY-5II-M guide camera was mounted on the imaging scope. 

The mount and focuser were controlled by AstroDMx Capture via an INDI server running on the imaging computer indoors. PHD2 multi-star pulse auto-guiding was done via the INDI server on a separate Linux computer indoors.

The data were debayered, calibrated, stacked in ASIDeepStack and further processed in GraXpert, Cosmic Clarity, Gimp, ACDsee and G'MIC. Three renderings are presented here:

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The Seagull nebula

RGB

HOO

Blend of RGB and HOO

Steve Wainwright and Nicola Mackin

posted by astroimager  # 5:49 PM 0 Comments

Wednesday night, thanks to my amazing wife to help me set up my telescope I photographed the fish head nebula.

StellaLyra 8" f/4 M-LRN Newtonian Reflector with 2" Focuser

Player One Ares-M Pro · ZWO ASI120MM Mini  ×

ZWO AM5

Askar M54 OAG · Player One Phoenix Wheel 8x1.25"

Antlia 3nm Narrowband H-alpha 1.25": 44×300″(3h 40′)

Antlia 3nm Narrowband Oxygen III 1.25": 36×300″(3h)

Antlia 3nm Narrowband Sulphur II 1.25": 36×300″(3h)

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The Fish Head nebula

John Beer

posted by astroimager  # 11:18 PM 0 Comments

Dr Simon Helan (Swansea Astronomical Society) gave a meticulously researched and authoritatively presented, live and Zoom lecture on "Asteroids Harbingers of Death And Life". The lecture was very engaging and informative, and in Simon's usual style, held the audiences attention right to the end. Simon may be going to prepare Part II for next year, which we will be looking forward to.

posted by astroimager  # 11:00 PM 0 Comments

A Solarmax II 60 BF15 was mounted on a Skywatcher SolarQuest mount and a prototype SVBONY SC715C OSC fitted with a UV/IR cut filter was placed at the focus.

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The equipment

The solar disk with small prominences

posted by astroimager  # 5:54 PM 0 Comments

My image of the M35 star cluster was taken with my 1300D DSLR Canon camera.The camera was mounted on my Skywatcher 80ED Refractor telescope, mounted on my EQ5 GOTO mount. I used an intervalometer  to control the camera and a Bahtinov mask to focus on a bright star.   My settings were 45s exposure, 800ISO. 50 flat frames, 25 dark frames and 50 images were captured. They were all stacked in Squator and processed in Siril, and Gimp 2/10. 

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M35

Chris Playle

posted by astroimager  # 5:02 PM 0 Comments

NGC 7789 the Caroline Rose cluster taken with my 1300D DSLR Canon camera . The camera was mounted on my Skywatcher 80ED Refractor telescope with a field flattener. The telescope was mounted on my EQ5 GOTO Mount. I used an intervalometer to control the camera and a Bahtinov mask to focus on a bright star. My settings  were 45s exposure and 800ISO. 200 images, 50 flat frames and 25 Dark frames were captured, all stacked in Squator and processed in Siril and Gimp 2.10. 

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NGC7789

Chris Playle

posted by astroimager  # 3:21 PM 0 Comments

Today's Sun in Ha through the PST - 15% of a 7,366 frame SER with the Apollo M-Mini and a x2 Barlow. Imaged with AstroDMx Capture, stacked in Autostakkert!4, wavelet sharpened in Registax, enhanced with PI Solar Toolbox and finished/cropped in Adobe Photoshop.

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Chris Bowden

posted by astroimager  # 2:36 PM 0 Comments

The Twin Quasar is interesting because it is in fact the same object. The "A" version is a more or less straight light path from the object to Earth. The "B" object is a longer light path that is gravitationally lensed by several galaxies, esp YGKOW G1, which appears to merge with "B" and is why, I suspect, "B" appears slightly larger than "A" in the image. The light takes about 14 months longer to reach Earth on path "B" compared to "A".

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John Evans

posted by astroimager  # 2:30 PM 0 Comments

Here's my processed Soul nebula from last night. 383 x 30s subs using the Dwarf3 in EQ mode. I used the duoband filter.

Stacked and processed in Pixinsight. There are 2 versions, one using the SHO palette and one with a HOO palette. I created a synthetic green to enable the SHO version by extracting red, green and blue from the master. I then deleted the blue channel and renamed the green to blue. I then blended the remaining 2 channels 50/50 as the new green channel.

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HOO

Anne Startup

posted by astroimager  # 11:38 AM 0 Comments

On the evening of the 31st January 2025 members enjoyed some clear skies at the Brian Stokes Cygnus Observatory to view a splendid 6.7% illuminated crescent Moon and the four brightest planets Venus, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars through a range of telescopes of different focal lengths and sizes. After the Moon set, the scopes were then trained on a range of DSO objects including the Pleiades and the great Orion nebula where blue and pink colours were discernible through the larger aperture instruments under the excellent seeing conditions. Despite some high magnifications, quality eyepieces and a range of filters used to see the best views of the phase of Venus, the edge on rings of Saturn, surface features of Mars, the equatorial belts of Jupiter, one of the most striking views was the gorgeous slender crescent Moon viewed through the Meade 12" LX200 50mm viewfinder!

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Chris Bowden

posted by astroimager  # 11:39 PM 0 Comments

Click on an image to get a closer view

OIII: a mono image of 50 mins of OIII data taken with a Sky-Watcher Esprit 80-ED Pro and an ASI 533MM Pro camera

SHO: 1/2 an hour of SII, 1/4hr of Ha and 50 mins of OIII taken with a Sky-Watcher Esprit 80-ED Pro and an ASI 533MM Pro camera

All data integrated and processed in Pixinsight and Adobe Photoshop 2025

Chris Bowden

posted by astroimager  # 6:19 PM 0 Comments

The Horsehead and Flame nebulae: 108 minutes worth of 10s RAW exposures were captured with a Seestar S50 in mosaic mode using the LP filter. The 16 bit stacked image was processed in Siril, GraXpert and Gimp. 

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The Horsehead and Flame nebulae

Steve Wainwright and Nicola Mackin

posted by astroimager  # 4:10 PM 0 Comments