Members' viewing and imaging evening: On the night of 28th March

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Montage of members' viewing and imaging evening: On the night of 28th March 2026 several members enjoyed views of the 82% gibbous Moon, Venus, Jupiter and several DSO's at the Brian Stokes Cygnus Observatory, with shared learning and guidance on various astro-imaging techniques undertaken.

The Tadpoles nebula: Taken at the members viewing and imaging night at the Brian Stokes Cygnus Observatory on the night of the 28th March 2026 using an ASI 533MM Pro camera with a field flattener attached to a Sky-Watcher Esprit 80 triplet refractor. some 2.5 hours of SHO data were captured in NINA and integrated in Pixinsight with further processing done in Adobe Lightroom.

The Owl, Pussycat and Pea Green Boat: An 11 hour integration of M97 & M108 also known as the Owl Nebula & Surfboard Galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major (The Plough). These are a planetary nebula and a spiral galaxy some 2,500 light-years & 46 million light-years away respectively. The cat "Noah" was keeping watch for clouds and was somewhat nearer, but more difficult to image as he wouldn't stay still! DSO images were taken on the nights of the 29th March, 24/12/25, 09/04/25 and 08/04/25 with an ASI 533MM Pro camera with a field flattener attached to a Sky-Watcher Esprit 80 triplet refractor, with 4 hours of Ha, 3.5 hours of SII, 2.6 hrs of OIII and 10 minutes each of LRGB. All data were captured in NINA and integrated in Pixinsight using drizzling with further upscaling of x 2 done in Adobe Photoshop using Firefly.

Chris Bowden