Berry Head in December

Its the first time I've been to Berry Head in Devon and I thought the light was just amazing. 

Even on this cold and blustery day, the light and scenery changed with every minute. On a day when I thought I would struggle to get any images I was pleasantly surprised. It just goes to prove that you should always take you camera.

The lonely path.

Here is another black and white image from the same day taken with my 10mm -18mm lens.

I took the picture because I just liked the dead straight path and this lens just suited it. In colour, the image is quite boring but in black and white I think it becomes quite thought provoking. The cold December with its menacing clouds day simply adds to the mood.

Berry Head Guard House and Canon in Devon. 5th Dec 2014

Another hdr image using 3 images processed in Photomatix 5 Pro shutter speeds of 1/100, 1/400 and 1/25 at F/6.3 ISO 100
This old Napoleonic Guard House is now a cafe but you wouldn't know until you walked around the side and its full of people. Again its shot at 12mm focal length using a 10mm to 18mm canon lens.
It looked pretty ordinary until I converted it to black and white when it seemed to instantly age.

Trip to Berry Head in Devon. 5th Dec 2014

On a cold December day, the sun is low and the sky is dark. 

This hdr image was taken at 12mm and ISO 100.

Three images -2 stops 0 and +2 stops (1/100, 1/400 and 1/1600) combined using Photomatix 5 pro.

I tried to keep the image as natural as I could But I wanted the sky to be menacing so the sunbeams would show up clearly. 

Taken hand held as I didn't have my tripod with me I used f6.3 but if I had tripod it would have been about f9. I like it so much its now my desktop background.

First quarter Moon 29th Nov 2014

Taken with a 70mm Skywatcher refractor which I bought second hand from eBay 2 years ago for £30 including postage.
I have only used it once when it produced bad vignetting and an less than sharp image. So I put it in the drawer under my bed and forgot about it.
With a focal length of 500mm (F/7.4) its a lot faster and wider than my old Meade Etx105 so I gave it one last try. I removed the prime lens then split it and cleaned it with alcohol. I made a Batinov Mask from black plastic to improve the focusing and mounted it on my Barn-door Tracker.
I'm quite pleased with the result. Its no triplet but at least I can get some use out of it whilst I'm saving for a better scope.

M31 Andromeda Galaxy

Taken early this morning directly overhead with my DIY barndoor mount and a 200mm lens at f4.
I just love looking at this galaxy. I commented on Facebook that light can travel 7.5 times around the equator in 1 second but the light from this galaxy has taken 2.5 million years to reach my camera. and that's a relatively close galaxy.

This shot would be almost impossible using my Meade etx 105 due to its position in the sky but using my barndoor mount its easy and much quicker to set up. Its also too big to fit on the sensor at that magnification.
Using 45 second raw images at iso 1600 from my 40d. I took 25 lights, 22 darks, and 21 flats all processed in Deep Sky Stacker. That's 18 minutes of data. I would like to try this shot in a dark windless location using much longer exposures. Maybe soon?

M15 Globular Cluster using the home made barn door tracker.

Taken with a 200mm lens mounted on my Barn door. M15 is one of the oldest and most dense clusters in our galaxy. At nearly 12 billion years old and 33.6 light years away it is made up of 100,000 stars. Discovered in 1746 it lies in the constellation of Pegasus but to see it you need a good pair of binoculars or a small telescope as its just too faint too see with the naked eye.

The image was made from 4 x 3 minute images with 6 darks. A very poor seeing night and the 3 minute exposures at 1600 iso looked completely blown out. With the aid of deep sky stacker this amazing cluster appeared.

Lightning bolt using my diy auto trigger 19th July 2014

 Taken from my open window this was the first time I've had chance to test my intervalometer's built in lightning detector. As you can see it works to my delight. I just have to set my camera, plug in the intervalometer and every time there is a flash it almost instantly takes a picture.
In the intervalometer I can change the sensitivity at any time to adjust for the ambient light conditions. The only thing it cannot do is to point the camera in the right direction so I did miss a lot where the camera took a picture of a bright sky with no lightning. The setting for this shot were ISO800 F7.1 for 2 seconds. Probably not the best settings as normally I would use ISO100 for 4 or5 seconds but I just caught this one at these settings.

The Coathanger asterism

Brocchi's cluster (known as the coathanger)lies in the constellation of Vulpecula and is not actually a cluster but a random alignment of 10 stars. Easy to find with a pair of binoculars it lies about one third of the way along an imaginary line between Altair and Vega surrounded by the milky way. Its best viewed in July or August. This image was taken with my barndoor mount and 200mm lens. A very bright Moon was near by so I had to use 20 x 20 second exposures and 5 darks and 2 flats. I added the lines to show the coathanger but through binoculars these 10 stars easily outshine those nearby.

M42 (The Orion Nebula) on fire!!! HLA processed by me.

This is my favourite object in the night sky so getting the chance to process it just how I like it was brilliant. Thanks to the Hubble Legacy Archive anyone can.
I just HAD to post this image.  It may not be to everyone's taste but its how I like it.
Read below for details of how I obtained and processed it.

The original data for this image was downloaded from the Hubble Legacy Archive website ( http://hla.stsci.edu/ ). I downloaded three fits files. Basically that's  a set of red, blue and green (RGB) images taken by the Hubble telescope. I combined these black and white images using a free program called FITS Liberator and they just burst into colour. I wanted the nebula to look as if it was so active it was on fire, so I pushed the saturation to enhance the red. The Tiff file I produced was a massive 324 million pixels!! and it seems like you can keep zooming in forever, seeing incredible detail. I have also processed some others deep sky objects with great results. So if its cloudy and raining outside have a go!!!!

Leo Triplet 8th March 20014

I'm currently in the process of fine tuning my DIY Barn Door start tracker and its taking all my stargazing time at the moment. I grabbed this image last night after a 2 hours tracking test.
 Its a single exposure with no darks or lights and not stacked, so its a bit grainy and the light pollution was bad. However I quite like it (and the stars are fairly round). Exposure time was 2 minutes and 21 seconds at ISO 400 using an f4 200mm lens. I always use mirror lockup to avoid mirror shake. I'm really pleased with the tracking ability of this home made tracker however I'm currently working to eliminate a slight vertical drift over 2 hours. Whilst its not noticeable with a wide angle lens it equates to about 8 pixels using this 200mm lens.
This cluster of galaxies can be found in the constellation of Leo about 35 million light years away.
 Top left is NGC3628 and to the right is M65 whilst bottom centre is M66.
 I am hoping to blog the design and details of this star tracker as soon as its finished as it may be of use to others trying to build a home made star tracking mount.

Last nights Jupiter with Red Spot and Io

Thw shadow of Jupiter's Moon Io with its 400 active volcano's can be seen as a black dot transiting just above the great red spot.

 I was surprised at how quickly Io raced across Jupiter.
In the second image you can see that Io has moved slightly faster than the GRS.

Taken with Meade Etx 105pe and a £30 microsoft cinema lifecam webcam at 10 fps. Captured in sharpcap and processed with Pipp and Registax using the best 910 images from 1400 I think this is the best I can do with Jupiter with this setup.

Last Night's Orion Nebula near a very bright Moon 20130110.

I am still amazed at the images I can get with an old DSLR, two bits of wood and a microprocessor.

This image was taken last night as part of my Arduino driven Barn Door Tracker project.

19 thirty second exposures & 20 darks in a light polluted sky with a bright moon nearby. I think the brown glow is due to the Moon?

 I think I have finally got the mechanics, electrics and programming right. My barn door mount now tracks with the correct acceleration for the correct time, correcting for the straight threaded rod drive. Any errors I have seem to be in the accuracy or not of the polar alignment to the NCP.
During the evening I took about 130 images, all with pretty round stars.

Pleiades or Seven Sisters or M45

The weather is so cloudy wet and windy I decided to look at this image taken last week using my Arduino driven barn door mount.

It surprised me to see its similarity to the Plough (Ursa Major). This group of stars are travelling through a dust cloud giving them this blue glow.