Lake Pier, Hamworthy, Dorset.

Taken just after a sunset that didn't really happen. Again taken with a Canon 10-18 lens. I'm starting to get addicted to landscapes!!

Corfe Castle in Black & White.

I found this shot after my main shot when I returned to my car after the the big climb to the top of a hill which looks down on Corfe Castle. The camera was set to ISO100 and the lens was @ 10mm. It looked very ordinary until I converted it to black and white.

The Running Man & M42

Made from 22 x 45 second subs @ ISO1600 after months of cloudy nights I finally managed to get a reasonable image of these two amazing nebula. The camera is an unmodified Canon 40d so I'm quite pleased with the amount of colour in the image.

Corfe Castle sunrise

I've always wanted to photograph Corfe Castle and as I only live 30 minutes away i'm not sure why it took me so long. I used Google maps and the Photographers Ephemeris to plan the shoot and I arrived an hour early. I didn't realise how steep the climb was going to be so its always better to arrive early as rushing to set the camera up can lead to mistakes. The hill in the background is where I'm going to try a sunset image of the castle ruins.

Thurlestone in Devon

On a visit to Devon I found myself faced with a dull overcast and very windy day. The temperature was around 14 degrees which is very mild for the time of year. The shot was difficult to compose and I eventually put the horizon in the middle. In hind site the grass in the foreground nearly took over the image so I probably should have moved forward a bit.  However I quite like this image and I judge that by how many times I keep looking at. The images that attract my attention end up as my laptops wallpaper and this one was no exception.
Taken using a tripod and my Canon 40d, ISO 100 @f/9 and a focal length of 10mm. Four image stitched using Adobe Photoshop CC making use f the Camera Raw filter.

M45 the Pleiades or The Seven Sisters

M45 is found in the constellation of Taurus, Made up of around 1000 member stars its one of the closest star clusters to Earth at only 444 light years away. Dominated by young blue stars (75-100 million years old) its a reflection nebula caused by dust reflecting the blue light.
Its often called the Seven Sisters from Greek mythology but as you can see there are more than 7 bright stars. The image below shows the seven sisters and their parents (Atlas and his wife Pleione).

The Heart nebula IC1805

With my unmodified Canon 40d I almost didn't bother to image this nebula. Although its not going to win any awards but you can see some red nebulosity and make out its distinctive shape.
Discovered in 1787 by Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel its 7500 light years away, located in the Perseus arm of our galaxy in the constellation of Cassiopeia. Its apparent size is 1 degree by 1 degree and its apparent magnitude is 6.5.
The bright stars in the middle making up a open cluster are called Mellote 15, some of which are 50 times the mass of our sun, driving the intense red plasma of ionised hydrogen and free electrons.. At its centre are two stars locked in orbit, doomed to fuse together and explode in a supernova in 700 million years, making the unique shape of the nebula .
I used 26 x 3 minute exposures at ISO1000 guided with PHD2.

Lunar eclipse time-lapse 2015

This so called Blood supermoon eclipse started at 01:11 and finished at 06:22 wit a midpoint at 03:47.
This time-lapse Giff consists of 227 images @ISO100. The exposure was controlled from indoors using Backyard EOS and ranged from 1/500 second to 8 seconds.
The video was put together in Photoshop and condenses 2.5 hours into about 18 seconds. That's 500 x actual speed. The moon is quite difficult to track as it moves slower than sidereal rate and seems to move north all the time. I had to put the 227 images into Photoshop layers and manually align them which too some time.

Bubble Nebula and M52 Open Cluster

The Bubble nebula or Caldwell11 (bottom right) was discovered in 1787 by William Herschel. Located  in the constellation of Cassiopeia its about 11,000 light years away and totally unrelated to M52 (top left). The bubble is caused by the stellar wind from a massive, very hot, young star which disturbs the giant molecular cloud that surrounds it, making it glow. It seems to sit in a fan shaped void.
M52 or NGC7654 was discovered in 1774 and is about 5,000 light years away. Its relatively young at 35 million years and contains 200 stars with a diameter of just 19 light years. It also contains another very small cluster HIP115521 and a white giant star HIP115542.
The image is rich with stars as the view is through our own galaxy, the Milky Way
The image was generated from 20 light frames, 10 dark 10 Flat and 10 Bias frames. exposure was at ISO 1600 for 150 seconds giving 50 minutes. Scope was an ED80 @ 510mm focal length. I'm really please with this image as its very faint and small, taken with an unmodified old dslr.

Messier 33 Triangulum Galaxy

M33 Triangulum galaxy or the Pinwheel galaxy is 2.3 million light years away in the constellation of Triangulum. Containing about 40 billion stars its a small faint deep sky object. Difficult but rewarding to photograph at last. Captured over 2 nights using 32 Light frames, 16 Dark, 11 Flat and 10 Bias. Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker, finished in Photoshop CC. Guided using PHD2 and ZWOasi120mc camera. The 0.85 field flattener is great at making round stars right to the edge of the frame and making the scope faster, from focal length 600mm f7.5 to 510mm f6.4. Backyard EOS is a great software program for Canon and Nikon cameras. I used 120 second Exposures @ISO 1600 with an 8 second mirror lockup to settle the scope then a 20 second pause between shots to cool the dslr sensor. BYEOS also enables PHD2 to Dither between shots, helping to reduce noise when stacking.