Swansea Astronomical Society Blog

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

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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

6 minutes worth of 10s exposures with a Seestar S50 on NGC 1817 the Poorman's Double Cluster.

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NGC 1817

Steve Wainwright and Nicola Mackin

posted by astroimager  # 9:43 PM 0 Comments

My image of the Double star 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 50s exposure, 800 ISO, 50 flat frames and 30 dark frames, I captured 150 images. They were all stacked in DSS  and processed  in Gimp 2.10.   

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C14 The Double cluster

Chris Playle

posted by astroimager  # 6:24 PM 0 Comments

Two 3 minute RAW AVIs were captured with different exposures of the 6.1% crescent Moon last night using a Seestar S50. The best 75% of the frames in the AVIs were debayered and stacked in Autostakkert!4, wavelet processed in waveSharp and other processing was done with Gimp, GraXpert and ACDSee.

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6.1% crescent Moon

Steve Wainwright and Nicola Mackin

posted by astroimager  # 4:32 PM 0 Comments

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The Dolphin nebula (Sh2-308):  Following a most enjoyable viewing night at Fairwood, I returned home to find the skies were still clear over Llanelli, so with no moonlight to worry about, I managed to get a fair bit more OIII data on the Dolphin nebula to add to that taken a year ago. I still need a lot more data to help raise this objects faint signal out of the noise further, but the Dolphin is starting to take shape now! I collected around 2.5 hours of new data which I added to the 3.5 hours taken previously to make this 6 hour integration of SHO and RGB data which was stacked and processed in Pixinsight and Adobe Photoshop 2025. The Dolphin nebula is an area of ionised hydrogen lying 8 degrees below Sirius some 5,300 light years away which has a nebulous bubble of molecular oxygen lighting up a star preparing to go supernova. 

The UFO galaxy (NGC 2683): I do like edge on galaxies, and last night I managed to get some 45 mins of red filtered data on this one for the first time imaging it. I hope to collect some green, blue, luminance and Ha data in the future to make a properly coloured image. NGC 2683 lies in the constellation of Lynx some 30 MLY away and its easy to see why it's nicknamed the "UFO" galaxy! Recently the Hubble Space Telescope imaged this galaxy (with a somewhat better image than mine!) and found that it contains around 300 globular clusters which is almost twice the number in our own galaxy.

Chris Bowden

posted by astroimager  # 3:07 PM 0 Comments

I imaged the monkey head nebula last night, had a few "technical issues" but got there.

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

Player One Ares-M Pro

ZWO AM5

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

Antlia 3nm Narrowband H-alpha 1.25": 30×500″(4h 10′)

Antlia 3nm Narrowband Oxygen III 1.25": 30×500″(4h 10′)

Antlia 3nm Narrowband Sulphur II 1.25": 31×500″(4h 18′ 20″)

Total Integration: 12h 38′ 20″

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The Monkey head nebula

John Beer

posted by astroimager  # 1:17 PM 0 Comments

I have had a chance to try out the S50 in its new home. 28 minutes on M1 and an hour on the Horsehead, plus a little post-processing in Photos on the iPad.

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Nik Whitehead

posted by astroimager  # 11:01 PM 0 Comments

The Satellite cluster NGC 2244 at the heart of the Rosette nebula. 2 hours worth of 2 minute exposures were captured along with calibration frames with AstroDMx Capture using a Prototype SVBONY SC715C OSC uncooled camera. A 60mm Altair ED APO refractor was used and an L-Enhance filter. The data were calibrated, stacked and partly processed in PixInsight and further processed in GraXpert, Cosmic Clarity, Gimp, ACDsee and G'MIC. Four renderings are presented here. 

Click on an image to get a closer, detailed view.

The equipment

AstroDMx Capture displaying the 60th image captured

The Satellite cluster and associated nebulosity

Linked channels

Unlinked channels

HOO

Steve Wainwright and Nicola Mackin.

posted by astroimager  # 9:44 PM 0 Comments

Wide field image of M35 star cluster in Gemini  taken with my Rokinon 135mm prime lens at f/2.8 mounted on my DSLR Canon camera. The camera was mounted on a Star Adventure 2i pro tracking mount. My settings were 45s exposures ISO 800, 200 images, 50 flat frames and 30 dark frames, all stacked in DSS and  processed  in Siril and Gimp 2.10. I used an intervalometer to control the camera and a Bahtinov mask to focus on a bright star.

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Chris Playle

posted by astroimager  # 9:09 PM 0 Comments

A Seestar S50 was used to capture a 3 minute RAW AVI Through a Baader OD 5.0 solar filter, controlling the brightness in the software. The best 85% of the frames were debayered and stacked in Autostakkert!4. The image was wavelet processed in waveSharp 2.0 and post processed in the Gimp 2.10.and ACDSee. 

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Steve Wainwright and Nicola Mackin

posted by astroimager  # 4:44 PM 0 Comments

The Sun in White light and H-alpha light today (Jan 30). Captured with AstroDMx Capture and a prototype SVBONY SC715C OSC CMOS camera. The scopes used were a Solarmax II 60 BF15 H-alpha scope and an Ekinox 80mm ED refractor with a Photographic grade Baader solar filter both mounted on a Solar Quest mount.

 Click on an image to get a closer view. 

Steve Wainwright and Nicola Mackin

posted by astroimager  # 5:15 AM 0 Comments

With a mostly clear night for a change I was able to image for over 8 hours and managed to capture three different parts of the sky with my Sky Watcher 80 Esprit and ASI 533MM Pro camera.

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 Rosette Nebula (NGC2244):  I compiled two different data sets of this fine deep sky object; 2.25hrs of RGB and the same amount of SHO which I integrated in Pixinsight and processed separately to produce two different versions. I then blended the two sets together to make a combined RGB/SHO image comprising an integration totalling some 4.5 hours. This rather beautiful region of nebulosity lies in the Monoceros molecular cloud region of the Milky Way where new stars are being born and lies some 5,000 LY from Earth and being over 130 LY in diameter. 

RGB

Bodes Galaxy (M81), The Cigar galaxy (M82) and NGC 3077:  An RGB and Ha composition of 2.3 hours total integration time. These three galaxies are gravitational bound together and lie in the constellation of Ursa Major (The Plough). The forces exerted by each galaxy on one another strip away hydrogen gas, leading to large filamentary structures that glow in deep red which is particularly prominent in the so called Cigar galaxy M82. The large spiral galaxy of M81 is a so called "grand design" spiral and is around 12 MLY from Earth, with M82 just 1.1 MLY with NGC 3077 being around 13 MLY away.

The Whale and Hockey Stick galaxies (NGC4031/NGC4627 & NGC4656/NGC4657): With dawn approaching, I could only manage a 1.3 hour RGB and Ha capture of these galaxies and their companion dwarf galaxies which lie in the constellation of Canes Venatici. These pairs of interacting galaxies are linked by a stream of hydrogen gas that give them their distorted appearance. The Whale galaxy lies about 25 million light years away and is seen edge on to us and is thought to be comparable in size to our own Milky Way. The Hockey Stick galaxy is around 30 MLY away, with its small dwarf galaxy being suitably nicknamed “the Puck”.

Chris Bowden

posted by astroimager  # 7:35 PM 0 Comments

I've just processed the first of last night's images with my Dwarf3. 200x10s exposures using the duoband filter (Lenhance). All 200 subs were processed using WBPP using fastintegration. No darks used at all, I just wanted to see what the Dwarf3 could do!

After stacking I removed the gradients, ran SPCC then BlurX. After stretching I removed the stars and ran noiseX. Then adjusted the nb colour scheme using Narrowband normalisation as HOO, type 2 to give a reddish colour. The Oiii signal was intensified which increased the visibility of the Running Man section and the outer reaches of M42. I then replaced the stars and adjusted the background colour that was a little red for my taste.

I didn't attempt to bring out the trapezium section as the field of view is quite large. I've also included the processed image created by the Dwarf3.

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Here's my 2nd image from last night, 100x10s subs. Again stacked and processed in Pixinsight. This image had some greenish issues which I removed in Pixinsight using SNCR. I've also cropped the image slightly.

Anne Startup

posted by astroimager  # 2:32 PM 0 Comments

A Seestar S50 was used to capture 33 minutes worth of 10s RAW exposures of Thor's Helmet nebula NGC 2359 over a period of about an hour. The data were debayered and stacked in both PixInsight and Siril. This was done because PixInsight only stacked about 50% of the subs. With Siril, all of the subs were able to be stacked. The resulting stacked images were processed in GraXpert, SetiAstro's Cosmic Clarity suite and Gimp2.10 with Starnet++. The resulting images were combined in Picture Window Pro 2.5.

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The unprocessed jpg saved to the controlling tablet computer straight off the Seestar S50

The cropped and reoriented final image of Thor's Helmet

Steve Wainwright and Nicola Mackin

posted by astroimager  # 10:10 PM 0 Comments

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Sombrero Galaxy (M104): I was waiting patiently for some clear skies to get some additional blue subs of the Sombrero galaxy with my Skywatcher 80 ED triplet refractor to go with some red and green data I took on the 8th January and last night was the first such opportunity due to unfavourable weather conditions. This is an 85 min cropped RGB integration taken with an ASI 533MM Pro camera which was sufficient to bring out the dust halo surrounding the central bulge of this unclassified galaxy some 31 MLY distant which lies between the constellations Virgo and Corvus. Stacking and processing were done using Pixinsight and Adobe Photoshop 2025.

Needle Galaxy (NGC 4565): Using the same equipment I was able to take some 2.25 hrs of LRGB and Ha data of this edge on spiral galaxy and its smaller companions which fill this area of sky in the constellation of Coma Berenices. The Needle galaxy is between 30 and 50 MLY distant, but is still considered to be part of the local group of galaxies to which ours belongs. Stacking and processing were done using Pixinsight and Adobe Photoshop 2025. The image was cropped to show a closer view of the galaxy, but the wider field image captured by the camera was then use to annotate to show the many other galaxies nearby.

Flame and Horsehead nebulae: It was good to be able to get some more Ha and OIII data on these magnificent nebulae which are located close to the left hand star of Orion's belt (Alnitak). Due to partly hazy skies, I was only able to capture an hour of Ha and OIII data which I combined with a similar amount of data taken with the same equipment (a Skywatcher 80 ED triplet refractor and ASI 533MM pro camera) back in December of 2024. The two data sets were combined and integrated in Pixinsight and processed in the HOO palette which was adjusted to produce a bi-colour and white rendition of this popular target to show the different types of gases present in this star forming region of Orion

Chris Bowden

posted by astroimager  # 7:08 PM 0 Comments

Chris Followell gave a fascinating live and Zoom talk on Robotic telescopes. He satisfactorily answered the question as to whether a user of remote, robotic telescopes is actually doing imaging. The answer is a clear yes. He explained where the remote telescopes are located and how to obtain time on them, and generally how the system works, concentrating on the Slooh system of robotic telescopes. The talk was well received and was followed by a lively question time. 

posted by astroimager  # 11:00 PM 0 Comments