The Sun looked very nice late yesterday afternoon with quite a lot of dark filaments on the surface. There were only a couple of small prominences around the limb.

Images were taken with a Lunt 60mm (PT) solar telescope and Canon 700D camera :-)

~ Antares, Rho Ophiuchi region and Blue Horsehead Nebula IC 4592 in Scorpius & Ophiuchus ~
 
The Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex is one of the nearest star forming regions to the Sun. It is composed of emission, reflection and dark nebulae; the brightest parts of the cloud complex include the nebulae IC 4604, IcC4603 and IC 4605.
 
IC 4604, also known, as the Rho Ophiuchi Nebula is a reflection nebula illuminated by the star Rho Ophiuchi itself, which is located in the constellation of Ophiuchus, the Serpent Bearer.
 
Antares is the alpha star in Scorpius, just one and a half degrees away from Antares is the globular star cluster M4.
 
Images taken with Canon 6D Mark 11 camera and Canon f2.8 70-200mm lens piggybacked on tracking telescope. Both images; subs 25x3 minutes darks 15x3 minutes, ISO2500. Stacked in DSS, processed in PS.

~ NGC 6334 Cats Paw & NGC 6357 Lobster Nebulae in a sea of stars in the tail of Scorpius ~
 
This is a wide field star rich image around the sting area of Scorpius near the bright stars Shaula and Lesath. The Cats Paw nebula is also know as the Bear Claw nebula and is an emission nebula about 50 light years across at a distance of 5,500 light years from Earth.
 
It is one of the nearest H II regions that’s a very active stellar nursery and it really does look like a Cats Paw stamped on the sky, I can also see a little hedgehog on his back smiling at me :-)
 
British astronomer John Herschel discovered the nebula in 1837 while observing the southern skies at Cape of Good Hope in South Africa using one of the largest telescopes available at the time.
 
The other nebula close by is NGC 6357 known as the Lobster Nebula or War and Peace nebula that is another emission nebula about 5,900 light years away, it hosts several massive young stars clusters and is a prominent star forming region with proto-stars embedded within the dark disks of gas.
 
Along with all the rich star and dust fields other stellar objects can also be seen, with the large M6 star cluster in the top left hand corner.
 
I’m really getting into discovering the Barnard dark nebulae embedded throughout the Milky Way and have marked a few on the Cats Paw image.
 
This image was taken at my Stardust Observatory in August 2023 using a Canon 6D Mark 11 camera with a Canon F2.8 70-200 lens attached. The camera was being attached to the top of a tracking Meade LX200 10inch telescope.

Saturn is now nearing opposition which means the planet is closest to us in its orbit about the Sun and is best placed for viewing in the night sky, it rises in the east at the same time as the Sun sets so can be seen all night long…time to get those telescopes out and see the most beautiful planet in our solar system.

Saturn’s magnificent rings are now closing up and tilting away from us as viewed from Earth.

Images were taken at my Stardust Observatory with a Meade 10inch LX200 telescope and ZWO ASI 120 mc planetary camera with 3x Barlow lens attached, AVI movies captured and processed in RegiStax6 and PS.

To find out more information and star maps about this opposition of Saturn please go to Earth Sky article:  
​Saturn at opposition – and brightest – on August 26-27 at:
https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/saturn-at-opposition-closest-brightest-best/

These are my first images of Jupiter for 2023 with two of the Galilean moons Io and Ganymede close by.
 The sky was quite hazy but there’s still plenty of time to capture better images, as the planet does not come to opposition until November.
​
 Images were taken at my Stardust Observatory with a Meade 10inch LX200 telescope and ZWO ASI 120 mc planetary camera with 3x Barlow lens attached, AVI movies captured and processed in RegiStax6 and PS.

~ Super Moons beautiful ‘Glitter Path’ reflected on Tranquillity Lake ~

This was the beautiful view of the rising full super moon on our lake with its very long glitter path that was shimmering its moonlight all the way to touch me…Wow!
 
A super moon is just a term to reflect that it’s closer to Earth in its orbit than usual, we are lucky enough to have two super Moons this month with another full Moon on the 31st August.  This second full Moon is called a blue Moon as two full moons in a month only happen once in a blue Moon.
 
It's nice to see we are having a bit of fun with astronomy.
 
The Stardust Junior Astronomy Club kids just loved learning all about the Super and Blue Moon this month with there astronomy session, they will be on the lookout for all the different phases to enjoy.
 
 
Image taken with a Canon G7x Mark11 camera on manual focus, one-second exposure and ISO200.

Yay! It finally cleared up late yesterday afternoon so I could have a look at the Sun and what did I see but three very thin active jet prominences shooting out from the eastern limb. It was quite fascinating to watch but after about 20 minutes they died down and faded away!
 
There was also quite a large active prominence on the lower western limb and that very large crescent shape filament on the solar surface is an interesting feature to observe :-)
 
Images were captured on the 28th July 2023 with Lunt 60mm PT solar scope and Canon 700D camera with 2x Barlow lens attached. 20 images were captured one set for the solar disc and one set for the faint prominences and combined in PS CS4.

The Sun looked awesome with these two large sunspots AR3372 & AR 3363 on the solar surface. There was another active region coming into view on the eastern limb that’s now designated AR 3373.

Images were taken with an Orion 80mm refractor telescope and a Canon 700D camera, I used  a 2x Barlow lens for the full disc and 5x Barlow lens for the close up view of the sunspots. 

​A glass solar filter was attached to the telescope lens for safe imaging and viewing of the Sun :-)

We had a lovely clear sunny day today and I managed to capture some pictures of this very dark inky black sunspot that looks like the shape of an old fashion keyhole, I wonder what it’s going to do over the next couple of days!
 
Images taken on the 8th July 2023 with Canon 70D camera plus a Canon 100-400mm lens fitted with a 2x teleconverter lens with a glass solar filter attached. Twenty images captured with an exposure time 1/500th second and ISO200, stacked in Registak6 and processed in PS.

Solar observing is so thrilling at the moment you never know what you are going to see, this afternoon I saw beautiful prominences all around the limb, sunspots sprinkled all over the surface and some lovely wiggly filaments…. what more could you ask for with our Amazing Sun :-)
 
Images captured with a Lunt 60mm PT solar scope and a Canon 700D camera with a 2x Barlow lens attached. 25 images were captured for each set, one set for the solar disc and one set for the faint prominences and combined in PS CS4.