The Helix nebula is like our own star the Sun, it has exhausted its fuel and is now expelling its outer layers, all that’s left of the original star is a dense white core that is exciting all the expelled dust and gas from the stellar remnant.
 
The Helix is approximately 650 light-years from Earth and is one of the closest planetary nebulae to Earth; it is sometimes refereed to the Eye of God due to its resemblance to a giant eye in the sky.
 
This image was taken with just the little Seestar S50mm telescope; I was at my Stardust Observatory at Leyburn in a very dark sky. The capture time was one and a half hours. Image was processed in Photoshop.
 
To find out more about this amazing object please go to Science at NASA at:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/explore-the-night-sky/hubble-caldwell-catalog/caldwell-63/
 
To find where the Helix Nebula is in Aquarius please go to FREE star chart:
https://freestarcharts.com/ngc-7293
​

~ Magnificent Andromeda Galaxy (M31) & it’s two satellite Galaxies M110 & M32 ~
 
This beautiful image of the magnificent Andromeda Galaxy was taken with just the little Seestar S50 telescope on the wide field setting; it’s an incredible 2.5 million light-years away from Earth!
 
If you go into the Seestar App settings you can orientate the object using the mosaic mode to fit in what you want to capture and its orientation.
 
I’m just blown away that this little telescope has captured an image like this, when I image this object usually I use my Meade 80mm refractor telescope that’s tracking on the larger Meade LX200 set up in the observatory.
 
Andromeda travels quite low in our northern sky at my observing location at 28 degrees south, I also have some high gum trees to contend with as well.
 
We have a time limit of just a couple of months as the galaxy skims low across the northern sky, November and December are the best times to capture it but by January it’s starting to descend down into the north western horizon.
 
You can still observe Andromeda in early January just after dark, but it’s now getting very low in the north western sky.
 
Images were taken with the Seestar S50mm telescope, on the new moon weekend at the end of November 2025, 2 ½ hours of images were stacked within the telescope then processed in PS. I was in a very dark sky location at my Stardust Observatory at Leyburn.
 
If you need FREE star charts of the night sky that contain so much information of the objects in those constellation then please go to freestarcharts.com at: https://freestarcharts.com/
 
Andromeda Star chart below at:
https://freestarcharts.com/andromeda
​
Messier 31
M31, also well known as the Andromeda Galaxy, is the nearest major galaxy to our own, the Milky Way.
 
Science at NASA has released incredible images of the Andromeda taken over a ten-year period with the Hubble Space telescope with links to all the new discoveries about this incredible galaxy that is much like our own. Link at:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/explore-the-night-sky/hubble-messier-catalog/messier-31/

The Andromeda galaxy holds over 1 trillion stars and has been a key to unlocking the secrets of the universe. Thanks to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, we’re now seeing Andromeda in stunning new detail, revealing its dynamic history and unique structure. Recent Hubble surveys mapped the galaxy’s entire disk—an effort spanning a decade and over 1,000 orbits—showing everything from young stars to remnants of past galactic collisions.
 
Learn how new information about Andromeda is reshaping our understanding of galactic evolution and what it reveals about the fate of our own galaxy.
 
For more information, visit https://nasa.gov/hubble.
 
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Paul Morris: Lead Producer Music Credit: “Vitava From Ma Vlast "My Country"” by Bedrich Smetana [PD] and Robert J Walsh [BMI], via First Digital Music [BMI] and Universal Production Music.

~ This is just so beautiful ~

​Take a journey across space and time through the best space images of 2025, captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble, Chandra, and other powerful observatories.
 
From newborn stars hidden inside dusty nebulae to the shattered remains of supernovae, and from distant galaxies to interstellar visitors passing through our solar system, each image reveals a different chapter of the universe’s story.
 
Webb’s infrared vision, Hubble’s clarity, and Chandra’s X-ray perspective come together to show how stars form, how galaxies evolve, and how unseen forces shape the cosmos.
 
MUSIC Alignment in Grace 3 Stereo Nuts Interstellar Alignment in Grace 2
 
https://youtu.be/MRfU9RR95A4?si=jcKqr92yuffdHrg9
​

​I managed to quickly set up the little Seestar S50 telescope just outside our cabin in town and capture this stunning comet low in the western sky.

It was not ideal conditions because of all the lights from the local hotel that was across the road…but I took the chance and I caught myself a beautiful comet :-)

​ I love the pretty green colour of the coma and its long delicate flyaway tail that stretched right up the sky. Images taken with a Seestar S50 telescope four images were stacked in DSS and very lightly processed in PS, the pretty green colour in the image is natural.

There is an excellent article from the UNSW in Australia that explains why comets heads are green by chemist Professor Timothy Schmidt, the link is at: https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2021/12/comets--heads-can-be-green--but-never-their-tails--after-90-year
​

I’m out at my Stardust Observatory for the long new Moon weekend and finally we have had a few evenings of clear sky. The red planet Mars is now in the constellation of Cancer and moving towards the Beehive cluster also known as M44.
 
I’ve taken a wide field image of the planet among the stars of Cancer using Canon 70D camera with a 70-200mm Canon Lens attached to my tracking telescope in the observatory on Sunday the 28th April at 8pm.
 
20 x 2-minute images with corresponding dark frames were captured with ISO 1250, then stacked in Deep Sky Stacker (DSS) and processed in PS.

~ Mars taken with Meade 10” Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope ~
Mars is looking very small now in the 10inch telescope, captured the planet with a ZWO ASI 120MC planetary camera with attached 3x Barlow lens.

You can just make out the polar cap at the bottom of the planet and some dark marking can still be seen on the surface.
 
Information on my Stellarium App states that Mars currently is 6.70” in diameter is at 0.90% phase and its distance is now 1.40AU. Stellarium App at: https://stellarium-labs.com/stellarium-mobile-plus/
 
I use this FREE App all the time for my sky observation, its excellent!

This image was taken with the little Seestar S50 smart telescope when I was at my Stardust Observatory on the evening of the 28th April 2025.
 
I thought it would be fun to see what this little telescope could do in a really dark sky and I was most impressed! Not only does it show the subtle colours of the stars if you look closely into the image you can see a tiny spiral galaxy designation as UGC 4526, its magnitude is a remarkable 14.06…now that’s very faint.
 
It’s estimated that this star cluster is about 600 light years away from Earth.
 
For more information about the Beehive Cluster (M44) please go to the link below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_(constellation)

We had a lovely clear evening here on the Gold Coast last night and just before I went to bed I peeked outside and saw brilliant Jupiter among the stars of Taurus (The Bull) with Orion riding above…. it looked just so lovely!
 
My picture may seem strange for people who live in the northern hemisphere because here in the land down under (Australia) we see these constellations rising and travelling across the sky upside down! Not only that, everything that rises in the east heads over to the northern sky…not the southern sky like it does for you :-D
 
Image was taken with a Canon 70D camera and Tamron 18-400mm lens, 10-second exposure with ISO1000 at 10.30pm on the 7th December 2024.

~ Andromeda Galaxy (M31) 2.5 million light years away from Earth image taken at my Stardust Observatory ~
 
For the month of October our club members came out to Leyburn to hunt down and take pictures of the magnificent Andromeda Galaxy.
 
I’ve decided to join in and took this image with my Canon 70D camera and Canon 70-200mm F2.8 lens. I took 35 x 2 minutes images with ISO2000 and corresponding dark frames, then stacked them in Deep Sky Stacker (DSS) and processed in PS CS4.
 
This is a wider field of view than with my Meade 80mm refractor telescope, as I wanted to capture some of the brighter stars around the galaxy.
 
Andromeda is very low in our northern sky and we only have a very limited time in the months of October and November to capture this magnificent galaxy.
 
To find out more about this stunning galaxy go the link below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_Galaxy

I had three perfect nights under the stars at my Stardust Observatory at Leyburn in early September 2024.
​This is a very dark sky site in western Queensland.
 
As I process the images I’ll post them onto my website beginning with capturing the faint Cat’s Paw and Lobster nebulae in the area around the sting of Scorpius.
 
At this time of the year Scorpius and Sagittarius and the whole band of the Milky Way is at the zenith, it gives you plenty of time to take lots of images.
 
For this weekend, I decided to do just wide field images of the Milky Way using a Canon 70D camera and Canon 70-200 f2.8 lens. The camera was attached to the tracking Meade 10inch telescope that was polar aligned in the observatory.
 
Most of the images were an exposure time of 2-3 minutes and ISO2000. I captured at least 20-30 frames and also corresponding dark frames for stacking. Images were stacked in Deep Sky Stacker (DSS) and processed in PS.
 
When looking at the star rich areas of the Milky Way you come across some very dark patches among the stars. I have since found out they are called Barnard Objects after a man called Edward E Barnard who saw them as ‘holes in the heavens’.
 
They are dark nebulae where so much interstellar gas and dust obscures the light from the stars that are behind it, it’s very similar to what you see with the Coalsack Nebula near the Southern Cross (Crux).
 
I have been coming across these objects when doing wide field images of the milky way for some time now and have been intrigued by them, so from now on I’ll try and number them on my images.
 
To find out more about these dark objects please go to the Harvard Education website link: Dark Markings in the Sky
https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~agoodman/astro208/articles/Barnard.html
 
(Please note, unfortunately a lot of the links are now not in use, I’ve only included the link because it gives the general information)
 
This is another very useful and excellent website where you can download a chart to use with your images at:
https://exhibit-archive.library.gatech.edu/barnard/
​

Andromeda Galaxy is the most spectacular spiral galaxy in the night sky; it’s so large and bright that it can be seen even with the naked eye in a dark sky. Its distance is 2.5 million light years away and is over twice as large as our own Milky Way galaxy with a diameter of 260,000 light-years across.
 
You can capture M31 with any size instrument, from camera and lenses to small to middle size telescopes. But be mindful as its size projected on the sky is about 6 moon diameters, so larger aperture telescopes are not recommended if you want to capture the whole galaxy.
 
I took this image at my Stardust Observatory using a Meade 80mm refractor with a focal reducer and Canon 6D Mark11 full frame camera, 30x3 minute exposures with ISO2500. 20x3 minute darks and flats were also captured and stacked in DSS and processed in PS.
 
For more information on this amazing stellar object please go to the links below:
https://lowell.edu/views-from-mars-hill-andromeda-galaxy/
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/galaxy-next-door/

 Starchart Credit: International Astronomical Union “The Constellations”
https://www.iau.org/public/themes/constellations/
​

This galaxy is known as the Silver Coin, or Sculptor Galaxy, it’s approximately 11 million light-years away and is the brightest member of the Sculptor group of galaxies.
 
NGC 253 was discovered by Caroline Herschel, the sister of William Herschel on the 23 September 1783 with an excellent small Newtonian telescope of 27 inches, more information at: http://www.messier.seds.org/xtra/ngc/n0253.html
 
Measuring 70,000 light years across, the Sculptor Galaxy is known as a starburst galaxy for its current high rate of star formation, one result of which is its superwind, a stream energetic material spewing out from the center of the galaxy out into space.
 
More information at:
https://www.constellation-guide.com/sculptor-galaxy-ngc-253/
 
Images taken at my Stardust Observatory at Leyburn in September with a Meade 80mm refractor telescope and Canon 6D Mark 11 camera, 30x 3 minute subs with darks plus flats, with ISO 2500. Images were stacked in DSS and processed in PS.

~ International Astronomical Union (IAU) constellations ~
https://www.iau.org/public/themes/constellations/