~ 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

After a whole night of observing in my observatory, I opened the door and looked to the east at the pretty dawn sky and saw a very faint smudge; I asked myself could that be the comets tail?
 
All I had with me was my little Canon G7x Mark 11 point and shoot camera so I rested it on the car bonnet and took some images…Wow, yes there it was!
 
To my delight you could clearly make out this huge faint gas tail going right up the horizon, I just wish I had come out earlier and taken some images, but that’s all right I’ve managed to capture it anyway :-)
 
This Canon camera is just amazing for night-time shots, because its lens goes down to F1.8; the settings for these photos were 5-second exposures and ISO3200. I always use manual focus for infinity that way the stars are in focus.
 
I’m at my dark sky site at my Stardust Observatory in Leyburn, QLD, Australia.

~ Tiny one day old crescent Moon between the gum trees in western sky on the 4th October 2024 ~
  
We arrived at my Stardust Observatory on Friday the 4th October for a long weekend under the stars. It was new Moon yesterday the 3rd October and I was on the look out for the one day old tiny crescent Moon.
 
At 6.30pm I found it very low in the western sky near the treetops, I had to go right back into the field to capture it and I did…Yay!
 
The sky is very clear and steady and it looks like it’s going to be a stunning weekend, some members from our club SAS are out here too and I’ve taken a couple of photos of them all set up on the field.
Good luck everyone tonight I hope you all get some great images :-)
 
These images were taken with a Canon 70D camera plus a Tamron 18-400mm lens on a tripod, using ISO800 with 1.5-second exposures.

~ SAS members getting there telescopes ready for a night under the stars at Leyburn ~
 ~ 4th October 2024 ~
https://www.sas.org.au

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/
​

~ Parade of planets in September 2024, Venus, Mars, Jupiter & Saturn with its moons Titan and Rhea  ~
(Planets to scale size)
 
September is the month for a parade of planets in the night sky, Venus is shinning brilliantly low in the west, Saturn is high up at the zenith and Jupiter and Mars are in the early morning sky.
 
I’ve made up a photomontage; the planets are real size in relation to one another as I used the same imaging setup for all objects. Venus was nearly a full phase but being very low in the sky there was a lot of turbulence.

​Mars was seen as a gibbous phase with a bright polar region but no distinct detail on surface as yet as it still too far away from us.
 
Saturn’s rings are now closing up, or I should say, the rings are nearly edge on as viewed from Earth, you can see two of the Saturnian moons Titan and Rhea in the image.
 
These images were taken at my Stardust Observatory on the first weekend in September; the sky conditions were not favourable as the atmosphere was very unsteady but I took the pictures anyway :-)
 
I used a 10inch Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope, ZWO ASI120MC S Planetary camera with 3x Barlow lens attached. AVI movies were captured and stacked in Registak6 and processed in PS.

After taking images of all the planets with the Meade 10inch telescope, I attached my Canon 70D camera with a Canon 70-200mm f2.8 lens to the top of the telescope and tracked the night sky.

​I then took some wide field image of Saturn among the faint stars of Aquarius to show its position among the stars.
 
I’ve also added the image of Saturn that I took earlier in the evening through the telescope to show what you can see in the telescope…Saturn’s beautiful rings are now nearly edge on and will disappear next year as viewed from Earth.
 
This event only happens twice as Saturn orbits the Sun in its nearly 30-year orbit, so we only see the rings edge on every fourteen and a half years!

It’s Saturday the 31st August 2024 and I’m finally out at my Stardust Observatory at Leyburn for a weekend under the heavens :-)
 
The sky is perfectly clear, as I look to the western sky brilliant Venus can be seen going down low in the sunset coloured sky…it's very pretty.
 
I will try and capture an image of Venus with my Meade 10inch telescope tomorrow night but I think the turbulent might be too much with the atmospheric conditions…but I will try!
 
My image was taken with a Canon 70D camera and Tamron 18-400mm lens on a tripod at f4.5, with a 2-second exposure and ISO800 at 6.28pm.

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/

~ Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) Planetary nebula in Aquarius 655 light years away ~
 
About 10,600 years ago a star like ours exploded and this is what it looks like today…awesome isn’t it, but there’s no need to worry as our life giving star still has 4.5 billion years to go!
 
The Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) was formed when a massive red giant star exploded, resulting in a white dwarf star forming at the nebula centre, expanding band of gases and dust can be seen surrounding the whole area as the star shed its outer layers into space.
 
The Helix Nebula is the closest planetary nebula to Earth and can be found very easily at the moment in a dark sky with binoculars or telescope in the constellation of Aquarius.
 
Image taken at my Stardust Observatory with Meade 10inch LX200 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope and Canon 6D Mark11 camera attached. 35X3 minute images captured with dark frames and ISO 2500, stacked in DSS and processed in PS.
 
German astronomer Karl Ludwig Harding discovered the Helix Nebula in about 1824. It is estimated to be about 10,600 years old when the explosion was created and the star could have had planets, moons, comets and other celestial objects orbiting around it just like our Earth.
 
To read more about this spectacular celestial object please go to the links below:
https://theplanets.org/nebula-facts/helix-nebula/

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