Managed to get 2 hours of 10-minute subs using the Hyperstar III on 26/01/2012.  In fact I got 4 hours worth of subs but didn’t realise the bottom of the image was being clipped by the trees over the back, so now I know how far south I can image, and it isn’t much below the bottom of M42 itself   So things like the Sombrero and NGC2170 are out of the question which is a shame.  Back to NGC1999.  Obviously this object needs a LOT more data, and the usual 8 hours total exposure time would seem to be about right.  Not sure if I will go back to this one to get more data or not.  In the much larger uncropped image there are also a pile of geostationary satellites, as much as a problem as the satellites that sit in the middle of the Witch Head nebula.  I can always image something else later in the evening of it remains clear I suppose but getting 8 hours of data in 2 hour chunks is a bit wearisome.  Might just move onto something higher up where I can get 4 to 6 hours in one go - we’ll see.

I sent off an image of the Horsehead nebula to be made into a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle.  Here it is freshly opened on a big piece of card.  I don’t think I made the best choice of deep-sky object for this exercise, too much dark stuff all around the edge which will be a pain.  Should have done something with structure throughout like the Belt & Horsehead or better still the Cone nebula region.  Maybe next time.

The same final process twiddles carried out on the Registar composite image of the Monkey Head nebula

Carried out some final (?) processing twiddles on the Rosette composite – think it’s just about there now

Handled the old data slightly differently in this Registar composite reprocess.

Registar was used to align old Rosette and Monkey Head nebula data with that taken recently to form a composite image with even more data   Here are the results.

I recently gave a talk in Lymington on photography in general (not just the deep-sky stuff).  A number of people asked about purchasing images – and the price.  Go to “Image Gallery” click on “owning” or “purchasing” and you will see the sizes available and the prices for astronomical pronts.  For examples of photomicrography, macro or high-speed flash work go to the Scientific Artist web page and choose your image – pricing for prints is the same (size for size) as astronomical prints.

One of the reddest naked eye stars in the sky this is 119 Tauri in the constellation Taurus – and it has a nice companion blue star for some dramatic colour contrast.  Taken on the clear Moonless evening of 16th January 2012 with the Hyperstar III using 22 subs at 3-minutes per sub.

A beautiful clear Moonless night last night – absolutely perfect for deep-sky imaging.  The Hyperstar III was on the case again, armed with PERFECT collimation!  Here we have the Rosette nebula in Monoceros, 27 subs at 500 seconds per sub.

A reprocess and crop of the previous image.