Last night I managed to get another 11 x 20-minute subs on this region to go with the 7 x 20-minute subs I got a few days ago.  This shows Coddington’s nebula – which is actually an irregular galaxy – and towards the bottom left is a large red Carbon star V Y Ursae Majoris.  The star’s name gives it away, these are to be found in Ursa Major.  Blazing Moon last night didn’t help with trying to improve the dataset – but even so there are traces of the Integrated Flux Nebula coming through which is to be expected as it is pretty dense in this region (close to M81 & M82).

With the 200mm/M26C Trius combo in portrait mode I managed to grab 10 x 4-minutes of the Castor/Pollux region after 3-hours of setting up (focus mainly) in the freezing cold.  The chip turned out to be not flat for this image, so the next morning I brought it indoors and flattened it pretty precisely.  Now waiting for the next clear night to see how well (or not) I’ve done.  Would like to grab a 2-framer of the M44 region if at all possible.

Should have done this one Friday night when the Moon was a little closer to the planets but didn’t manage it.  Using the Canon 5D MkII and a 50mm prime lens I managed this shot, ISO100, 10-seconds, f#5.6

This image was shown on Meridian weather at 6:30 p.m. on 23/02/2015

Not a lot of colour in M106 itself  But plenty in the stars  The Sky 90s always seem to be able to grab star colour very nicely.

24 x 20-minute subs using the mini-WASP array.  And yes – that star in the centre was used for focusing and guiding

The cloud didn’t finally shift until 9:00 p.m. last night – but when it did we were left with a pitch black, clear, Moonless night like I haven’t seen for about a year.

After a couple of stalls where the object I wanted to image was behind trees, I settled down on the M106 region with the mini-WASP array and 20-minute subs.  I needed to refocus the refractors after an hour but in the end got 24 x 20-minute high-quality subs which I will enjoy looking at today.  Shame I went to bed at 1:30 a.m. as it appears to have stayed clear all night.  Need to get more automation sorted out!

Managed to get the mini-WASP array set up early last night, imaging by 6:10 p.m., just as well as clouded out by 8:10 p.m.

Set up on Carbon star SAO 77516 in Taurus, was going to do M1 but then saw there was a Carbon star nearby and went for that instead.

30 x 10-minute subs – plenty for a star field shot

Here is the full frame C W Leonis image with a magnified insert.

Managed to get 12 x 20-minute subs on this one from the mini-WASP array late last night.

This is possibly the brightest star at 5um wavelength in the galaxy – so I wasn’t actually expecting to see ANYTHING at visible wavelengths.

But there it is  Carbon star C W Leonis or IRC +10216 – a pretty unimpressive looking image, and possible the one I am the most pleased with.

There is a 4-page article in the February 2015 issue of Astronomy Now on the mini-WASP array at the New Forest Observatory.

To save trawling through the last 2 years of development on this site, buy the Feb 2015 issue of Astronomy Now and get the whole story in one place

Taken on the evening of 16/01/2015 using the mini-WASP array and 2-minute subs (around 90 in total).

Not very impressive and I won’t spend any more valuable imaging time on this one.  I was lulled into a false sense of security with my earlier Hyperstar work on comets where a 4-minute sub brought out even the faintest detail.  With the array at f#4.5 it is asking a bit much to see the extent of the very faint tail with only a 2-minute sub.  The comet is moving quite quickly so I didn’t want to use longer subs as there would have been more comet movement in that time leading to a soft image.  Also – the VERY long comet tail means a multi frame mosaic if I were to use the Hyperstar III.  Not out of the question, but a bit of a pain to organise.  I may leave it at this for comet Lovejoy C/2014 Q2 and enjoy other people’s better efforts.