Not having the day job has given me a new imaging experience – the ability to image during June  With the day job I used to give up imaging half way through May (if not earlier) due to the shortening evenings.  Last night I started setting up at 11:30 p.m. and finished imaging this region in Cygnus at 2:00 a.m. just as the clouds started to roll in from the SW.  Also had a good view of the ISS and ATV4 earlier on in the evening – so a pretty good night all round.

This image shows a region in Cygnus with a nice pair of Carbon stars, some nice faint nebulosity (hard not to find some emission nebulosity in Cygnus) and the stars 30, 31 & 32 Cygni in the centre of the frame.  I took 13 x 10-minute subs using all 3 scopes and M26C cameras, but this is just the Sky 90 data.  Excellent seeing conditions last night.

Managed to grab 7 x 10 minute subs on all 3 mini-WASP cameras before the cloud I had been watching finally arrived from France.  Glad really as it meant I could have an early 12:30 a.m. night.

This is open cluster NGC 6971 in Lyra – very faint as you can see.  Why bother imaging such a faint cluster?  See the nice bright red star at the 1 O’Clock position?  Yep – another Carbon star, U Lyrae

Last night it was beautifully clear and Moonless and was probably one of the best imaging runs I’ve ever had.  Apart from the highly anti-social hours of course as I couldn’t start imaging much before 11:00 p.m. which meant shutting up shop around 2:00 a.m. more from tiredness than practical necessity.  Anyway, grumbling aside, I decided to go for a pair of Carbon stars which lie just to the west of the recently imaged Stephenson 1 open cluster.  Incredibly the Carbon star on the right in this image  has a B-V index of 5.16 – absolutely incredible!

I have now fitted the Canon 5D MkII to the top of the array so if we get yet another clear night tonight (that will be something like 5 or 6 in a row) then I’ll go for another ultra-wide-field with the 100mm macro lens.

The best laid plans of mice and men

I had an electric focuser lying around so with a pulley and timing belt from Radiospares I put together an electric focuser rig for the Canon 5D MkII and the 100mm macro lens that took the mega-wide-field Virgo/Coma galaxies shot.  If I find there’s mileage in this approach I will invest in a prime 200mm Canon lens which has a 72mm diameter lens (and I have an IDAS filter for this lens size).

A recent Noel Carboni process of mostly mini-WASP test data (I used one scope for imaging whilst trying to set up the other two scopes).  This is Polaris the alpha star in Ursa Minor.  Although it looks like a single bright star it has two close companions and two more distant companions – it is also a Cepheid variable!  The green cross hairs at the 2 O’clock position from Polaris show the position of the celestial pole, the point which all the stars appear to rotate around.

A few weeks ago I was scrolling through the constellation Leo using “the Sky 6″ planetarium program when an amazing numerical asterism flashed into view.  It looked quite unreal and I wondered if it would look as impressive in the flesh.  We haven’t exactly been blessed with much in the way of decent imaging weather lately, so impatient to see what this region of Leo looked like I downloaded the DSS data for the area.  Yep – it was every bit as impressive as it looked on the Sky 6.  So now it’s playing the waiting game, waiting for some clear sky.  Unbelievably, last night there was a 1-hour break in the clouds.  I have never moved so fast, nor been so excited about taking a deep-sky image before – I really wanted this one.  And I got it   O.K. so it’s not deep enough to show the faint fuzzies in the background, and there’s not enough subs to really clean up the background noise either – but it’s still one of my favourite images of all time

Noel Carboni combined the Hyperstar III and mini-WASP data for this image.

Managed to get out for just a few minutes last night and as Leo was in a good position I focused up on Regulus and let the mini-WASP do its thing.  Rather disturbing news when I processed the data this morning, looks like we have some unwelcome visitors right on our doorstep

Noel Carboni processed the recent Tania Australis data, and as you can see, he made a much better job of it than me

Managed a full half-hour of imaging using 3-minute subs and all three cameras on the mini-WASP array last night.  Nice bright red star Tania Australis and nearby spiral galaxy NGC3184 in Ursa Major were the objects of attention.  Need a lot more time and some longer subs on this interesting area, lots of background faint fuzzies to be had as well.  Tania Borealis lies in the frame above this one and I’d like to get that as well to create a nice two-framer of this region.  But with the weather we’ve had here over the last 4-months I’m not holding my breath.