I had a great time there and would like to say a big thank you guys and I really appreciate the hospitality

The talk before mine was by Larry Mitchell from the Texas Star Party – yes he had flown in from the States to talk to the Webb Society.  Absolutely mind blowing stuff (even though it was for observational people and not imagers )  These guys go out to visually observe the really faint stuff right at the limits and way off the catalogues.  Plenty of objects I’ve never heard of before (certainly not seen), and a really inspirational talk for imagers as well as observers.  Thank you for a really great talk Larry!!!!  Next time maybe we will get the full 1 and a half hour’s worth

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

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

Yes – another single star picture for this month’s Image of the Month.  Polaris, the Pole star, the North star, Alpha Ursa Minor – the Navigator’s friend.  I like this region of space because 1)  It is rarely imaged and 2)  It is difficult to take deep images in this region due to the vagaries of the good old GEM.  Quite a few faint fuzzies in the background of this one, and many of them are closer to the Pole than well-known Polarissima Borealis.  The green cross-hairs at the 2 O’clock position from Polaris indicate the position of the North Celestial Pole, as you can see, it’s actually quite some way from Polaris.  Finally, yes, if you think you can see some “cloud” in there – this is a touch of the Integrated Flux Nebula (IFN).

I can only imagine that I missed this because I had been working over the allotment all day and got back too shattered to even bother turning the computer on.  Still at least over 100 runner bean plants and over 300 spuds went in ready for this year

Thank you Jim at EPOD for continuing to publish my work and my apologies for not acknowledging sooner

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).

For the second test of the newly aligned M25C camera on the Hyperstar III I chose the Stephenson 1 region of Lyra.  Although I didn’t have the optics spot-on they were pretty close and I’m quite pleased with the resulting image.  When I spend a little more time getting the collimation just right we’ll be back to the earlier high-quality Hyperstar III imagery we’re used to seeing

Recently imaged M57 as a test-shot for the recently flattened M25C chip.  This is 14 x 5-minute subs with a blazing nearly full Moon overhead.  Looks pretty reasonable considering