Comprising many hours of RGB and H-alpha exposure, as well as many hours in processing all this data in a consistent way, the Parker/Carboni imaging team bring you a very busy region in the Constellation Cepheus – centred on the well known Cave nebula.  In this image you can see a lot of emission nebulosity, many dark nebulae, and dotted around the place several little reflection (blue) nebulae.  I think enough data has now been taken of this region for me to tick this one off the list and to move on to something new.

It is extraordinary that by chance I imaged this one almost at the peak of its maximum and minimum about 18 months apart.  I was saying recently that I don’t believe in coincidence – I’ve just changed my mind on that! 

This star varies between something like magnitude 7 (brightest) and magnitude 14-15 (dimmest).  I had absolutely no idea that stars varied over this enormous range – thank you Roger Pickard at the BAA for educating me

Click on the image below for a larger version showing the “flashing” variable star.

This is a 6-page interview and makes the magazine worth purchasing   

Our thanks to Eddie and the rest of the team at Practical Astronomer for taking the time to interview us, it was a great experience.

The images below are the same as some of those in the article

The constellation of Cygnus the Swan, also referred to as the Northern Cross, is now nearly overhead for viewers in the Northern Hemisphere around 8:00 p.m. The stars composing Cygnus reside along the spine of our galaxy — the Milky Way. Surrounding the central star in Cygnus, Sadr (upper left center), is the massive emission nebula IC1318 (in red), also called the Gamma Cygni nebulosity. A sea of just the color red can be boring to the eye, but here notable blue gems, including the reflection nebula NGC6914, add substantially to the beauty of this image

This is a Sky 90 image taken using the old SXV-H9C camera.  This image represents approximately 4 hours of RGB data using 3 minute subs and 4 hours of H-alpha using 6 minute subs.  Just one tiny mistake in the description – Sadr isn’t in the image

Tom Price wrote the article and he suggested the highlights: it is amazing what you can achieve from your garden [and we are really pleased with the results we are getting] and anyone can do this with very basic kit and a bit of patience.

However, Tom obviously got some of the information from an earlier interview I did with the Daily Mail.  The main problem I have with the article is that he mentions the amount of £10,000!  Well, yeah, I probably have spent just under that amount over the last three years but that covers just about everything over that period.

The value of the equipment that I use is not particularily high.  In fact, I think one of the most expensive items was the concrete base to bolt the telescope onto!

As most of you know, you can spend just about any amount you like on the equipment but in reality you can start getting great images with relatively low cost gear.  We will be posting some “getting started” articles in the near future so make sure you keep an eye out for those.  Also, we cover how to set up and take images like ours in the book “Making Beautiful Deep-Sky Images”.

The picture in the article is one of our images of M31 – The Andromeda Galaxy [shown here because it is a great picture!]

This is one of my top ten favourite images and shows just how far really have come in two years (and maybe just how far we have to go!).