A break in the clouds on the shortest day of the year was all the excuse I needed for a first light image with the new William Optics ZenithStar 73 II APO telescope. I originally had my heart set on a RedCat 51 250mm/f4.9 triplet. But having experienced what the ZS73 is capable... Read More

I dusted off my old Nikkor 180mm lens to test out a newly acquired Optolong L-eNhance narrowband filter for a widefield shot of the Heart and Soul nebula. The faint emission nebulae being the perfect target to test the filter’s light pollution suppressing abilities. In... Read More

Three hand a half hours of imaging of the Great Orion nebula (M42) over three nights. One of the brightest nebulae in the night sky is bright enough to shine through the glare of the city lights. Given the level of light pollution and lack of any light pollution filter, I’m... Read More

The plan was to photograph either the Heart or the Soul nebula last night. But with a pub quiz calling, I ran out of time to find and compose the targets before leaving. Even at 400mm some targets can be surprisingly difficult to find!.. So I resorted to shooting the Pacman... Read More

I did some more tinkering in Photoshop with the North America nebula data I captured the other night. I wanted to see if a version of the iconic Hubble palette would be possible, despite not using narrowband data. With a fair bit of trial and error with colour channel swapping,... Read More

Yesterday evening I set out to a dark sky location in the middle of the North York Moors, determined to make the most of a break in the relentless clouds. The crystal clear skies making the one hour drive well worth it. The images I was able to capture without the glare are far... Read More

A short break in the clouds was enough to tempt me outside with a plan to capture the Bubble nebula (NGC 7635) in Cassiopeia. I was only able to capture half an hour of data before the high cloud became too thick to continue. But the final stacked image came out a lot better than... Read More

Last night I decided to astro modify my trusty D5500. Up until now it had remained completely stock, doing a great job for regular photography and astro work. But by replacing the hot mirror with a UV/IR cut filter, the sensor crucially receives around 5x as much signal in the... Read More

As summer turns to autumn, one of the jewels of the northern skies moves directly overhead in the evening hours, making it the perfect target. The great galaxy in Andromeda almost fills the entire frame at 400mm with the Tamron lens and the D5500’S crop sensor. With polar... Read More

Yet another big improvement on my old attempt at capturing the cluster, way back in 2014. It’s encouraging how well the AstroTrac performs at longer focal lengths without the need for autoguiding. The ability to capture two minute sub exposures at 400mm gives a huge jump in... Read More