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Comets like NEOWISE don’t come along often, so it’s worth making the extra effort to get a better view. My views to the north are hampered by the bright city lights of York, so set off at midnight to my nearest dark sky site in the Yorkshire Wolds. The elevated view...

Details: Nikon D5500, Nikon 180mm f2.8 @ 180mm/f2.8. Total of 13 minutes exposure time (39 x 20 seconds) at iso 200. Stacked with Deep Sky Stacker and tracked with AstroTrac TT320X-AG Comet Neowise C/2020 F3 taken last night at 1:45am local time. I haven’t seen such an...

I finally had a chance to photograph Comet Catalina after what seems like a solid month of cloud. By chance this happened to be a night when the comet passed close to the Pinwheel galaxy (M101) forming a brief but beautiful conjunction. Catalina is already an attractive comet,...

The Pacman nebula is named after the classic 80’s arcade game character, but to me it looks much more like an angler fish! The little nebula (officially named NGC 281) sits alongside the bright yellow star Scheder, inside the familiar W constellation of Cassiopeia. A...

The ragged remains of a 7000 year old supernova explosion make up the Veil nebula in the constellation of Cygnus. A 72 minute exposure (144 x 30 seconds) over two nights was enough to pick up some of the intricate details of this huge and complex structure. The Western Veil or...

Cutting through the Milky Way, the constellation of Cygnus is home to some of the best sights in the night sky; the North America Nebula, the Dumbell nebula and another one I plan on tackling soon, the Vail nebula. At the heart of the constellation, bright star Gamma Cygni (Sadr)...

The short nights of spring reveal a view unobstructed by the Milky Way, with slim pickings for wide-angle astrophotography. But there are some distant giants to be seen. The Pinwheel galaxy is one of them. The massive galaxy stretches 180,000 light-years edge to edge. Despite...