This beautiful face-on spiral galaxy is situated approximately 54m light-years from our Milky Way in Coma Berenices on the outer edge of the Virgo cluster of galaxies. Also visible are NGC4312 (bottom left) and NGC4322 and NGC4328 (above and to the right).

Possibly the most beautiful galaxy visible in the Northern hemisphere. I decided to reimage this in monochrome with additional weighting for the Hydrogen Alpha channel to highlight the star-forming regions.

Spring is the optimum time to observe this beautiful edge-on spiral galaxy. It is situated approximately 40m light-years from our Milky Way and measures 100,000 light-years from end to end. This evening the sky was remarkably transparent and stable which gave good guiding and generally excellent image quality. It is surprising how little integration time has given a worthwhile image (the HA element is over a quarter of the total time and does not represent a very large visible element in the…

A spectacular conjunction from 1st April 2025.

Imaged over the course of three nights where the seeing was the best for several months. M81 was high in the sky thus avoiding (though no totally) the negative effect of the ever-worsening light pollution. I included a lot of time on the Hydrogen Alpha channel to enhance the star-forming regions in the spiral arms.

Orion will soon be gone from the sky for another season. I wanted to have a new attempt to produce a satisfactory photogrpah of the bright star-forming region around the Trapezium in the Great Orion nebula which is so bright that detail is very easily lost to over-exposure. The second challenge is to control this while simultaneously not losing signal in the much dimmer surrounding nebulosity. HDR methods are required so I used a series of 10-second exposures for the heart and 60 seconds for the…

    Integration time (running total):
    * OSC 85 X 120s (170m)
    * Total: 2h50m
    
    Integration time target
    * Target: 7 hours
    * Progress: 40%

Seeing index: Good (3)
Jet stream: Poor (30 m/s)
Transparency: Good (3)

    Integration time (running total):
    * S 57 X 300s (285m)
    * H 54 X 300s (270m)
    * 0 51 X 300s (255m)
    * Total: 13h30m

Notes

Imaged over the course of three nights and processed using the Hubble palette.

    Integration time (running total):
    * S 54 X 300s (270m)
    * H 53 X 300s (265m)
    * 0 51 X 300s (255m)
    * Total: 13h10m

Seeing index: OK (3)
Jet stream: Poor (40 m/s)
Transparency: Good (4)

Seeing index: 3
Transparency: 2
Jet stream: Poor
Moon phase: 18%

    Integration time (running total):
    * L 20 X 120s (40m)
    * R 18 X 120 (36m)
    * G 18 X 120 (36m)
    * B 16 X 120 (32m)
    * Total: 2h24m

     Integration time target
    * Target: 10 hours
    * L 75 X 120s (150m)
    * R 75 X 120s (150m)
    * G 75 X 120s (150m)
    * B 75 X 120s (150m)
    * Progress: 22%

3rd January 2025

Seeing index: OK (4)
Jet stream: Poor (40 m/s)
Transparency: Good (4)