This image is made with equal numbers of short and long exposures, the short exposures made specifically to retain more detail in the bright core of the galaxy which gets blown out in normal imaging. The two sets of frames were combined using HDR Composition in PixInsight.

The bright supernova is visible adjacent to the bright core of galaxy NGC7331 40,000,000 light-years away.

Messier 10 is a very low target from 52°N and one which I had never considered photographing. The poor visibility is made worse by the poor southern horizon here. However, the short integration time has produced a remarkably good image of this beautiful globular cluster, helped by the stable sky this evening. This was really an experiment to check the collimation of the CT8 which turned out better than expected!

Imaged in May, the Splinter Galaxy showed no signs of the tidal tail which probably needs darker skies than I have here in Coventry to be photographically visible.

Continuing what has been an incredible galaxy season weather-wise with another version of a large galaxy. Again I decided to reimage this in monochrome with additional weighting for the Hydrogen Alpha channel to highlight the star-forming regions.

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…

    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)

    Integration time (running total):
    * L 26 X 180s (78m)
    * R 27 X 180s (81m)
    * G 25 X 180s (75m)
    * B 24 X 180s (72m)
    * Total: 5h02m
    
    Integration time target
    * Target: 6 hours
    * Progress: 85%

Seeing index: Poor/OK (2/3)
Jet stream: Ave (12 m/s)
Transparency: Good (4)

    Integration time (running total):
    * OSC 63 X 120s (126m)
    * Total: 2h06m

Seeing index: OK (3)
Jet stream: Good (7 m/s)
Transparency: Average (3)