Thursday, 12 June 2025

M8 and M20

M8 and M20. The Lagoon and Trifid Nebulae.

Taken from the Gower peninsula under very clear windy sky conditions. Looking towards the east the light pollution was clearly visible from Swansea, however looking to the south over the Bristol channel and Exmoor National park the sky was superb with stars visible down to about magnitude 6.3.

I was using a 135mm lens with astronomik RGB and narrowband filters attached to the front of it. The camera was an Atik 383L mono CCD mounted on a Vixen DX mount. I captured two minute sub frames with matching dark frames and combined them with flat field frames to reduce the effect of noise and vignetting in the final image. 

The total exposure time was 35 minutes using a H Alpha filter, 20 minutes using an O111 filter, 7 minutes using an S11 filter, and 15 minutes for each RGB filter. 

Click on an image to get a closer view


The Lagoon and Trifid Nebulae.



Sunday, 8 June 2025

The Pipe Nebula

Barnard 59, 65-67, and 78, The Pipe Nebula.

Taken under the dark skies of the Gower peninsula. The conditions were cold and windy with good sky transparency, stars were visible down to about 6.5. 

I was using  a Vixen DX mount. An Atik 383L mono CCD camera, a 135 mm lens, with Astronomik RGB filters attached to the front of it.

I captured 60 second sub frames with matching dark frames and combined them to reduce the effect of noise in the final image. 

The exposure times were two minutes for each RGB filter and ten minutes for the unfiltered  luminance data.