IC2118, The Witch Head Nebula.

This reflection nebula lies in the constellation of Eridanus.

Taken on two separate evenings one from the Gower peninsular and from Newport South Wales.

The data from the Gower was taken using a 200mm lens with filters attached to the front mounted on a Vixen DX mount and an Atik 383L mono CCD camera.

From Newport the data was taken using a 135 mm lens with a H Alpha filter, piggybacked on a ten inch reflector mounted on a Vixen Atlux 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 60 minutes using an IDAS filter . 10 minutes using a red filter, 10 minutes using a green filter, 6 minutes using a blue filter and 45 minutes using a H Alpha filter.

 IC2118, The Witch Head Nebula.

NGC1499, The California Nebula.

This patch of nebulosity lies in the constellation of Perseus at a distance of about 1.500 light years. It is about 100 light years across and was discovered back in 1885 by Edward Barnard. 

This image was taken from the Gower peninsula in late August 2025 under very clear sky conditions with stars visible down to magnitude 6.5.

I was using an Atik 383L mono CCD camera, a 200mm lens, a Vixen DX mount and a set of Astronomik filters that was placed in front of the camera lens.

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 2 hours and 14 minutes using a H Alpha filter, 1 hour using an S11 filter, 20 minutes using an O111 filter and 4 minutes using a blue filter.

Equipment used

Looking east towards Swansea

Sky conditions looking south west

The California Nebula.

Hubble Palette

RGB

Hubble Palette + RGB