Widefield Images

Cygnus

A very dense region of our own Galaxy, looking out through one of the spiral arms.  Note the darker areas of galactic dusk obscuring the countless stars, amazing.  And all above my garden too!

(Image details to follow)

Orion

This image shows the Meade LX90 telescope pointing to Orion. The star Sirius can be seen at extreme bottom left with M45, the Pleiades, just visible at top right between the main telescope and it's smaller 8x50 finder 'scope.  I've been asked if this is a mock-up image.  It's not.  This is a single image, the end result as you see it here; around 25 seconds or so into the exposure, I shone a dimly lit torch onto the back of the 'scope from a distance, to illuminate it slightly.  What can clearly be seen here however, is the gradient in light as you look down towards the horizon.  This is the dreaded 'skyglow', an unfortunate feature when imaging from an urban location nowadays.  Streetlights Bad, power-cuts Good, see CfDS for details.

Canon 300D
Static on EQ1 mount
Manual focus (on Sirius)
ISO1600 1x33secs F4.5
05jan2005 2237UT
PSP Photoshop

Milky Way

This image shows a dense area of our own Milky Way galaxy extending from Cassiopeia at the top of the image down through Andromeda and in to Perseus towards the bottom. The satellite dish on the wall is around three metres from the camera.  I left it in the image for a bit of perspective. As this was a kind of test image for the newly acquired Canon 300D, I was amazed to find that it had captured M31, 33, 34 etc. Labels are provided in the image below.

Canon 300D
18mm Canon EFS Lens
Piggyback on LX90 0.2m AltAz
ISO800 f4.5 5x60seconds
21oct2004 2105UT
Registax PSP