Comet P12/Pons-Brooks

A very happy ending to a search which had began seven decades earlier . . .

Exposure: 54 x 0.5 secImage Size: 2.67º x 1.78ºDate: 2024-04-26 Back in 1954, a nine-year-old schoolboy living with his parents on the outskirts of London came across an article in the newspaper about a bright comet in the night sky. This young kid, who had already developed an interest in outer space, was immediately captivated. According to the article, the best time to view the comet was…

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Seagull Nebula

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's an enormous cloud of ionised hydrogen gas!

IC 2177 A Bright Nebula in Monoceros Image exposure:120 minutesImage Size:Size: 2.11° x 1.39°Image dates:2024-04-06 It’s a bit of a stretch but I guess, if you look hard enough, it does look a little bit like a bird or a plane flying overhead, although it seems more like a bat to me. When the shape began to emerge as I began to live-stack this image, I thought I’d made a mistake and was…

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Galactic Twins

An associated pair of spiral galaxies in the constellation of Leo.

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Sirius

The brightest visible star in the night sky, circled by a colourful atmospheric ring phenomena.

Brightest Visible Star Exposure: 1.3 secImage: 6.53º  x 4.36º Date: 2024-04-11 During a clear evening under the stars at Cosmic Focus Observatory, I was imaging a nebula with my telescope. All was proceeding well, so with some time to spare I set up my DSLR and decided to take a shot of Sirius. Also known as α Canis Majoris, Sirius outshines every other star in the night sky. At magnitude…

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Moonset

The Moon holds a special place in our lives, influencing romance and evolution, as well as astronomy.

I love everything astronomical but I think I love the Moon most of all, even if a full Moon does interfere with my observing sessions! It has a special status in our lives. Moonlit nights represent romance to many. We can look at the Moon with pride, knowing that mankind was once there and soon will be again. If we lived elsewhere in the Solar System, we would look at the Earth/Moon system and…

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Omega Centauri

Imagine it. Ten million stars packed into a spherical shape with an overall diameter of 170 light years and an average distance between them of just a tenth of a light year. #astronomy #universe #cosmos

NGC 5139 A Gigantic Globular Cluster in Centaurus Image exposure: 45 minutesImage Size:2.11º x 1.4ºImage date:2024-04-06 Imagine it. Ten million stars packed into a spherical shape with an overall diameter of 170 light years and an average distance between them of just a tenth of a light year. (The nearest stars to Earth are 4 light years away). Also known as Caldwell 80, Omega Centauri is…

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Conjunctions 2024

Planetary Alignments For the Remainder of the Year Following my last post about a very tight conjunction in 2015 between Venus and Jupiter, I thought I would check the prospects of any upcoming close encounters for the rest of the year and determine what the field separation will be. Here is what I discovered. There are nine planetary conjunctions remaining for 2024. Eight of them are in the…

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Look Back

Close Conjunction of Venus & Jupiter Image exposure: not recordedImage Size:33′ x 22′ arc-minutesImage date:2015-07-01 This old-timer seems to forget about a lot of stuff these days and this old image was no exception. I was looking through some of my old posts and stumbled across it in a 2015 post. It was taken with my trusty old Meade LX-90 f/10 telescope on its alt-az mount, (which means it…

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Burning Bright

NGC 2467 A stellar Nursery in Puppis Image exposure: 90 MinutesImage Size:1.99º x 1.32ºImage date:2024-03-08 Against the stark blackness of interstellar space, the abundance of Milky Way stars are shining bright. In the middle, they seem to have caught alight, burning like a bonfire on Guy Fawkes Night. 4,420 light years away, the emission nebula of NGC 2467 forms a bright and colourful patch…

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Messier 50

A beautiful open star cluster, discovered in 1710 by Cassini

An Open Star Cluster in Monoceros Image exposure: 19 MinutesImage Size:2.11 º x 1.4ºImage date:2024-03-08 Another Messier List object ticked off the list. This is M50, a cluster of young stars 2,900 light-years away which have blown away the remnants of the nebulous cloud of hydrogen gas from which they were formed 140 million years ago. The cluster is 17.8 light years across and has over…

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Christmas Tree Cluster

A fascinating open star cluster with associated bright and dark nebulae.

… and the Cone Nebula NGC 2264 Complex in Monoceros Image exposure: 120 MinutesImage Size: 2.11 º x 1.4ºImage date:2024-03-05 The NGC 2264 complex is a huge nebula of hydrogen which forms a tenuous star-forming gas cloud approximately 25 light years across and some 2,300 light years distant. It also contains a dark nebula and an association of over a hundred hot young stars. Most of the…

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The Spotted Sun

My solar image captured with a Canon DSLR utilised a DIY solar filter, inspired by Jim Ruebush.

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Messier 1

The Crab Nebula, the remnants of a colossal supernova explosion nearly 1000 years ago.

The Crab Nebula, NGC 1952, Taurus A Image exposure:51 MinutesImage Size:38.6 x 25.6 arcminImage date:2024-01-18 These are the entrails, over ten light years in diameter, of a giant star which exploded in the Milky Way galaxy in the year 1054 CE. The “guest star” event was separately logged at the time by Chinese, Japanese and Islamic astronomers and was so bright that it was visible in the…

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Moon, Jupiter & Uranus

A short trip around the Solar System.

Images dated: 2024-01-18 Finally a night under the stars for Cosmic Focus! It’s been so long that I needed a test session to remove the rust. Even though I kept it simple, I still got some of my established setup procedures wrong. A fun place to start off at was the First Quarter Moon. The most prominent features are the Mare Seranitatis and Mare Tranquilitatis (the two largest dark…

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In the Spotlight

Eerie spotlight on the clouds

Here on another wet Sunday evening, a very powerful ground-based searchlight, one or two kilometres away, was quietly playing its eerie narrow light beam around on the underside of the nearby 100% low cloud cover. Was it the defence force practicing in case that Netanyahu fellow decides to send his bombers over to ravage Australia when there’s nothing left to destroy in the countries around him?…

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The Rosette Nebula

A fine nebula with numerous designations

Caldwell 49, in Monoceros Image exposure:75 MinutesImage Size: 1.84º x 1.35ºImage date:2023-02-16 Rosette Nebula: The Rosette Nebula possesses two designations in the Caldwell catalogue: Caldwell 49 – the large spherical H II region. Caldwell 50 – the star cluster. It also possesses no less than five NGC designations: NGC 2237 – Part of the nebulous region but used to denote whole nebula…

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2023: Strike Gallery 6

Highlights of the year...

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