Astrophotography
Below is my collection of astro-images that I have made over the last few years, using a variety of cameras and telescopes, to find out how these images are made, please visit the equipment and techniques pages
Click on any image to launch the gallery browser
Lunar Images
The Moon is the closest celestial body to the earth, and is thought to have formed after another large planet sized body collided with the Earth 4.5 billion years ago, the material thrown out into earths orbit during the impact eventually came together to form the moon we are all familiar with today.
We see the moon now as it has been for the last 3.8 billion years, as unlike Earth, the Moon has no weather systems to erode the evidence of multiple impacts from space objects which formed the craters and lava basins, or 'seas' which we see today. The Moon is approximately 250,000 miles from Earth.
98% Full Moon
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Half Moon |
Young Crescent |
Apennines |
Straight Wall |
Colour Moon |
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Copernicus
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Full + 1 day |
Eratosthenes |
Plato |
DSLR Half Moon |
HDR Moon |
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Straight Wall & Rima Birt
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Planet Images
Planets are large bodies which are in orbit around our star, the Sun. The Earth is the third planet out from the sun, as Mercury and Venus both orbit closer. Beyond Earth is Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, the Solar System also has 'belts' of Minor Planets and Asteroids
Jupiter
Saturn
Venus
Mars
Uranus
Comets
Comets are cosmic snowballs of frozen ice, gas, rock and dust and can be up to several miles in diameter. When a comet's orbit brings it close to the Sun, it heats up and spews dust and gases into a giant glowing head larger than most planets. The dust and gases form a tail that stretches away from the Sun for millions of miles. Many comets are well documented, and their return to the skies can be predicted accurately, but some also appear unexpectedly and produce some fantastic displays
17P-Holmes
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*Click for animated image
Deep Sky Objects
Deep sky objects are beyond the solar system, but still within our local galactic system of the Milky-Way Galaxy, these 'objects' include gravitational groupings of stars, which can be loosely associated or tightly packed into globular clusters, Nebulae, which consist of gasses and dust which have either been ejected from dying stars or coming together to form new star birth
All these astronomical 'objects' are contained within our own home galaxy, the Milky-Way.
Horsehead
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Bubble Nebula |
M45 Pleiades |
M1 Crab |
M27 Dumbbell |
M57 Widefield |
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Double Cluster
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M42 |
M3 |
M44 & Mars |
M13 |
Witches Broom |
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M103
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Orion Sword |
M13 Hercules |
Dumbbell |
The Pleiades |
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Galaxies
Galaxies are also classified as Deep Sky objects but are very distant from local galactic deep sky objects, and are similar to how our own galaxy would look from a great distance. Individual stars of distant galaxies cannot be seen, but the collective mass is seen as the galaxy itself. Individual stars in the images are stars seen in our own galaxy 'curtain'
M31
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M33 |
M51 |
M81 & M82 |
M33 |
Whirlpool |
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Bodes Galaxy
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Simply Stars
Stars come in a vast variety of types and sizes, from red super-giants, to tiny brown dwarfs, binary doubles and multiples, white, yellow, blue, orange, red, brown, neutron stars and pulsating stars, but all these varieties simply plot the stellar evolution from starbirth to star-death, some die dramatically in a supernova exposion, whilst others quietly shrink down to become cool superheavy dark cores. All stars are massive, and consist of a chemical furnace of plasma, converting one element to another through nuclear fission, releasing vast quantities of energy as they burn throughout their long lifetimes
Vega
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Mizar/Alcor |
Albireo |
Deneb |
Betelgeuse |
Sirius |
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The Sun
The Sun is the powerhouse of the Solar system, and accounts for 99.9% of the total mass of the entire system, it has been in existence for approximately 4.5 billion years, and will continue to exist for at least another 5 billion years, when eventually it will expand into a red-giant star. The sun burns approximately 600 million tons of hydrogen every second, and provides Earth with about 1Kw of energy for every square meter that it shines upon, all from a distance of 93 million miles away!
With the use of specialised solar-filtered telescopes it is possible to see the activity of the surface of the Sun, below are some images taken through a Hydrogen Alpha PST (Personal Solar Telescope) using a QHY5 video camera.
Looking at the sun through a normal telescope is extremely dangerous and will result in severe eye damage and blindness, so never attempt solar observing unless you have the equipment and knowledge to do it safely!
16 Sept 2010
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25 Sept 2010 |
25 Sept 2010 |
10 Oct 2010 |
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Other Images
Orion Startrail
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Startrails |
Orion Widefield |
Mount Moelfre |
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Below is a collection of other images I have taken of interesting or unusual objects in the night sky. Click the image to follow the link
Barnards Loop |
Iridum 65 Flare plus guests |
The Milkyway in Cygnus |
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