The Phantom Galaxy M74

M74 The Phantom Galaxy

In this months Sky at Night Magazine this elusive object was named 'The Phantom' because it is the most difficult of Messier Objects to find and take images of it. Back in November I managed to find and image this very feint object. Not a lot of detail and I wish now that I had given the object another hour of imaging time.

I used the computerised SLT Mount and ST80 telescope to find M74 and was amazed when it appeared on screen. This image was made up of about 30 stacked images at 45s, ISO 800 with my Canon 350D.

M33

M33 Triangulum Galaxy

Rain, Rain, Rain...this is looking like the wettest Winter on record!

No chance of taking the equipment out into the garden as it is totally waterlogged.

Last week I bought a copy of the CD 'A Guide to Astrophotography with Digital SLR Cameras' a great resource with videos of using Photoshop to get nice results. Here is M33 taken in November, at the time the background was very red and spoiled the image. I have now neutralised the background which has revealed a lovely image of M33.

Thanks to Jerry Lodriguss and his CD which came super fast through the post from America!

Enhanced M42 Nebula

M42 Orion Nebula

I took this image on 12th December during a lovely, clear frosty night. I have worked on the image for a long time to improve it, so here it is!Taken with my Skywatcher ST80 and Canon 350D camera, about 100 subs @ 45s, stacked in DeepSkyStacker and processed in Photoshop 7. This is by far my best image of M42 so far. I'm quite pleased with this one!

The other day I bought a copy of 'A Guide to Astrophotography' this is a CD with video tutorials about processing with Photoshop. One of these is very simple operation where the background colour and noise can be neutralised. The result on this image was amazing! The CD came from America, but arrived in 3 days!

I love Orion, a spectacular sight in the Winter sky. I always wanted to find out more about the 'blur' of the Orion Nebula. I have often seen photos taken from huge observatories, but never thought for a minute that I would be able to photos of my own like this!