Photonfog

A capture of one of the most visible star clusters in the night sky - the Pleiades. This cluster has lots of young hot bright blue stars reflecting off the surrounding dust cloud producing a beautiful blue glow.

Unlike many of my recent images, this is a broadband image captured without filters to capture the reflection nebula - I really need to get myself an L-pro to damp down the light pollution of Cambridge and improve these kinds of targets.

Captured from my backyard in Cambridge in January 2023. Astro prints are available at photonfog.com.

Technical details:
- Using a Williams Optics Redcat 250mm f/4.9 telescope on a Heq5 mount
- 288x3m frames for a total of ~14.4h exposure time with ZWO ASI533mc camera
- Processed with Astropixelprocessor, Pixinsight, and Photoshop

It's that time of year again for best of the year posts. It's been a slow year compared to last, particularly because the kelling heath star party which generated so many of last year's images was cloudy this year. But I was happy with the targets I did capture, and my processing skills continue to improve. Here's wishing for clearer skies in '23.

Just in time for Xmas, this is the Christmas Tree cluster (ngc2264), which encompasses a number of objects including the Cone nebula at the top of the tree and the Fox Fur nebula below the cluster. This is not the normal colouring you'd see for the nebula, but by blending the Hydrogen Alpha and Oxygen signals (roughly HHO) I've given it a more dramatic Christmasy feel.

To finish it off, it really needs some RGB frames to bring out the star colours and IMO diffraction spikes - maybe I'll rig something up over my aperture the next clear night.

Have a great holiday everyone!

Captured in the snow from my backyard in Cambridge in December 2022. Astro prints are available at photonfog.com.

Technical details:
- Using a Williams Optics Redcat 250mm f/4.9 telescope on a Heq5 mount
- Using an Optolong dual-band L-extreme filter (Ha & OIII)
- 106x5m frames for a total of ~9h exposure time with ZWO ASI533mc camera
- Processed with Astropixelprocessor, Pixinsight, and Photoshop

This is the Pacman Nebula (ngc281), an emission nebula about 9200 light-years from us in the constellation of Cassiopeia. You can see a dark lane of obscuring dust blocking the light from the glowing clouds of hydrogen and also several Bok globules which are dense blobs of dust and gas typically 2 to 50 solar masses within which star formation may take place. They're one of my favourite things to photograph.

Captured in the snow from my backyard in Cambridge in December 2022. Astro prints are available at photonfog.com.

Technical details:
- Using a Williams Optics Redcat 250mm f/4.9 telescope on a Heq5 mount
- Using an Optolong dual-band L-extreme filter (Ha & OIII)
- 73x5m frames for a total of ~6h exposure time with ZWO ASI533mc camera
- Processed with Astropixelprocessor, Pixinsight, and Photoshop

Had a handful of clear nights during the cold and snowy weather - finally have some data to process!