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Stephen Kirk

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M74 is a magnificent spiral galaxy about 32 million light years away in the constellation of Pisces.  It has quite low surface brightness which makes it quite a hard galaxy to observe.  It bears a passing resemblance to M101 I always think, but is much dimmer. M74 Galaxy in Pisces Imaged on 15th December 2022 when to The South.  I used my TEC 140 refractor with its field flattener, an Atik 460 CCD camera with Astrodon E series 1.25″ LRGB filters.  All on my MESU 200 mount which was off-axis guided.  The objective lens was very dirty and I cleaned it the following day.  Despite that, the image came out quite nice.This image is made from quite a modest data set comprising the followingLUM > 12 x 300s ; Red > 9 x 300s ; Green 9 x 300s ; Blue > 9 x 300s Which gives a total integration (exposure)…

Rosette Nebula In Very Wide Field Image taken with a Samyang 135mm DSLR lens and QHY268C Colour CMOS camera in January 25th 2023 when high to The South. A total of 30 x 120s exposures at F4. I used NINA software for image acquisition and processed in PixInsight. I wanted to set the Rosette in a very wide field so as to see the surrounding nebulosity. I have imaged The Rosette Nebula before with a FSQ85 telescope which can be found here. Annotated version of the nebula Finder Chart

The M81 and M82 galaxies in Ursa Major showing the background Integrated Flux Nebula. These are a well known and popular pair of galaxies and can be seen with binoculars.  I’ve imaged them here in a very wide field with a DSLR camera lens – the Samyang 135mm connected to a G2-8300 CCD camera and filter assembly using Astrodon LRGB filtersThe cloudy dust that is visible is not passing cloud!  Rather, it is the extremely faint dust and gas that exists in the space between the galaxies – in intergalactic space.  Hence it is called the Integrated Flux Nebula or IFN.  It is extremely faint and is only visible with very long exposures and integration times.  Careful processing is needed not to inadvertently cut it out of the image. M81 and M82 and IFN Technical Data Imaged in my back yard in Nottingham in March 2020 with Samyang 135mm and G2-8300…

The magnificent Pleiades, known to many as the Seven Sisters, is an open cluster in the constellation of Taurus. The Pleiades have been known since the dawn of antiquity and even some cave paintings from 30000 years ago depict them on cave walls. The cluster is 442 light years away and they are about 20 light years across. The exact distance has been a source of debate amongst astronomers for many years but the matter was recently settled using parallax data from the Gaia satellite. Technical Data Imaged with Takahashi FSQ85 refractor and G2-8300 CCD camera with Astrodon E-series RGB filters.  It consists of 20 x 300 second exposures in each of those filters to give over 90 minutes in each of the three channels for a combined integration of about four and a half hours.  As is normal with any type of cluster, I did not bother with a…