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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)…

The Moon TEC140 December 2022.Images taken on the 6th and the 7th.  The 6th was not quite a full moon and the 7th is a few hours past full. On the picture on the left you can see that the circle of the moon’s disk is not quite full between the 6 and 11 O’clock positions.Both images were taken with my TEC140 refractor and ASI174M camera through Baader RGB filters.Each capture was of 5000 frames and the seeing was quite good so that I could utilise the best 50% of frames of each capture run.  Because of the Field of View with the combination of the F8 focal length of the TEC140 and the chip size of the AIS174M, each capture run through each filter was comprised of a North and South run.  I then stitched the two together in Photoshop.Weather conditions were extremely cold at about -2C when the…

This is a RGB image of The Moon captured at about 20:00 on 15th December 2021 from my observatory in Nottingham using my TEC140 refractor and ASI174MM camera. I captured two capture runs in each filter and stitched the resultant images together in Photoshop. Each video capture file was 9GB in size.

M31 is one of the most favoured and popular imaging targets in the night sky; it is bright, large and very photogenic.  I have imaged this galaxy numerous times, for example, in this LRGB version and in this OSC version.   Since the galaxy is so large, each of these images is set in a wide field, one of 3 degrees horizontally and 2 degrees vertically across the field of view which equates to six times the diameter of the full moon. Many newcomers do not appreciate how large these objects are in the sky.  Large but VERY dim! M31 in OSC from a QHY268C and Takahashi FSQ85 refractor The above image is at a resolution of 4.16arcsec/pixel.  On such a large object as M31 this allows the entire galaxy to be imaged in one field of view on a wide field refractor such as the FSQ85 but does not allow…

M108 is a galaxy about 45 million light years away in the constellation of Ursa Major. It is sometimes called the surfboard galaxy. Technical Information M108 in Ursa Major with TEC140 Imaged from my backyard observatory in Nottingham, UK in April 2021 when M108 was almost directly overhead. I used my TEC140 refractor and Atik 460 CCD camera with Astrodon E series Gen LRGB filters (1.25″). There is almost 9.5 hours of data in this image consisting of: Lum > 42 x 300s; Red > 24 x 300s; Green > 24x300s; Blue 24 x 300s Image was captured using Sequence Generator Pro software and was guided using OAG on my MESU 200 mount. Processed with PixInsight and Photoshop 2021 CC. I hope you like it!