My main interests in astro-imaging are deep-sky objects, particularly galaxies. You obviously need a dark sky for this, and the moon is usually a nuisance to me. However, with the moon high in the sky on these recent freezing nights, I felt the urge do some lunar imaging. I've not used my webcam for some months now, and with Saturn also rising earlier each night, I decided it was high time to dust off the webcam (an old Philips ToUcam Pro).

Yesterday (the 9th January) around 4pm but already -2...

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Supernova 2008in was discovered on 26th December by Koichi Itagaki in the spiral galaxy M61 in Virgo. It is a type IIP supernova. Type II supernovae are formed from the core-collapse and explosion of massive stars (i.e. greater than 9 solar masses). Type IIP are designated as such because they reach maximum brightness, dim slightly, and then stay at almost the same brightness "plateau" for many days before fading (hence the name type IIP, i.e. II-Plateau). Other type II supernovae reach maxim...
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Most evenings when I start my imaging session, my set-up process involves selecting a bright star in my planetarium programme (Cartes du Ciel), slewing the scope to the star, ensuring it is centred and then 'syncing' the scope. The other evening, I subconsciously selected a star in Andromeda high in the south and started the guide camera. With the star bright and dead centre, I noticed a faint smudge some 7' north west in the autoguider window.

A quick glance at Cartes du Ciel and I saw I'd se...
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There are, I'm sure, plenty of contenders for the biggest and brightest object not included by Charles Messier in his famous catalogue of faint fuzzy objects which might have been mistaken for comets. Lying around 4° west of the nose of Leo, NGC 2903 must surely be near the top of the list. At around magnitude 10 (according to SEDS) and 13.3' along its major axis, this is a large and bright Sb+ spiral galaxy some 20.5 million light years from us.

Despite NGC 2903 being missed by Messier, Gian...
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Here is an image of the Type Ia supernova SN2008hv in NGC 2765, a magnitude 12.2 lenticular galaxy in Hydra. It was discovered on 2nd December 2008 by the CHASE project. Type Ia supernovae are a result of the catacylismic explosion of a white dwarf star.

At around magnitude 15, SN2008hv was an easy target and stands out clearly on this 2 hour, 40 minute image (taken from 5 minute subs) through my f/3.3 LX90 on an SXV-M7C camera.

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The Pegasus I cluster is dominated by the two elliptical galaxies NGC 7626 and NGC 7619, both 11th magnitude. NGC 7619 (centre) exhibits an X-ray tail and it is believed that this may be because there are two smaller galaxy clusters in the process of merging.




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The type Sb spiral galaxy NGC 772 lies in the constellation of Aries high in the Autumn skies when this image was taken on 24th November 2008. There is some distortion to its spiral shape which has led to its inclusion in the Arp catalogue of peculiar galaxies. The distortion is due to the tidal interactions between NGC 772 and its neighbour NGC 770, the dwarf elliptical galaxy to the south. 



In 2003 two supernovae were discovered in NGC 772 within 3 weeks of one another, but these have long ...
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This latest image is of the magnificent galaxy cluster Abell 426, part of the Abell Catalogue. There are at least 25 other galaxies visible in this image but in total the cluster has 400 members across 4 degrees of sky. Its brightest members are NGC 1272 and NGC 1275 (centre left and right). NGC 1275 is some 235 million light years away and is a type 1.5 Seyfert galaxy. In actual fact it is two galaxies, one in front of the other, although you can't see that on this image (click for an annota...
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