It seems to be an age since I was out with the telescope but we finally had a clear night this weekend, albeit one with a high waxing crescent. Despite the moon's interference I tried managed to capture some detail in the Alnitak region. Sky glow did limit exposure to 120 seconds however . Even so I was surprised at how much information the 450D managed to capture through the small William Optics refractor but will still revisit this object if we get a clear moonless night before Orion bids us adieu for another year.

This is a shot of the area close to Alnitak, the left most of the three bright stars in the constellation of Orion The Hunter. Those three starts are often called "Orion's Belt" from which the "sword" of the incredible Orion Nebula hangs (I've used the Orion Nebula and the Running Man nebula as the backdrop to this website).

For the first time in years we have a sunspot group that is visible to the (shielded) naked eye. AR1339 is 3 times wider than the Earth and a whopping 10 times longer. See attached photo taken in Galway on Saturday afternoon. No aurora warnings as of yet but the NOAA are estimating a 70% chance of M Class solar flares and 10% of an X class event.

Image after the break - note the size of the Earth in comparison to the group!

Taken in early September with a modded 450D. There was a short clear spell this night so I rushed out with mount and camera, used a 17-55 f2.8 @ f3.5. Completely out of practice though so I hadn't realised how poor my focus was. Reducing the image to this size helped though. Stacked in Deep Space Stacker and processed in Photoshop. I found getting rid of the gradients in the image particularly challenging. Not something I've come across on my other images, but this is a FAR wider view so I should have expected this. Guess I should have used the Astronomik CLS Clip filter I had on the shelf, D'oh!

The 3 brighter stars are Altair, Vega and Deneb.

Come on clear skies, I want to try again!

Well this is exciting news. Solar observation has always been a favourite subject of mine. So when a couple of days ago ESA announced that it was planning a VERY ambitious program called the Solar Orbiter it was big news. Today NASA announced that it would be collaborating with the ESA on this project. NASA will be providing two of the spacecraft's instruments.

The Atacama large milllimetre/submillimetre array (Alma) - one of the most advanced telescopes ever built. After 8 years it has finally seen first light, imaging the iconic Antennae Galaxies.

Situated at 5000 metres above sea level in a remote region of Chile the 20 giant dish array built jointly by the United States, the European Union, Canada, Chile, Japan and Taiwan was made to explore the deepest areas possible in order to understand the extreme early universe. It's big now but it will eventually use 66 dishes! From the official ESO announcement