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Deb & I recently went on a cruise up to northern Norway, hoping to see the aurora. We'd seen a couple of very weak ones & had almost given up on seeing anything better when sailing out of Alta our luck changed! The following photos were taken from the deck of a moving cruise liner on a calm sea with lots of people tramping about - gives you an idea anyway.

Hi everyone - here’s my take on M106 in RGB. I love the shape and colours of this galaxy. 150 x 1 min subs; C8+Hyperstar +178MC Cool. Baader moon and sky glow LP filter

First play with Data 27x 300 sec , Dithered ,Flats and Bias as Darks SW 200pds ,1000D,baader CC ,idas D2, guided phd2,DSS ,processed in STARTOOLS

Decided on this for tonight's target at the last minuet. So glad I did as its position in my sky meant I got an uninterrupted run at it all night. Definitely a work in progress as I want to get a load more data on it. Taken in HA, OIII and SII. Very surprised to find so little OIII. So much so I ditched the OIII in the processing and just went for a duel band image of HA and SII. Tricky one to process as the two channels are pretty much identical in appearance so deciding which channel to map to which colour was a bit of a headache. Taken with. Williams optics GT 81 Atik 414 EX Astronomik 6nm filters HA - 16 subs at 600 seconds SII - 16 subs at 600 seconds Captured and stacked in Maxim Processed in PS 6 Next run I will only be taking the HA and SII.

A quick 5 minute shot of M41 in Canis Major with Itelescope Tak FSQ106, luminence only

Finally managed to get the RA drive manufactured today. Like the rest of the mount it will last forever. I have decided to go for a spring loaded design so there is a permanent tension applied to the worm and pinion when making adjustments and to eliminate any back lash. The component parts. Assembled. The knurled threaded bolt screws into the housing applying tension to bearings removing any backlash in the worm gear. Front view. Under spring loaded tension. Bolted to the RA body of the mount. Close up of the drive. The Red light is from my torch. View from above. You can see I have adjustment in all directions for aligning the worm to the pinion. Side View. The whole thing. Next task is to fit the motor bracket and spray it black . Over the weekend I am going to jury rig a 110 volt motor to the drive so I can lap the worm and pinion together for a perfect mating. Then all I have to do is finish off the DEC drive, fit it and lap that together and I am away. More to follow as it happens.

RGB as the L will not play nicely at the moment 200mm SCT QSI cam 21 x 600 each over 3 nights

Catching up on my processing - NGC2264 the Cone Nebula - usual kit - 2hrs integration - hope you like it

7 hours and 30 minutes of 10 minute subs, best 85% of 8 hours and 50 minutes worth of total subs, 19 x 10 minutes darks, 31 flats and 31 bias frames, William Optics GT81 with Hotech flatner, Astrondon 5nm Ha filter, Atik 460 Mono camera, processed in Startools.

Very much work in progress 25x 300 sec dithered ,flats and bias as darks ,processed in startools ,im very happy the way this is going few issues to iron out ,

Taken last night on one of those lovely three clear nights.. 1 hout of 3 minute exposures at ISO800

My favourite galaxy - managed to get a bit of detail in the central dust lane. 4 hrs integration with the ususal kit

Collected another 10 hours on this last night. Total integration time is 14 hours in HA and SII. It has lost a bit converting to JPEG for posting but I am quiet pleased with how it turned out. Click on the image a couple of times to get to full res.

This morning I welded the DEC body onto the RA shaft . Then I finished spraying it all up. So here it is, the basic mount is all finished. I will hopefully get the DEC shaft completed this week. Then it is just the drives to do. Oh yes then I have got to build the new scope to go on top of this beast. I made this video to give you some idea of how freely the RA axis moves and to demonstrate just how big this beast really is. Quality is not that great as I had to tape my phone to a tripod. I would have used the canon but the memory card is not up to store videos. I have left the plastic plugs in the bearing housings to protect them until I fit the DEC shaft. More to follow as it happens.

This has to be the faintest target I have ever undertaken. It took several five minute subs just to locate and frame this weird object. The resulting image below is the culmination of 19 x 1200 second subs in HA. Capturing and stacking this super nova remnant turned out to be only half the battle. Teasing the Nebular out from the mass of stars was a nightmare. Click on the image a couple of times to get to full res.

It was getting late, 22.30 pm on the 8th March, but I noticed it was clear outside and I knew it was moonless, so I decided to make the most of the opportunity. I got all ‘clobbered’ up with warm clothing and gathered my iPad, notebook, lenses, and red torches together and headed outside. It was about 2 degrees C, no wind and there were a few light patches of cloud about, which I hoped would disappear quite soon, and this turned out to be the case! I wheeled my 16” Dobsonian out of its corner in the garage into the back garden and built it up. A quick collimating check and I was ready to look up! I then set up the Wixey inclinometer and Azimuth setting circle on a known star. These proved to be spot on all night, a great way to find stuff quickly and accurately. Leo was high above, perfectly placed for my southern aspect, as was Ursa Major - it all looked quite promising. I started off with NGC 2903, a spiral galaxy that Messier missed. It lies just to the west of Leo’s nose and is well worth looking at. At Mag. +9.5, it is almost as bright as M65 or M66. Okay we were off! Next object was Algieba (Gamma Leonis), a double star in Leo that had featured in Astronomy Now Magazine (March 2019 edition). Having read about it, I wondered how it would appear to me. Straight away I could see it was a double, even in my 40mm eyepiece at 45x magnification. The two stars are 4.6 seconds apart and shine at mag. +2.3 and mag. +3.6. I then ramped up the magnification to 182x with my 10mm Delos. It was quite a delightful sight and one I will return to in the future. I was keen to return to a new delight for me in Leo, not ‘THE’ Leo Triplet, but a trio of galaxies that includes the elliptical galaxy M105, the elliptical galaxy NGC 3371, and the ‘new to me’ spiral galaxy NGC 3373 I had seen M105 and it’s companion NGC 3371 on many occasions before but had only just noticed NGC 3373 for the first time a week ago when It had popped up quite unexpectedly in the same FOV alongside M105 and NGC 3371! It was much fainter than its companions, but fairly large and elongated, unmistakably another galaxy! I had checked my charts and it had to be NGC 3373! It was quite amazing and a sight to behold - ‘three for the price of two’ and a good one for the memory banks. This is defo another object to return to in the future and this gem of a find has got to be another endorsement for the 16”! These three are a part of the Leo I galaxy group, which also includes M95 and M96 which lie about 1 degree away. Okay, next I visited the ‘proper’ Leo Triplet M65, M66 and NGC 3628. In particular I wanted to study the edge on spiral galaxy NGC 3628, to see if I could discern its dust lanes and other dramatic features. I could not seen any details on this occasion, but it looked a bit ‘box’ shaped to me, much fainter than its neighbours and a lovely object. Markarians Chain was next port of call, along with several other local Virgo galaxies. There were just so many galaxies in the area between stars Denebola, in Leo and Vindemiatrix, in Virgo that I could not fail to see galaxies wherever I pushed the scope to! As usual, I started at the southern end of the chain and worked my way north and west, then moved back down again and then moved away from the chain to pull in a dozen or more other galaxies! Truly amazing to see! Here are the galaxies in Markarian’s Chain: I will omit the other Virgo galaxies... NGC 4388, mag. +9 M84, mag. +9.10, is a giant lenticular galaxy. M86, mag. +8.89, is a bright lenticular galaxy in the Virgo Cluster. (M84 and M86 are neighbours). 'The Eyes' are next - NGC 4438 at mag. +9, & NGC 4435, mag. +9. Continuing along the chain... NGC 4461, mag. +11.19, Now in the Coma Berenices region, NGC 4473, mag +10.19, NGC 4477, mag. +10.39 NGC 4459, mag. +10.39 NGC 4474, mag. +11.50 The chain ends on M88, mag. +9. Time to leave the spring gals! Moved over to M54, a fine, smallish globular cluster, always nice to see a small glob then move on to a bigger one, so... onto the magnificent M3 globular cluster. Simply stunning! Wow! As usual! M51, the face on Whirlpool Galaxy was almost straight above me, giving me an ideal chance to see details in its spiral arms. It did not disappoint! In fact This was the best I had ever seen M51. The spiral nature of NGC 5194’s arms were quite obvious and nebulosity could be seen around its interacting partner NGC 5195. Both nuclei were quite pronounced too. This was the object of the night for me. It was a real treat to see so many galaxies in one night and also see a few new items of interest! I wrapped up at 02.00am, had a cup of tea and went to bed thinking of the sights I had seen. Thanks for reading! 👍

60 x 2 mins C8+Hyperstar+178MC Cool. Processed in Pixinsight and PS CC

Well after a rubbish year with major equipment problems I think i've sorted the issues. This is a quick dirty in LP skies (Bloody Trent) 5hrs total (2 nights) offering trying out new equipment and changes to my optical train set up. Processed in Pixinsight SGpro capture 29 x 180s Red 28 x 180s Green 23 x 180s Blue 20 x180s Lum Darks 14 LRGB each filter 21 Flats LRGB and 31 Bias upscaled to 200subs SuperBias Thanks for looking

My first attempt at this target, and I'd thought about testing the Ha response of my unmodified Oly, for a change. No shortage of Ha to my eyes, so I'm pretty pleased, what with it being stock. So much easier to colour balance than my modified Canon, too. Kev

Put this video of the building of the large GEM Mount together today.

I have been grafting away over the past couple of days on this and now have the DEC Axis complete. Brought it all home with me tonight so I could assemble it to get the correct length of the shaft. I will take it with me tomorrow and machine it back to the correct length. ( You can see the excess that has to come off lower down the page. ) DEC Axis fitted. The M 30 thread on the bottom of the shaft is to take the counter weight bar. This one in fact. Side view of the complete mount. As you can see the shaft is too long and will be machined back to the correct length tomorrow. Once that task is completed I can fit the scope adapter / carrier plate. I even got to machine up my dome end for the RA shaft.

Well it's Galaxy season so I thought I'd go for my favourite 11 x 300sec @ ISO800 with calibration frames Stacked in DSS processed in Startools and finished in CS6

quick test after rough PA on NGC2264 with the newly serviced and repaired GM1000 Tak 106 native QSI 683 Ha filter mixture of 10 and 15 min subs unguided. about 90 minutes Very quick process before bed will need to PA a bit better for longer subs Mount performed now as it should I think. Was relatively pleased

sw200pds Eq6 pro belt modded mount ,canon 1000D modded , 80x120 sec guided dithered subs ,25 bias as darks ,40 flats stacked in DSS ,processed in startools

Taken over several nights. 19x1200Ha 18x1200O3 16x1200S2 binned 2x2 200mm Meade SCT @f10 ith QSI cam. Click for full res might not be needed, but who can resist a click or two

Hi everyone - this is a 30 sec exposure of the Milky Way and Jupiter over Swansea Bay - taken from out holiday let on The Gower Peninsula today (17th March)

4 hours of 5 minute subs Hypercam 183c, Megrez 72FD

managed 7 hours of HA but only 2 hours 20 minutes of Sii, lights and bias frames only in the Sii channel, processed in Startools, and combinned in Photoshop CS3, William optics gt81 and Atik 460 mono camera, Astrodon 5nm filters.

Hi everyone - something a bit different. This is a HDR image of tonight's crescent moon to try to pick up the Earthshine without blowing out the crescent detail. Saw Dylan O'Donnell do this with his DSLR and 9.25 SCT. I used my Altair Astro 72ED and Canon 80D. Check Dylan's video out here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8XxNQw7PjY

Managed to get up to Belper tonight for a couple of hours. I took the ED80 binos to give them an outing. All finding was by star hopping as the binos were on the Giro2 altaz mount. This outing I remembered everything so set up and operation was trouble free and quick. Conditions were still, dry and warm for february so even though I had the dew system running I dont think it was needed.There was a bit of sky glow so contrast on fainter objects was low. Initially I went round the usual suspects just to get my eye in: M42 at 75x showed loads of detail. The trapezium showed nicely with clean sharp stars showing atmospherics were quite stable. No chance of E&F stars at 75x. M45, three dimensional view. M1 faint but there as a trapezium shaped blob. M35, hmm, not the best view, ngc 2158 only just visible at 18x M31, surprisingly uninspiring at 18x. M32 visible but M110 was very difficult to spot, a little better with some magnification. So this gave me a good idea of what The sky would allow and I adjusted my targets to suit. Double cluster nice especially with a bit of mag, thanks to Rob for the loan of his 13mm Naglers, these pulled in loads of stars. Coulurs were good in the cluster components IC457, Owl/ET Cluster. Excellent view, taking 75 mag nicely with lots of colour in the stars. Because I cant get low objects from my garden anymore I decided (despite the skyglow) to have a bash at some low Messier clusters. M41 easily spotted as it was reasonably high and in not too much skyglow M47, again easily spotted but a lot of the cluster was lost to Belper glow. M46 was there but almost lost in the glow. But I bagged them. I then moved on to Cancer, a constellation I tend to forget about probably because its so faint. M44 I wandered around at 18x, a very nice view. M67, lost in the skyglow in the finder but at 18x in the ed80s it was there A double now lCNC STF1268. The Cambridge Double star atlas describes this as the Albireo of Spring. Colours are similar but mags 4.1 and 6.9 its nice but not as striking Almaak, in Andromeda, a lovely colourful pair easily split. Never dissappoints this double. Algieba in Leo, heralded as a showcase double and its easy to see why, a lovely sight. M51. Despite the seeing I thought I would test out my star hopping and go for this one. No chance of seeing it in a 50mm finder so it was down to reading the stars in the area. After a few minutes searching I found it at 18x, very faint but it was there. A bit of mag improved the contrast so made it stand out more. Well pleased to find that one. Back ache and having to do a few things the next day stopped me doing anymore so I packed away at about 21:40. Still it was good to getout under the stars again.

Belper dark site 26.02.19 19.00-00.30 Skywatcher 120ED Esprit Selection of Clave eyepieces Warm 8° Sky conditions good. All below was found by star hopping to the destination. I started the evening with a few double stars from Gemini: 30 Gem - 4.48/11.1 - 27.2" - Difficult split as the companion is very dim but did glimpse it using the 6mm Clave at x140 - Lemom/white - B in 11 o'clock position. 38 Gem - 4.7/7.8 - 7.3" - Easy split using the 12mm Clave at x70 - Yellow/white - B in 7 o'clock position. 45 Gem - 5.8/10.9 - 16" - Medium difficulty as the companion is very dim - 6mm clave at x140 - white/white - B in 11 o'clock position. Lambda Gem - 3.6/10.7 - 9.3" - Medium difficulty - 10mm Clave at x84 - white/white - B in 10 o'clock position 63 Gem - 5.2/10.9 - 43" - Medium difficulty due to dim companion - 8mm Clave at x105 - Yellow/white - B in 1 o'clock position. Zeta Gem - 4.0/11.46 - 87.4" - Very hard due to magnitude of it's companions, this star has a C companion which forms a triangle - 8mm clave at x105. Delta Gem - 3.5/8.1 - 5.4" - Easy split very good contrast and colour - 10mm Clave at x84 - Yellow/white - B in 4 o'clock position. Gamma Gem - 2.0/13.0 - 140.5" - Failed to find companion too dim. 15 Gem - 6.5/8.1 - 24.8" - Easy split, 16 Gem is in the same FOV - 10mm Clave at x84 - white/yellow - B in 5 o'clock position. Nu Gem - 4.1/8.0 - 112.8" - Easy wide double, multiple system but no more stars detected - 10mm Clave at x84 - white/white 20 Gem - 6.3/6.9 - 19.7" - Easy split - 8mm Clave at x105 - white/white - B in 5 o'clock postion. I then got a bit tired of Gemini and started moving around the heavens: M51 a lovely galaxy in Ursa Major was quite easy to find the main core stood out and there was a slight hint of the dimmer core. M44 also known as the Beehive cluster in Cancer, this looked amazing in my newly aquired 30mm Clave at x28. M42 as we all know is simply stunning and once again the 30mm and 40mm Clave paid it justice. Had a look at the trapezium within M42 and could quite easily see the "E" star and maybe a hint of the "F" but not confident enough. M94 a fantastic spiral galaxy in Canes Venacti at 7.96 mag it was easily seen in many of my Clave eyepieces. Ngc 4485 was next this is also known as the Cocoon galaxy and resides in Canes Venacti it's an irregular galaxy and just appeared as a rather dim smudge against the background. Back on to some doubles: Cor Coroli (alpha CVn) - 2.8/5.5 - 19.3" - Easy split using the 12mm Clave at x70 - white/blue Xi Ursa Major (Alula Australis) - 3.78/4.8 - 2.1" - Medium difficulty - Clean split using 4mm Clave at x210 - white/white Nu Ursa Major (Alura Borealis) - 3.8/10.1 - 7.8" - Medium difficulty - Clean split using 4mm Clave at x210 - white/white Gamma Leo (Algiebra) - 2.2/3.6 - 4.7" - Easy split - 8mm Clave at x105 - Lemon/white 54 Leo - 4.5/6.3 - 6.3" - Medium split - 12mm Clave at x70 - Yellow/hint of blue Kappa Leo - 4.4/9.7 - 2.4" - Hard split - 4mm Clave at x210 only just split it - B in 10 o'clock position. Onto some deep space stuff: Had a go at the Leo Triplet looking through the 20mm Clave at x42 I could easily see the smudges and diffused core of M65 and M66. But try as I could I did not see a hint of Ngc3628. Went to Auriga next and looked at M36,37,& 38 also a quick glance at Ngc1907. While in the vicinity I used my binoculars and scope to see if Comet Iwamoto is visible. I managed to star hop to the exact spot and was greated with a slight fuzzy blob but it was so diffused I cannot be sure if that was the comet. Back onto to binary stars: Gamma Cep (Errai) - 3.2/7.3 - 1.8" - Found this very difficult, companion was lost in the glare - Just split with the 4mm Clave at x210. Beta Cep (Alfirk) - 3.2/8.6 - 14.1" - Easy split - 16mm Clave at x52.5 - white/white - B in 4 o'clock position. Xi Cep (Alkurah) - 4.4/6.4 - 8.4" - Easy split - 4mm Clave at x210 - white/white Omicron Cep - 4.8/7.2 - 3.4" - Quite easy split - 4mm Clave at x210 - white/white - B in 5 o'clock position. Mu Cep (Garnet Star) - 4.0/12.3 - 19.3" - Couldn't split, the companion at 12.3 mag was to dim and was lost in the glare - Very red star. Eta Draconis 2.8/8.2 - 4.8" - difficult split - split using 4mm Clave at x210 - B in 10 o'clock position. To finish the night some more deep space objects: In Cassiopeia I looked at M52 an open cluster looked fantastic through the 30mm Clave at x28. With the same eyepiece the open cluster Ngc7789 Carolines Rose really stood out I counted an amazing amount of stars. As always the Double Cluster was fantastic in the 40mm Clave and even better in the 55mm Clave at x15. Had at look at the Owl Cluster Ngc457, to me it looks like ET from the movies. Over to Ursa Major again and found M101, it only appeared as a large smudge with no core visible but I found it by star hopping so pretty chuffed. M64 in Coma was next and once again using the 30mm Clave I could detect a core with a diffused glow around it. Onto to Virgo galaxy cluster and I picked out M87, this appeared very bright and was easily seen. Then my last object of the night was M13 the mighty glob in Hercules, what an object, gazed at it for a while and so many stars appear. Finished about 00.30 and still 8° in temperature.

Hi everyone - 4 pane mosaic with the C8 and Hyperstar. STC Duo Narrowband filter - 1hr on each panel

Managed to add the L to the mix and add another nights worth of data.

That is it all done. 8 hours of continuous grinding has left it smooth as the proverbial. To give some indication of the difference, When I first fired it up this morning the motor was pulling 5 amps to turn it. When I went down to switch it off just now the motor was pulling a tad over 1 amp. Tomorrow it is the DEC's turn.

Managed to make a start on this during te good weather. just 1hr per pane so deffo a work in progress. Roll on galaxy season!

Revisited M1 tonight. Conditions were none too great and I lost a lot of subs to high cloud and bad seeing not to mention the ASCOM driver dropped out again on EQMOD. Ended up with HA - 9 subs at 600 seconds. OIII - 7 subs at 600 seconds. SII - 9 subs at 600 seconds. Captured and stacked in Maxim Compiled in PS 6

Had another great session at work today. Managed to get the RA pinion carrier machined up. I also finished the DEC body. So I loaded up the motor with all the bits and brought them home. First task was to fit the bearing outer shells. I then packed the bearings with a synthetic grease. It was then a matter of fitting the RA shaft to the mount along with the bearings. Once that task was completed I screwed on the tension nut now complete with the pinion gear until it pulled up on the bearings. The nut is locked into place by three M8 grub screws. Tomorrow I will weld the DEC body in place on the RA shaft once it is sprayed up and get some better pictures. I then have just the DEC shaft to complete and the worm / motor mounts to build. More to follow.

A few photos of the stunning Great Grey Shrike I saw today. This bird is known as the Butcher Bird as it impales it's food on spikes. Unfortunately I didn't catch that but waht a fantastic looking bird.

The new timing belts and pulleys arrived today. I had made the motor mounting brackets earlier on this week so it was a simple case of building them up ready for fitting tomorrow. I will now have a 1 to 1 ratio drive from the motors to the worms bringing the axis drives into the range of EQMOD so I can run the new mount from the motherboard of the HEQ 5.

Took the photos for his a while ago, but only recently got round to processing. This was taken in the back garden, and is a combination of 90 15 second exposures, stacked in StarStaX. The foreground was re-processed from one of the images and blended in

Made a counter balance weight today. Hopefully I will only need the one. Weighs in at around 30 Kilos.

Needed more than the 10 x30 secs RGB and 20 x 30 sec L 200mm SCT and QSI cam

Up bright and early this morning to set up ready to lap the DEC Axis gears. After a few headaches I got the motor jury rigged and ready to go. Finally got running at 9 O'clock.

Hi everyone - the recent run of good weather allowed me to get 6.25 hrs of good data on this one. Taken over 3 night, I only had 2 hrs or so per night between dark falling and the neighbours house getting in the way. Thank god for plate-solving in SG Pro. Guiding was a bit of a challenge with this so low in the southern sky (for me at least). C8+Hyperstar+178MC Cool+STC Duo narrowband filter

I've never had a got at this one so thought I would give it a try 10 x 300sec @ ISO800 with calibration frames Stacked in DSS and processed in Startools finished in CS6

So this happened! Nearly a set but the 25mm is a little bit out of my price range. Still fancy the 30mm 82° though.

200mm SCT QSI cam ha O3 S2 5 x 1200 secs each

This is another new one for me 8 x 300sec @ ISO800 with calibration frames taken with a Skywatcher UHC filter Processed in Startools and finished with CS6

Think you knew these were coming. Couple of very small marks on the Prisms, but lenses are nice and clear. Pin sharp views as you would expect. Serial number puts them about 1989, so one of the later runs. Quite happy with these.