Cloudy Night!? Messier 24 Sagittarius Star Cloud and NGC 292 Small Magellanic Cloud taken with DwarfLab 2 Smart Telescope 22nd August 2026

                                                             M24 Sagittarius Star Cloud

NGC 204 Small Magellanic Cloud

Random Star Field with Dark Lane(s) in Sagittarius 18th August 2026. Canon 550D and Vixen ED80. 41 x 5 Minute Frames combined and enhanced in Pixinsight.

 

NGC6559, The Chinese Dragon Nebula in Sagittarius, 5000 Light Years Distance(Approx),

Taken with Sharpster Qii 100mm Refractor and ZWO ASI183 Camera, 52x 5 Minute Frames, combined and enhanced in Pixinsight.

 

SH2-27 Cobold/Zeta Ophiuchi Nebula 440 Light Years in Distance. Imaged 15th August 2026 with Celectron C8 Edge SCT and ZWO ASI1533 Camera. 51 x 5 Minute Frames (just under 3 hours total) Integration

 

Large Magellanic Cloud,Satellite Eliptical Galaxy to our Mikly Way Galaxy, 163000 Light Years in distance, taken with SV535 Lense and SV405CC Camera. 11 x 120 Second frames combined and enhanced in Pixinsight

 

Fighting Dragons of Ara, NGC6188, with Multi Broadband Filter, ASI183 OSC and Sharpstar100qii Refractor on a HEQ5. 23 x 5 min exposures, about 2 Hours all up.

 NGC 6188 in Constellation Ara 3800 Light Years Distant.

Globular Clusters NGC104 47 Tucanae taken with Sharpstar100qii Refracter and ZWO ASI183 Camera. 10 x 30 Sec Frames. and NGC 5139 Omega Centauri taken with Vixen ED80SF and Modified Canon 550D 43 x 30 Sec Frames

After a few months of having all the equipment packed up and stored away I setup agian this time with a permanent treated pine piers.  A quick test on Globular Cluster 47 Tucanae and Omega Centuari and now hopefully some good Milky Way/ Scorpius and Saggitarius Imaging to come for August before the evening daylight returns.

 

Sharpstar 100qii. ASI183 and Heq5 Mount

Vixen ED80SF,Canon 550D and EQ6 Mount

Scorpius through the Clouds taken Google Pixel 9 Pro

 

The Omega Centauri Globular Cluster. NGC5139

 


Which image do you prefer? This gigantic cluster of stars sits some 17000 light years away just above the galactic rim but a little closer to galactic centre, above the next spiral arm over.  It's puported to harbour its own black hole and might have been a small elliptical galaxy in its own right but in the past, drifting too close to the Milky Way, its has been captured. I caught this last night, Saturday/Sunday 27th/28th March with 120 seperate 30 second frames with a Celestron HD Edge C8 and ZWO533 Camera, then combined today in a program, Pixinsight. The bottom image is purely the resolved stars with the background removed and provides a little bit more of a colour hit.   The top image is perhaps more authentic combining both stars and the background with noise reduction and curve adjustment applied.  I think it preserves the inate central bright glow, that you see visually through a telescope. The OCD amongst us might also note that the cluster is not centred in the frame.  This is due to the 'Platesolving' process, that automtically detects and then centres an object refusing to work, probably due to the incredible amount of stars in this fairly narrow field of view and I was also too impatient at the time to try and figure it out manually.  In the end I quite liked the 'offcentred' composition of the shot so I didn't crop it.

Sombrero Galaxy, Messier 104, 34 Million Light Years Away. 33x5 Minute Exposures with ZWO ASI533 Camera and Celestron C8 Edge HD with 0.7 Focal Reducer. Pixinsight to Align, Combine and Enhance.

 

Time-lapse Rostrevor Avoca/Fingal Sunday Evening to Monday 8th and 9 th March 2026

Rostrevor Time-lapse