Astronomy

Solar System

These pictures have been taken during since 2004, mainly from my back garden in Bolton, mostly using a Philips Toucam webcam, attached to a Celestron 20cm telescope. The images have were processed with the excellent Registax program.

Saturn, in May 2006, showing the Cassini division in the rings Jupiter, in May 2006, showing cloud belts Mars, just after opposition in November 2005.
Venus crosses the Sun's disc in June 2004. This rare transit event happens only twice every 180 years, and amazingly it wasn't cloudy! The Moon passes in front of Saturn in March 2007 The end of the total lunar eclipse in March 2007

The Sun viewed through a hydrogen-alpha filter in April 2006, showing solar flares.

In addition to the our ever-present neighbours, the planets, the inner solar system is often visited by comets. I've seen a few of them in recent years - have a look at my pictures here.

"Deep sky" objects

The following images were captured using a Starlight Express MX5C CCD camera, attached to a 20cm telescope.

M27, the Dumb-bell nebula, an expanding shell of gas some 815 light-years away. M57, the Ring, another gas-shell planetary nebula, at a distance of 1,140 l.y. M13, a globular cluster of 300,000 stars, at a distance of over 23,000 light-years.
The M51 galaxy is known as the Whirlpool, and is 15 million light years distant. The great M31 spiral galaxy in Andromeda, as it was 2.3 million years ago. The M82 galaxy in Ursa Major is much further away than the stars which form that constellation: 17 million light-years.

Have a look at this page to see more details of the equipment which I use.