Knight of Clear Skies

Very curious. Could be a geostationary satellite signalling a left turn maybe?

Here's a 1h25m timelapse showing M31 setting behind the trees, with a guest appearance from a Starlink satellite train. Taken on the 1st March 2021 from 7:55PM to 9:05PM. Moonrise was 8:40PM, as it rises its light washes out the detail in the galaxy. Taken with the Samyang 135mm f2 and Canon 6d, using just 10 second exposures. I processed the first frame in PS (mostly using Noel's actions) then used batch processing to apply the same workflow to all 360 frames. Hope you like it, more details here if anyone is interested.

Yes, would love to know what's going on in these sub-surface oceans under icy moons. If life is present on Europa or Enceladus it could well represent the most common form of life in the universe, there are far more moons than planets with liquid water on the surface. But would it be complex life? Life on Earth was simple for most of its history, the first animals only appeared 800 million or so years ago once the atmosphere (and ocean) was supercharged with oxygen.

Nice record shot, these single exposure shots are good for bridging visual with imaging, as the field isn't too overwhelmed with stars. Although as you say the framing could be better, moving the Pleiades towards the top-right would give a pleasing thirds composition with the Hyades at this focal length. I might give this a try later this week if the weather co-operates.

There was a bright Moon last night, the brighter the sky the more you need to reduce ISO and exposure time to avoid over-exposing any details. ISO 800 would probably have been better last night, but brightness can always be adjusted when processing the images. It can be counter-productive to reduce the ISO below about 400 (depending on the camera model) as it starts discarding signal. From a very dark site I can exposure for 2 minutes at f2 and ISO 1600, but I tend to use ISO 800 with the very fast Samyang lens. As Lee says, adjusting the exposure so the peak is roughly 1/4-1/3 across the histogram is good, it can be brought up by pressing the 'info' button when reviewing a picture. Hope that's some help and good luck with the imaging.

I was lucky enough to see it as were a few others on here. There is a thread about the sightings here.

Quick attempt at a track from mine and @Philip R's reports, although my bearing could be quite a long way off. Hopefully UK Meteor Network will do this properly from the videos. Philip, what colour was it for you please? I'm wondering if the orange colour I saw was mostly due to atmospheric reddening, it was pretty low for me. Edit: Looks like my bearing is wrong and should be NE rather than ENE. Here's a link to 758 (so far) reports.

Was lucky enough to see it from Bodmin Moor, Cornwall last night. Was looking at the Moon but it was bright enough to catch out of the corner of my eye, so I turned in time. Fairly low, orange (due to altitude?), bright and with obvious fragmentation. Wish I'd taken a proper bearing now but probably ENE.

Yes, it can certainly be a frustrating hobby when equipment doesn't co-operate, sorry to hear about your problems. This kind of thing is why I tend to spend more time working with a simple setup (DSLR and camera lenses) than my cooled camera and scope, the latter takes more time and energy than I have to get results. But the mono setup can be very rewarding when the conditions are right.

Thanks very much for making this data available. I've downloaded M16 & M17 as this will complement one of my widefields nicely, I have both together in a 135mm lens shot.

Yes, I think that's more likely. These O-class stars can impart a great deal of energy and momentum into their surroundings, over their lifetimes about as much as a supernova.

Had a search and there are several image captions out there suggesting magnetic fields are the cause, but an astronomer cast doubt on that in this APOD discussion thread. "Interstellar magnetic fields are extremely weak, and there's no clear mechanism that could produce structure this strong in this hot, dense, turbulent environment. This is a region dominated by gravity, radiation pressure, and shock fronts."

Does anyone know the cause of the vertical streaks in the background emission nebula please?

Here's the Ha data blended into a 50mm lens shot to show the nebula in context. The Spaghetti Nebula is also within the field of view, so I might have a go at blending that in too sometime. (Although keeping relative brightness with the Flaming Star might be difficult.)

Thanks for the data, very high quality. Had a quick go at a bicolour Hii Oiii, processed using PS and Noel's Actions.

Good to see this GMC given some attention, it should light up like Orion in the (relatively) near future. Lots of protoplanetary discs in there, I believe HL Tauri is somewhere in your field of view. (Imaged by ALMA.)

Superb detail, don't often see this close a view of the horsehead.

Here's my effort on the Flaming Star nebula and its surroundings. Field of view is 6.28 x 4.25 deg. Bit of a mis-mash of focal lengths and cameras, but that's what Registar is for. An old colour image I took with a DSLR and 200mm lens along with Ha data from the 1600mm cool using the Samyang 135mm f2. I'll try reshooting the starfield if I get the chance, the Ha version is more successful. The starless version shows the nebulosity a bit more clearly.

Nice image with the contrasting colours in the cluster, and appreciated the write-up.

Well, it's down, and the only smoking crater is the bit that's supposed to end up a smoking crater.

Here's a reprocessed version, which brings in Ha signal up to the Eastern rim of the ring, and with the dust from WISE showing more clearly.

The longer the wavelength of the light the lower the resolution. A 10 metre radio telescope dish has an angular resolution of about a degree.= This is the Witch's Head from WISE. Looking at it, I'm not sure the resolution I quoted is accurate.

There is data coverage for the whole sky. WISE has a 16" telescope and the resolution is between 6 and 12 arc-seconds/pixel in the 4 bands, so it plays well with optical data from telescopes and camera lenses. This was my quick effort on the Angelfish.

WISE data can be downloaded here. The search parameters take a bit of messing around with but here's an example search which returns several panes around Sh2-264, in four different wavelengths. You can click on the different panes on the left to see them in more detail. Here's a screen grab of what I put in the search parameters. Hope that's of some interest. You can see an example composite in this thread.

Thanks Olly. I guess it would be a challenging project for a mosaic while the brighter and more intricate knot at the top tends to get overlooked in favour of the other jewels around Orion. Much of the nebula is quite amorphous, possibly due to its age, and its structure shows up quite well at short focal lengths.