Scientific Artist

Is a stereo view of asteroid JO25 2014.

Thank you Jim at EPOD for continuing to publish my work and Dr. Brian May for creating the stereograph. 

As well as capturing asteroid JO25 2014 on the single Sky 90/M26C – I also managed to grab 16 subs on the two 200mm lenses with the Trius M26Cs.

Sub number 12 (counting down from the top) is missing as I had cloud over the region during that 5-minutes.

As I couldn’t properly process this data myself, I sent it over to Noel Carboni in Florida USA who did the most superb job as you can see below.  Thank you Noel!!

I was blessed by (mostly) clear, Moonless skies at the New Forest Observatory on the night of 19/04/2014.

I set up a single Sky 90/M26C and both 200mm lenses/Trius M26Cs on the asteroid JO25 2014 which was moving through Canes Venatici at the time.

The negative black and white image below shows the asteroid in 5-minute exposures with 1-minute gaps between exposures.  The field of view in this image is 3.33 x 2.22 degrees, so you can see the asteroid is really moving through at quite a pace (because it is so close to us).

I was actually in two minds as to whether I could be bothered to go out and get set up that evening as I wasn’t sure whether I was going to get clouded out or not – you cannot imagine how pleased I was that I wasn’t lazy that evening!

As we are entering galaxy season, Leo is well-placed for imaging.  So I went for a deep shot of Regulus as I wanted to get the dwarf galaxy Leo I.  What I was not expecting to get was this object in the FOV – http://epod.usra.edu/blog/ 

Thank you Jim at EPOD for continuing to publish my work.

Got today’s EPOD with the recent deep image of the Pleiades.

Thank you Jim at EPOD for continuing to publish my work.

18 x 40-minute subs on the Sky 90 mini-WASP array form the basis of this deep image of the Pleiades taken at the New Forest Observatory.

Got the November 7th 2016 Earth Science Picture of the Day with an image of the North America nebula region taken with the Canon 200mm prime lenses.

http://epod.usra.edu/blog/2016/11/north-america-and-pelican-nebulae.html

Thank you Jim at EPOD for continuing to publish my work.

Got today’s EPOD with an image of Carbon star La Superba.

Thank you Jim at EPOD for continuing to publish my work.  This is EPOD number 83 for me.

A spectacular display of the Perseids this year!  I took 220 frames and 27 frames had a meteor – the colourful Perseid below was the best image of the evening.  The persistent thin high cloud miraculously cleared around 11 p.m. and then the Moon set at 12:30 a.m. to give a superb evening’s viewing.  Don’t get many nights like that one.

I have recently finished the Second Edition of the Springer publication “Making Beautiful Deep-Sky Images” and it has been sent off to them to make bookworthy.  Springer then sends me back the draft (with all the page numbers) and I then have the final (mind-destroying) job of putting the Index together.  You will see the new 2nd Edition in the shops next year (I’ll let you know when) and if you have the 1st Edition, there’s enough new stuff in the 2nd Edition (including completely new chapters, and completely re-written old chapters) to warrant raiding your wallets for a second time.  The biggest change you will see on the front cover is the removal of the sub-title “Astrophotography with Affordable Equipment and Software” – with a chapter dedicated to the New Forest Observatory mini-WASP Array – some of the equipment is now anything but affordable.