M31 Andromeda Galaxy by Richard Parker. 14th August '06.
120mm f5 Skywatcher refractor. Canon D10. EQ6 Pro SynScan mount.
Richard took this wonderful picture with his Canon digital SLR camera and our Skywatcher telescope and EQ6 mount. The exposure time was 2 minutes at prime focus and 5 frames were taken sequentially. No guiding was necessary.
This version of the image was created by averaging 4 frames together in Photoshop to reduce noise. Tonal detail was then improved by adjusting the levels, again in Photoshop.

Below Andromeda is another great image, this time of M20, the Triffid nebula in Sagittarius. The details for which are the same as given above.

Click on either image to see larger versions plus images of M8 the Lagoon, M27 the Dumbell and NGC 6960 the Veil Nebula. All taken as described above.

 

Jupiter by Paul Gibbons. 21st July '06. 23.30 bst.
80mm f7.5 Skywatcher ED refractor. To-U webcam. EQ 3 mount.
Jupiter was placed a mere 9.5 degrees above the horizon when the image was taken, this coupled with the fact it was taken with a telescope of just 80mm make this a rather pleasing image. It shows the four main satellites and Ganymede's shadow on Jupiter can be clearly seen.
Paul captured this image, with his equipment, from the path in front of Wren lodge. It was a 500 frame AVI and was processed in Registax and Photoshop.

M51 by Matthew Cook. 1st May '06.
5inch f8 Skywatcher refractor. MeadeDSI. EQ6 Pro SynScan mount.
Matt took this lovely image of the Whirlpool galaxy using his Skywatcher OTA mounted on our EQ6 and using our DSI. There were a total of 61 integrations, each of 20 seconds, to capture this image. Click on the thumbnail for a larger image.

Click here to visit Matt's website.

M13 by Matthew Cook. 1st May '06.
5inch f8 Skywatcher refractor. MeadeDSI. EQ6 Pro SynScan mount.
Matt was very pleased with this image of M13, the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules. The details for this image are as for the previous image.

The Moon. By Richard Fewing.
Intes MN71 - 18cm f6 Maksutov-Newtonian. EQ6 Pro SynScan mount. Webcam. 10th April '06.
Richard used our 7inch Intes and webcam to create this image of the Moon. It needed 15 separate exposures to cover the whole Moon. Each AVI file was 500mb and was processed through Registax. The resulting 15 still frames were then joined together in Paint Shop pro to create this montage. Much to Richards annoyance there is a small strip missing from the center, but it is still a great result which shows the ray systems really well. Click on the thumbnail for a larger version.

The Moon. Crater Gassendi. By Richard Pearce.
Intes MN71 - 18cm f6 Maksutov-Newtonian. EQ6 Pro SynScan mount. Webcam. 10th March '06.
Richard wrote:
"I promised Tony that I would send some images for you to consider using on your website - well here they are at last! I am still practising with Registax 3 but, I think, the results so far are not bad. All these images were taken on the 10 March 2006 through the 7" Intes using a x3 barlow on the EQ6 mount. The weather, you may recall, was quite blustery so I think these images show how stable the EQ6 is."
Richard was using our 7inch Intes and his own laptop and webcam. The large crater is Gassendi with the two smaller being Gassendi A+B

Saturn. By Richard Pearce.
Intes MN71 - 18cm f6 Maksutov-Newtonian. EQ6 Pro SynScan mount. Webcam. 10th March '06.
Richard wrote:
"I promised Tony that I would send some images for you to consider using on your website - well here they are at last! I am still practising with Registax 3 but, I think, the results so far are not bad. All these images were taken on the 10 March 2006 through the 7" Intes using a x3 barlow on the EQ6 mount. The weather, you may recall, was quite blustery so I think these images show how stable the EQ6 is."
Richard was using our 7inch Intes and his own laptop and webcam.

M51 by Dean Watson. 2nd March '06.
6inch f5 Skywatcher refractor. Canon 300D digital SLR.
EQ6 Pro SynScan mount.
A lovely picture of the whirlpool galaxy and surrounding starfield. Taken with Deans' telescope, set up in our observatory. The exposure was around 3mins at prime focus. This is a stack of several images. The weather was very cold and at one point we had to close the observatory due to snow flurries.

M101 by Dean Watson. 2nd March '06.
6inch f5 Skywatcher refractor. Canon 300D digital SLR.
EQ6 Pro SynScan mount.
A larger but much fainter galaxy than M51 but still a very nice result. The details for this image are the same as for the previous image by Dean.

M101, NGC2903, NGC4565 and M51. By Terry Bridgwater. 20th Feb '06
Intes MN61 - 15cm Maksutov-Newtonian. Meade DSI camera.
EQ6 Pro SynScan mount.
These were imaged by Terry with his DSI camera. This image is a composite of 4 different Galaxys. Each was a combination of 50 x 21 seconds exposure each of the 50 frames into one synthetic 17 minute exposure. This is done 'on the fly' and the result are single frames that have been further improved and composited in Photoshop. The images are all shown at the same scale and were taken at the prime focus of our 15cm Intes on the EQ6 SkyScan mount. The focal length of the Intes is 900mm.
Click here for a larger version of this image.