For the first time in a while, we were able to open on Friday 4th April.

Mark had the SeeStar S50 and Chris was using the RASA 8. Despite the quarter-Moon and fairly poor seeing, decent images were made.

Mark’s shot of the Moon was a single imageand without processing.

Chris had the Rasa 8 telescope with an Apc Imx571 colour camera. He took 109 30-second images and processed them with different filters to bring out the Ha and Oiii wavelengths.

The third image is a composite with the addition of 20 120-second images taken with an NBZ uhs filter, specifically designed to enhance the contrast of Ha and Oiii emission nebulae.

Saturday 29th saw a partial solar eclipse, starting at 10:06 in High Legh. Luckily, the clouds were not too heavy and we had sight of most of the eclipse.  Many thanks to those who turned out to share the experience.

We had solar spectacles for our visitors and there were several telescopes observing the event. Here are a few shots taken on the day.

The first set were taken by Terry using a mobile phone camera to capture the images from the solar projection telescope.

The second set were taken by Mark with a SeeStar S50 telescope. The images are unprocessed.

Eric was using a Dwarf II telescope with solar filters. This image was captured at 10:16, soon after the start.

Auto exposure, processed in Affinity with upscale in Topaz.

COSMOS (our sister site on St. Martin’s, Isles of Scilly) had no trouble with clouds.

This image was taken with a mobile phone attached to an130 Altair EDT APO refractor using a 20mm 68° explore scientific eyepiece.
It’s a single shot taken at 10:19:52 am, aperture F1.75, exposure 1/500 sec, ISO125 with some minor processing to bring out the details.