April 2026
Friday 24th – On our first observing session since January had over a dozen visitors. There were 4 telescopes running: the RASA in the roll-off shed, the Celestron 9.25 in the dome and, in the compound, a manually operated Skywatcher Explorer 200P and a robotic SeeStar S50. The Celestron and Skywatcher were being used as visual instruments observing the Moon and Jupiter; the RASA and SeeStar were imaging deep sky objects. That being said, we had some great images of the Moon from various phones held up to the Skywatcher eyepiece… what a souvenir for our visitors to take home!
SeeStar S50 : M13 globular cluster in Hercules – Chris O’Neill
RASA : M97 Owl nebula – Eric McElroy
Google Pixel 9a phone held up to Skywatcher eyepiece : Moon – Terry Griffiths
January 2026
NGC 7635 (Bubble Nebula)
1hr internally stacked data, AI denoised.
Image taken by Mark Holmes using Seestar S50
NGC 896 (Heart Nebula)
45 live stacked subs of 120″ duration. Processed in PixInsight
Image taken by Eric McElroy using C8 RASA with ASI533 MC camera and Optilong L-Extreme dual band filter
October 2024
Chris has been out again. This time capturing comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS (C/2023 A3) which was visible in the night sky in autumn 2024.
It was also known as the Great Comet of 2024
August 2024
More from Chris and the astrograph. A visible light image of the Andromeda Galaxy (Messier 31) and two satellite galaxies; Messier 32 to the left of the galactic nucleus and Messier 110 at the bottom right. Next is the Pleiades or Seven Sisters (Messier 45); an asterism of an open star cluster containing young B-type stars in the northwest of the constellation Taurus.
July 2024
Chris Digata has been exercising the new Samyang 135mm F2 Astrograph. The first image is the Veil Nebula – a cloud of heated and ionized gas and dust in the constellation Cygnus. The second is Polaris Flare – a filamentous gas cloud in the Milky Way which is seen in the sky in the region of the constellation Ursa Minor and around the star Polaris
June 2024
Mark Holmes captured noctilucent clouds over HLCO at about 23:30 on June 23rd.
Chris Digata has been busy at the observatory in June. Here is the stunning image of M16 (the Eagle nebula) taken over 3 nights. The technical details appear below the image.
Telescope #1
Askar 140 APO
30x180sec subs
Filters: NBZ 2, ALP-T (5nm H-beta + SII), ALP-T (5nm HA + OIII)
Telescope #2
8″ Rowe-Ackermann Astrograph (RASA 8)
90x120sec subs
Filters: NBZ UHS, Colour Magiv C2 (sii/oiii)
Integration
4.55h
Darks: 24
Flats: 24
Flat darks: 20
CAMERA: IMX571 cooled
May 2024
There was a tremendous auroral display over much of the country on Friday night (May 10th – 11th). Here are some of the images taken at High Legh by Tom (top, centre) and Carl (all the others).
The images of the Sun shown below were taken by Mark on Saturday 11th between 15:00 & 15:20 BST, using the Nuttellascope + iPhone with 25mm & 17mm eyepieces. The major sunspot group that created the Coronal Mass Ejections responsible for the Aurora is clearly visible.
