Up again until 3am last night (I really need to do the whole sleep thing better) ... but this time it’s because the sky was soooo clear!

All the gear was behaving, so had a fantastic night of astrophotography ... here come the results in a thread of photos!

Details at end

1/n

First up, the absolutely beautiful edge on spiral Sculptor Galaxy.

11 million light years away, it has billions of stars itself. Bright core region and spiral dust arms prominent.

2/n

For a different perspective, the face on barred-spiral galaxy, NGC 1365, located 12 million light years away.

Really love this galaxy as it’s unlike anything else I’ve captured, ever!

In its core you can see the twisted dark dust lanes and i love its inbounding giant arms

3/n

Tried my first attempt (from home) at the Horsehead Nebula in Orion. This was a lot fainter than I expected, though it was rising over the city (directly).

Gotta try this from darker skies I think ...

(And good grief, the dust critters are back - needs a clean!)

4/n

Speaking of Orion .... here’s how our fav local star nursery is going!

My first wider angle shot of the Orion Nebula and the Running Man Nebula below it.

You can see this as a single star with your eyes from the city!

5/n

The big, bright Lagoon Nebula has plenty going on - again this was first tome I was able to get a much wider angle.

Lots of twisted dark dust lanes and nebulosity.

6/n

The Helix Nebula .... still really grainy and noisy, but the brighter structure detail is starting to come through ...

7/n

Stepping out into our friendly Neighbour hood galaxy (that our galaxy is chomping on), the Large Magellanic Cloud .... it’s the Tarantula Nebula!

Big, very bright and 160,000 light years away!

If this were in our galaxy, it would be EXTREMELY bright!

8/n

Annnnd stepping back into our own, one of my fav targets this year - the Eagle Nebula.

Those wonderful Pillars of Creation down the bottom, and the rude finger nebula (can’t remember its real name) to the left.

9/n

Lastly for the images, the Trifid Nebula ... or as I like to call it, tje Boogy Man Nebula ....

Will miss seeing the Scorpius-Sagittarius nebulae as the begin to set in the west ...

10/n

Ok, so here’s the setup details:

@Celestron Nextstar Evo 8” SCT on Alt-Az Mount

@zwoasi 1600 MM (B&W) cooled to -15°C with Astronomik CLS filter

SharpCap for live stacking

AstroImageJ / PS for processing

roughly 10 mins integration time for all

Balmain

It still blows my mind that I can get these pics given I am literally ~1.5 km from the city lights.

This is my rooftop where I shot from (old pic) and some objects captured were right above the city!

Crazy when you think about light pollution ....