A Clear night! Tried to get Comet ISON, but failed to get it in the field of view.

Put the DMK camera through its paces. Tried the galaxies in the Leo Triplet M66 and M65.

M65 & Supernova 2013am.

M66.

Towards the end of the night Saturn was in clear skies, well away from the neighbours interfering turbulence from their house, so it just had to be done.

Finally packed up at half 1.

Dave

What a disastrous night! Everything was working fine until I started auto-guiding.

The camera gave up the ghost. I put on a friends CCD camera and started taking images.
Then that decided to stop downloading images as well. So I only got a five images in the bag.

But here’s the result. At least I got something.

Looks like Saturday night will be clear, so I will sort the camera out and have another go tomorrow…

Missed two clear nights as I was too tired to get up in the early hours after the Moon had set.

But I finally got a clear day at the weekend to capture the Sun.

Full disk.

Close up of Active Region 1726.

Last night I finally got a moment to make a montage of my Milky Way images I took in the early hours in The Maldives. A combination of 3 10mm lens images, showing the Milky Way from Cygnus on the left, right the way over to The Southern Cross on the right.

I’m pleased with that one.

Now that Comet PANSTARRS is well and truly behind my neighbours house, I decided I would give the supernova 2013am in the Leo Triplet Galaxy M65 a go.

The full frame image.

A crop to highlight the galaxy and the Supernova.

Well, a clear night beckoned, so I just had to pack up the kits and take it over to work which has a fantastic western horizon.

Set the Astrotrac up with my Nikon with my 80mm refractor, aiming to get the comet in the same field as the galaxy.

All set up ready and waiting for the sky to darken.

Once the sky darkened enough I tried to get the objects in the field of the 80mm refractor, but it was too small a field of view. Luckily I bought my 120 – 400mm Sigma lens with me.

I set that up instead, and took quite a while setting things up. But once I got it in my sights, there was no stopping me.

So there I was frantically trying to find it after sunset in the evening sky.
I have no chance of capturing it in the morning sky later, so this may be my last chance to get an image.

I found it in the bright twilight with less than 30 minutes to go before it went behind the neighbours house.

So the heat was on to get a relatively decent image, and here it is.

At last, a bit of (almost) cloud-free sky to catch a glimpse of PANSTARRS as it was heading towards the roof of my garage.

It may not have given us quite the show we were expecting, and the weather hasn’t been very good to us either.

It is now fading fast in the brightening evening sky.

I won’t be able to catch it in the darker morning sky as it will be behind my neighbours house in the north east before dawn.

So this will probably be my only offering:

A very young Type II Supernova ( PSN J11185695+1303494) has been discovered in the Leo galaxy Messier 65.

Although it is currently below 16th magnitude as the supernova was discovered so early on in its development, it should continue to brighten over the next few weeks.

With the galaxy lying at a distance of around 35 million light years away the supernova should reach a maximum brightness of  around 11th magnitude.

This should bring it within easy range of fairly modest amateur telescopes as it brightens.

Discovery image by M. Sugano, Kakogawa, Hygo-Ken, in Japan.

We have just had a fabulous 10 day trip to the Maldives.
So I have not had an Internet connection while I was away.

So glad to be back in the cold. NOT!

I totally failed to view the comet due to evening clouds in the west after sunset.

But the southern Milky Way looked glorious.

More images to follow as I process them.

Dave