Image of the Month
Every month the new NAS Newsletter "Pegasus" will feature an image from a NAS member - this may be an advanced example of imagery; it might be someone's first shot of the night sky. It might be a picture of an observatory, or something else related to astronomy. We'll also feature the image on this page, so if you feel you have an image that might be of interest, please submit your photos to communications@newburyastro.org.uk
November 2024
October saw plenty of activity in the sky to watch, from Orionid meteors to mighty Jupiter rising to an auroral display. But pride of place must go to Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) which is now rapidly fading in the evening sky but was well worth catching after emerging from perihelion mid-October. This image of the comet wonderfully captures structure in its tail as well as the ante-tail. Taken on the 15th October from the top of Roque de los Muchachos on La Palma, Steve used a Canon 90D camera with 135mm f/2 lens, stacking 50 x 2 second exposures.
October 2024
This month's image is a bit different - it's a short MP4 of the ISS (International Space Station) passing in front of the Moon, taking by Sean Taylor using his Seestar. It's fleetingly quick, but quite exciting to watch if you've never seen it before. Sean uses the website https://www.transit-finder.com/ to identify when the ISS will be making a transit, if you fancy having a go at it yourself.
September 2024
The early morning hours of August 21st saw clear skies over Berkshire and Oxfordshire for an occultation of Saturn by the Moon. Steve Knight captured this image using a Celestron C9.25 and an ASI462MC camera. The image necessarily needed some work in combining footage of two subjects with vastly different levels of illumination, but the result is well worth it. Note how Saturn’s rings are almost edge on currently.
August 2024
July 5th saw the passing of someone who played an outsized role in the lives of so many amateur astronomers – Wil Tirion. Arguably the greatest celestial cartographer of the last 50 years, he was the creator of Sky Atlas 2000.0 that this editor still uses to this day. Later came Uranometria 2000.0 as well as sky charts for countless magazines and books. In these days of electronic GOTO instruments and apps, his charts were a thing of beauty and the gateway to the heavens as, red torch in hand, you nudged your scope this way and that to its target. To use the well-worn phrase, we shall not see his like again.
July 2024
These short, bright nights of high summer bring the chance to glimpse Noctilucent clouds. Unlike normal clouds, these sit far higher at around 50 miles up, and glow with a blue-white tinge against darker, lower clouds. This splendid image was captured by Alan Dowdell on the 24th of June from Arnside, Cumbria.
June 2024
June's image is of the Auroral Storm of 10/11th May captured over St Mary's Church, Bucklebury. The image was taken by the Communications Lead using a Canon 5D camera, 24mm f/1.9 lens, and a 1 second exposure at ISO3200.
May 2024
Pride of place this month should go to this wonderful diamond ring image taken by Steve Knight from Mazatlan on the Pacific coast of Mexico. The April solar eclipse was a bit of a running battle with cloud for many people across an eclipse track that ran from Mexico up to Atlantic Canada, but the skies mercifully stayed clear enough for most to get a decent view. Steve used a Canon 90D mated to a 70mm Altair Astro doublet refractor on an Astrotrac mount for this shot, a still from a video of the event.
April 2024
April's images are two for the price of one. Taken by Chris Hooker in August 2022 during a run of clear mornings in which the seeing was occasionally superb. Chris believes the image from the 13th (on the left) is probably the best he's ever achieved, though the one from the 12th (on the right) is also absolutely stunning.
These were taken using a 25.4 cm F/6.3 Newtonian with a 3x Barlow, and an ASI462MC colour camera. Stacking and processing was done in Autostakkert!3 and Registax.
March 2024
This image of the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) was taken from Iceland by Tony Hersh using an iPhone 15 PRO, handheld (not using a tripod). No additional software was used for taking the photo or subsequently processing it - just the out of the box phone picture-taking software. The image shows the power of modern handheld devices and gives a real sense of being out under the aurora at night; the reflections in the river are particularly captivating. Other society members can be seen taking more conventional shots on the right.
February 2024
A brand-new supernova, currently visible (faintly!) in the distant galaxy NGC 3206. This is another image taken by Steve Knight using his ZWO Seestar s50. A type II core collapse supernova, these explosions mark the end of the life of massive stars that were previously 8 or more times the mass of our Sun – and will leave behind it either a neutron star or a black hole. The magnitude of the supernova at the time of imaging was estimated at 14.1, which is pretty faint and quite a performance from such a compact little telescope!
I would also draw readers attention to the other, fainter, galaxies that can be glimpsed elsewhere in the image. Another indication of the vastness of our universe.
January 2024
M42, the Orion Nebula, one of the first nighttime images taken by Steve Knight using his new ZWO Seestar s50. A number of members have now acquired one of these little 50mm robotic scopes, and the image is an indication of the power and ease of use of them