The Crescent Nebula NGC 6888 in the Constellation Cygnus.

 

The Crescent Nebula NGC 6888 captured from the Jodrell Plank Observatory using a Seestar S30 in EQ mode and it's integral light pollution filter. - 50 x1 minute exposures. Image capture and processing Credit: Pip Stakkert.

" Lots going on in this image as the Crescent Nebula sits in the plane of the Summer Milky Way's Disc. Huge amounts of ionized gas creating the red clouds and tendrils punctuated by the dark black clouds of dust. In this photograph there are many hot blue young and enormous stars, which are collectively responsible for ionizing the widespread clouds of Hydrogen gas. The Crescent Nebula has a different  and more interesting source of ionization." - Kurt Thrust current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

"The Crescent Nebula (NGC 6888) is an emission nebula located approximately 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. It is about 25 light years across!

The structure is not ionized by a standard B-type main-sequence star, but rather by WR 136 (HD 192163)—a highly evolved, massive Wolf-Rayet star located near the centre of the nebula. 

Wolf–Rayet (WR) stars represent an advanced, highly unstable evolutionary phase of initial massive stars (typically exceeding 20–25 solar masses). Having exhausted core hydrogen fusion, these objects are defined by extraordinarily high surface temperatures, extreme bolometric luminosities, and hyper-velocity stellar winds driven by radiation pressure.

The Wolf-Rayet Star, WR 136
ionizing the Hydrogen Gas
and making the Crescent Nebula glow.  

Formation Mechanism & Dynamics

Mass-Ejection Phase: Around 100,000 to 200,000 years ago, as the massive progenitor star evolved off the main sequence into a Red Supergiant (RSG) phase, it shed its outer envelope in a slow, dense stellar wind expanding at roughly 80 km/s.Shock Shell Formation: As the core collapsed into the Wolf-Rayet phase (spectral type WN6), the star's extreme surface temperature (approximately 70,000 K) drove an exceptionally fast stellar wind reaching velocities up to 1,700\ km/s. This high-speed wind caught up to and collided with the slower RSG shell, creating a swept-up shock boundary with complex filamentary geometry.

Photoionization & Emission: Intense ultraviolet radiation emitted by WR 136 photo-ionizes the surrounding gas. In this narrowband image, the deep red regions showcase recombining hydrogen (H alpha emission at 656.3 nm), detailing the intricate, shell-like shock fronts embedded within the dense interstellar medium of the Cygnus region". - Gary Gemini Comms Manager at the JPO

IC1396 in the Constellation Cepheus widefield FOV- Seestar S30 mosaic.

 

The central region of IC1396 Ha Emission Nebula
in the Constellation Cepheus. Rendered two ways post capture; the second showing more of the abundant Ha nebulosity. Image Credit: Kurt Thrust.

" Is astrophotography an art or a science?   Well like most questions in and about the Universe, the answer is complicated and far from straight forward.  At the Jodrell Plank Observatory we are often amused by the public's response to the use of photo editing software like Adobe Photoshop, Affinity Photo and SIRIL to enhance data captured by telescope-camera combinations. More recently Artificial Intelligence has become available to further complicate the astronomical conversation of 'what is real'.

Well what is real and unreal in our attempts to render our informed view of the Cosmo?

This is another JPO image of IC1396 but rendered using a modified RGB SHO colour palette.

Lets think about this. Is what we see with the unaided eye real Well the eye is a very good bit of kit but it does have limitations as a receptor of light in either photon or wave format. The eye is particularly good at accommodating disparate and large differences in luminosity. Most of us with reasonable eyesight can look at the Full moon and make out the darker Maria against the brighter surrounding uplands and the even darker night sky. Try doing this with the camera on your phone without a special app and it struggles to deliver anything other than an intensely bright disc set against a dark sky. It can however detect colour, which the unaided human eye struggles with at night. So is colour real or unreal in the night sky? 

Our eyes are joined to the brain by the optic nerve and together they make sense of the visual world in which we exist. So, what to us is real  in real time, is what our brain considers to be real and at best can be no more than a fleeting series of electrical impulses accepted or rejected and finally composed in a cerebral image according to what we know from experience and an accepted set of values. By and large we see what we want to see and through a veil darkly.

The human brain like the eye, is a very fine piece of 'wet ware' but it can be deceived in many ways. The Brain is a master at finding patterns and order in chaos even when none exists.

Let us return to colour in astrophotography, colour is real or at least the spectrum of light is real and astrophysics makes use of the colour difference of stars to determine their temperature and many other scientific things like radial motion. Colour is the eye's or camera sensor's response to the wavelength of incident light. If the image data we capture is to be used for science rather than art the way the data is processed is crucial in protecting the datas' scientific validity. When we capture and process the spectral details of stars at the JPO we follow strict protocols to ensure the data remains uncorrupted.

Much of the posts on the JPO blog are  made to bring celestial objects to the attention of the general public and as such the datas are treated with less rigour during post capture processing. We regularly increase or decrease colour saturation and relative luminosity to emphasise interesting features of astronomical objects. We also use specialised filters to identify differences in the chemistry of ionized nebulous gases. We sometimes reduce he number of faint stars in an image to aid clarity. We always seek in our post capture processing, to increase the signal from the astro-target whilst reducing the unwelcome random noise. Latterly, we use AI to do this job.

The JPO team goes the extra mile to follow these goals:

1. To create images that have a scientific narrative.
2. To create interesting images with artistic impact.
3. To avoid adding spurious artifacts by design or accident.
4. To use specialist software and AI as required in delivering on the first 3 goals. 

The above two images of the central area of the emission IC 1396 shows how different the image can look by just tweaking the luminosity and  colour saturation levels. So, you chose what is real and what is not in your Universe!" - Joel Cairo CEO of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

"The captured image exhibits the wide-field ionized hydrogen emission region within the IC 1396 complex, an H II region and star-forming complex located approximately 400 light-years away in the constellation Cepheus.

• Gas Emission and Ionization Physics: The pervasive warm orange-red luminescence across the field corresponds to standard Hydrogen-alpha recombination radiation at a wavelength of 656.3 nm. This emission is driven by intense photoionization from nearby massive, hot stars—principally the O-type multiple-star system HD 206267—which emit energetic ultraviolet fluxes lambda < 91.2 nm that ionize surrounding atomic hydrogen.

• Morphology and Dark Dust Structures: Irregular, dark silhouettes and web-like filamentary features interlaced throughout the emission background represent dense, cold interstellar dust lanes and molecular clouds. These optically thick concentrations attenuate background optical light via Mie and Rayleigh scattering, shielding the embedded interstellar gas from ionizing radiation. Near the center-right of the field, a distinctive dense bright-rimmed globule corresponds to IC 1396A (the Elephant's Trunk Nebula), where strong stellar winds and radiation pressure compress the dust to trigger active star formation and protostellar accretion.

• Point-Source Characteristics and Field Optics: Overlying the nebular background is a dense field of foreground and embedded Milky Way stars. Bright point sources display pronounced diffraction spikes arranged in a four-point cruciform pattern, an optical artifact characteristic of primary aperture spider vanes or post-processing star-spike algorithms. " - Gary Gemini Coms Manager at the JPO.

An image of the Great Orion Cloud rendered two ways
on the right to enhance Sll Ionized nebulosity.

Caldwell16 aka NGC 7243 Open Star cluster in the Constellation Lacerta

 

The open Star Cluster NGC 7243 captured at the JPO. Image Credit: Kurt Thrust using the Seestar S30 in EQ Mode with Infrared Filter. Cropped and enlarged.

Seestar S30 uncropped full field of vision version. Image Credit: Kurt Thrust.

" NGC 7243 is not imaged and posted that often by astro-imagers, which is a shame as the cluster is quite beautiful with its mix of red and blue stars". - Joel Cairo CEO of the JPO, the UK's most easterly astronomical observatory.

"The astronomical object shown above is NGC 7243 (also catalogued as Caldwell 16 and Collinder 448), an open star cluster located in the northern constellation of Lacerta. Situated approximately 2,800 light-years from Earth within the Galactic plane, the cluster presents an integrated apparent visual magnitude of approximately 6.4$ and spans an angular diameter of roughly 21 to 31 arcminutes.

Morphological and Dynamical Characteristics

• Trumpler Classification: NGC 7243 is classified as a Trumpler II 2m open cluster, indicating a moderately detached concentration with a medium range of stellar brightness and a moderate richness of member stars.

• Spatial Distribution: The cluster exhibits a loose, asymmetric, and elongated structure with distinct groupings. It is divided into sub-concentrations separated by a subtle, low-density dust lane. The core population lacks a central density spike, merging gradually into the surrounding background stellar field of the Milky Way disk.

• Mass and Membership: Photometric and proper motion analyses identify roughly 200 candidate member stars down to magnitude 15.5, with total estimated cluster mass ranging between 348 solar M and 522 solar M.

Stellar Population and Evolutionary Status

• Cluster Age: Isochrone fitting to the main sequence turnoff indicates an age of 250 million years.

• Spectral Characteristics: The brightest main-sequence members are late B-type stars (earliest spectral type B5 III). The presence of blue-white stars along the upper main sequence, alongside evolving stars transitioning toward the red giant branch, produces a distinct color contrast against the field stars.

• Extinction & Environment: Because NGC 7243 resides within the Galactic disk, the field is characterized by modest interstellar extinction, visible as subtle background interstellar dust patches interspersed among the field stars". - Gary Gemini Coms Manager at the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

SN 2026aaiv Type 1a Supernova in Galaxy NGC 7331

The above image is a compilation of data obtained at the JPO using the Seestar S30 in EQ mode. 30 minute stack of 1minute exposures with the infra-red filter. Credit: Kurt Thrust.

" The JPO Team was pleased to capture the recently discovered Type 1a Supernova in the Galaxy NGC 7331 which was shining at approximately apparent mag 13.5. In reality and at peak, the absolute magnitude of a Type 1a Supernova is mag -19.3. As a guide our Sun's absolute mag is 4.8 (the scale is logarithmic and - denotes brighter than zero mag. Absolute magnitude is a common standard based upon how bright an object is if  placed at a standard distance of 10 parsecs where one parsec =32.6 light years). 

Galaxy NGC 7331 is 44 million Light Years distant and can be found in the Constellation Pegasus. It is mind blowing when considering the distances involved and the amount of energy released by the supernova. The above image was captured two nights ago on the 8th of August 2026, when the Supernova was more luminous than the combined output from the millions of stars at the galaxy's core. All typical Type 1a Supernova have the same absolute luminosity and consequently Type 1a Supernova are used as 'standard candles' in judging the vast distances to other galaxies. A Type 1a Supernova is estimated to generate 10^42 joules of energy, which is equivalent to the amount of energy the Sun will output over 10 billion years. The radioactive decay of nickel-56 and cobalt-56 powers the emission in visible light totalling approximately 10^49 ergs.

As the Galaxy is 44 million light years away (416272140793522000000 km), the photons of light energy, which our Seestar sensor collects, allow us to see a Supernova, which occurred 44 million years ago, as a live event. However, from the perspective of the photon travelling at light speed in a vacuum the journey is virtually instantaneous". - Joel Cairo CEO of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

Enlarged  view showing SN 2026aaiv shining below and to the left of the less luminous galactic core. Image Credit: Pip Stakkert.

" We tried to obtain a low resolution spectrum from the Supernova using the Seestar and 'add on' diffraction transmission gratings' manufactured by our engineer, Jolene McSquint- Fleming. Unfortunately, a combination of issues associated with object low apparent luminosity and the shortness of sensor exposure times rendered our attempts unsuccessful. Further experimentation is underway on Jolene's bench". - Kurt Thrust current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

Saturn - South Pole

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope images of Saturn (left) and a south-pole projection (right) highlight a newly tracked ten-sided atmospheric wave — a geometric counterpart to the long-known northern hexagon. Credit: NASA/ESA/STScI/Sánchez-Lavega et al. (ESA/Hubble heic2612a, CC BY 4.0).

"We thought this was an interesting post from NASA" - Joel Cairo CEO of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.  

"Astronomers have discovered a massive 10-sided atmospheric wave (a decagon) encircling Saturn’s south pole. Published in Science Advances in September 2026, the discovery was led by Agustín Sánchez-Lavega and compiled using observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, ESO's Very Large Telescope, and ground-based amateur astronomers. 

 

​The structure provides a dynamic counterpart to Saturn's famous northern hexagon, which has been observed since the 1980s Voyager encounters.  

​Key Features of the Decagon

​Structure & Size: The decagon is a stationary-like wave pattern embedded within a high-speed eastward jet stream at southern mid-latitudes (around 58°S to 63°S). Each side measures roughly 10,000 miles (16,700 kilometers) across.  

​Wind Dynamics: While the encircling jet stream travels at speeds near 240 mph (400 km/h), the decagonal wave pattern itself drifts very slowly eastward at just 6 mph (10 km/h) relative to Saturn's rotation.  

​Vertical Depth: Observations in multi-wavelength infrared and visible spectrums demonstrate that the pattern penetrates down through multiple atmospheric cloud layers and haze, confirming it is a deep, 3D atmospheric wave rather than a shallow cloud-top feature".  Gary Gemini Coms Manager at the JPO.

​

Have Kurt and our Sponsor George Roberts gone 'Loopy' ? (Rhetorical)

 

The Cygnus Loop. Seestar S30 hybrid mosaic. Seestar in EQ mode, LP filter and 3.5 hours of 1 minute exposures in mosaic mode. Image Credit Kurt Thrust and Pip Stakkert. 

"Last night and early this morning were ideal for astro-imaging at the Jodrell Plank Observatory. 

As the weather forecasts for Lowestoft were predicting an extended period of cloud free skies over Suffolk, Kurt and George after some discussion, decided to use the Seestar S30 in EQ mode to image the entirety of the Cygnus Loop, using the little smartscope's firmware to create a mosaic of images as part of the capture process. 

The Moon didn't rise until quite early in the morning, so light pollution, which had plagued earlier attempts to image the Loop, was not a problem.

Unfortunately, minor mechanical or digital problems occurred, which meant the 'Eastern Veil' had to be added after the mosaic had been created and in post processing using the venerable but still excellent Registar software. 'Hats off ' to Olly Penrice who recommended purchasing this remarkable software to George many years ago.

Any how and irrespective of the processing route taken, the JPO Team were quite pleased with the end result"! - Joel Cairo CEO of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

Enhanced Seestar Firmware stack showing flux and a multitude of stars within the plane of the Milky Way disc. Faint satellite trail removed using Google Gemini AI.

IC1396A The Elephant's Trunk Nebula.

 

The Elephant's Trunk Nebula in the Constellation Cepheus. Seestar S30 in EQ mode with Light Pollution Filter. 60x60 sec lights stacked and cropped post capture. Image Credit: Kurt Thrust.

" IC 1396A is one of the most photographed objects in the Northern Hemisphere sky. Strangely the JPO team had never imaged it before. So, with a one hour window of clear  sky over the Jodrell Plank Observatory, Kurt decided to point the Seestar S30 in its direction. The Seestar does well with large nebulae and for only one hour of exposures we thought this image, although 'crunchy', was not bad for a telescope having only 30mm of aperture.

We selected a colour palette in modified RGB, which follows the HOO narrow band palette in outline.

The above image captures IC 1396A, commonly known as the Elephant's Trunk Nebula, a dense globule of interstellar gas and dust embedded within the much larger ionized hydrogen region IC 1396, located in the high-northern constellation Cepheus approximately 2,400 light-years from Earth.

Astronomical Characteristics

• Morphology & Dynamics: The dark, elongated structure—resembling an elephant's trunk—is a dense molecular pillar sculpted by the intense ultraviolet radiation and high-velocity stellar winds emanating from the massive, luminous central O-type star HD 206267 (located just off-frame). The bright rim seen edging the dark structure is an ionization front, where radiation from HD 206267 heats and ionizes the outer compressed gas shell.

• Star Formation Site: The Elephant's Trunk is an active star-forming region (an H II region). The photoevaporative compression caused by nearby hot stars compresses the interior interstellar medium, triggering gravitational collapse and giving birth to young stellar objects (YSOs) and protostars hidden within the opaque dust lane.

• Spectral Emission: Captured using a light-pollution (LP) filter, the false-colour/dual-band palette Highlights the ionized atomic hydrogen (Halpha) emissions in warm amber and orange tones, while contrasting background dust lanes and surrounding ionized gas appear in cooler dark hues.

We will undoubtedly return to this object in the future, as more data will definitely improve image quality" - Kurt Thrust current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

The Elephant's Trunk Nebula an enlarged crop from the above wider field. Image Credit: Kurt Thrust.