Winter Highlights with a fast 50mm lens

 

The Constellation Auriga the charioteer widefield.

                       

The Constellation Gemini the twins widefield.

                          

Part of the Constellation Gemini the twins featuring
the bright stars Castor and Pollux

The Constellation Orion the hunter.

Images credit: Pip Stakkert. Two Canon DSLRs were used one astro-modded and with an integral clip in Altair Astro Triband filter. Canon F1.4 and f=50mm fixed lens. All mounted on a Star Adventurer EQ mount. Stack of 2 minute exposures each image about 1 hour in total. Processed primarily using Affinity Photo2

"The winter sky is full of interesting astronomical features and awash with glowing red hydrogen gas and clouds of dark cold dust. The weather finally improved in Lowestoft and we enjoyed the benefit of two consecutive moonlight free and cloud free nights on the 9-10th and 10-11th of January 2024.

The above images were taken with two Canon DSLR cameras, a fast F1.4 f=50mm lens and an Altair Astro Triband filter. The cameras were mounted on a Star Adventurer equatorial mount which enabled exposures of 2 minutes in length which ensured stars were captured as points of light without any apparent trailing due to the Earth's rotation. The Earth spins about its north south axis 15 degrees every hour, which when you think about it is quite extraordinary!

 The eagle eyed of our readers will note the Flaming Star Nebula in the image of Auriga and a number of nebulae  in Orion including; Barnards Loop, the Great Orion Molecular Cloud, The Flame Nebula, the Running Man Nebula, the Horsehead Nebula and the Witch Head Nebula.

The Jodrell Plank Observatory is slowly recovering from the electrical outage caused by storm damage in the latter part of 2023. The LVST (the Lowestoft Very Small software defined radio telescope is still out of action awaiting reprogramming by Jolene McSquint Fleming, the Observatory instrumentation engineer. Sadly and just like the NASA Pioneer space craft, the the software used to originally programme the LVST is now antique and few but the very old are fluent in the language used. Jolene has messaged our sponsor George Roberts who is sufficiently ancient to be of some limited assistance". - Kurt Thrust current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.