This photograph of the Perseus Region was taken with a Yashica Minister D camera (non auto, non reflex, about 35 yrs old!), piggybacked on my C8, and exposed for approx. one minute at f4 with ISO 200 colour film. The original photo was badly affected by sky glow, but digital processing brought out the stars, although the colours were lost. The beautiful star field of Perseus shines through, with the big 'W' of Cassiopeia at the top of the picture, the Double Cluster just above centre, and Kemble's Cascade to its left. Magnitudes are down to around 8th.

This photo was also digitised to remove sky glow. It shows the Pleiades, Saturn and Jupiter in the star fields of Aries and Triangulum.

The 6th. April 2000 saw a conjunction of the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn and Mars in the evening sky. It was a bit hazy with a muggy horizon, but fortunately all the objects were visible.  The photograph was taken using a 150 mm zoom lens, ISO 200 film, 4 second exposure .

The early hours of 27th. July 2000 promised a nice conjunction of the Moon , Jupiter and Saturn, but the early evening was clouded in. Nevertheless, the sky cleared later, and I was able to obtain the following photograph. Although I was cursing the clouds, they balance the picture nicely, with the early dawn lighting the horizon.

The above conjunction would have been marvellous in the following setting a week later, but the Moon would have been too bright in the longer exposure required to capture the fainter stars. The early hours of the 4th. August found me at the castle gate on Lindisfarne (Holy Island), Northumberland. (I was on a singing holiday, but couldn't resist the dark skies!) Clouds around, and the top picture was the result. (Reflex camera, 58 mm lens at f/5.8) I returned the following night to clear but slightly hazy skies, and a two minute exposure piggybacked at f/5.8 with 200 ISO film captured the lower picture of the Castle and a lovely grouping of planets and stars, while a 15 minute semi guided exposure brought up hundreds of stars in Cygnus, limiting magnitude around 8.5. Not long enough for the nebulosities unfortunately. Next time perhaps? Interestingly, the movement of Jupiter against the background stars in the 24 hours between the photographs is clearly visible in the enlargements. Coma in the upper stars in the Castle photo is probably due to a lens deficiency - I'll have to try a better one. If anybody has a preference for either composition, please let me know.

Albireo (Beta Cygni) with a seperation of 34 arc seconds is probably the best known coloured double star in the northern sky. But Almach (Gamma Andromedae) in my opinion is equally beautiful, although less easy to split at 10 arc seconds. So here are images of both, taken with the VCam at Cassegrain focus of my C8. You can decide for yourself!

Albireo Almach

Cleanly splitting the close components of the Double Double - Epsilon Lyrae - is a standard test for decent optics This picture, taken just after midnight, 5th/6th July 2002 with the LX90 and Vesta Pro with 3 x Barlow shows an almost textbook Airy pattern on the two stars of Epsilon 2 Lyrae. There was some turbulence, and this is a stack of 25 of the better frames, but the 2.3 arc-second seperation is well achieved.

The 80WA telescope is a fine telephoto lens. These two comparative 35 mm reflex camera photos of the Marsden Rock Cormorant colony on the South Shields coast are a good example.

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