I have done some amateur astrophotography since becoming the Queen’s Observatory coordinator. Below are some of my bad photos that I am proud of.
Messier Tour
I had two clear nights in a row during galaxy season in 2020. Instead of taking the time to do one galaxy really well, I decided to do a tour of a whole bunch and get a zoo of galaxy types. One that I am quite proud of is M61, which has a supernova in it!
M51 the Whirlpool
The Whirlpool has been a goal of mine for a while. My first attempt is the greyscale image, I could not get any realistic colour to come out. For the image here, I wrote my own stacking code since the pre-made one couldn’t do what I wanted and align images that were more than a few pixels off from each other. The dark image is what the photos look like before processing and stacking.
M57 the Ring Nebula
The ring nebula was my first object to try stacking, so I’ve come back to it a few times. This is my best so far.
M27 the Dumbbell Nebula
This was the first time I got a photo with colour and interesting structure. The Dumbbell is the perfect size for the Queen’s Observatory and a very pretty nebula.
Connor Stone 