The Aurora makes an appearence on the 10th January 2026

The Saturday before last the aurora made another appearance in the skies above Norfolk and I wrote the following report for the BAA:-

"On the night of the 10th/11th January we had an aurora warning beginning around 20:00 UT with a strength of 240 nT on the Aurora Watch magnetometer at Sumburgh Head. This then fell back to 190 nT at 21:00 but then increased to 310 nT at 22:00 and 370 nT at 23:00. I went out outside in the garden with my camera at 21:10 UT but there was no evidence of an aurora in the sky at that time. It was a clear night dark night with medium transparency and the last quarter moon wasn’t due to rise until 01:16 UT on the 11th. At the time I was carrying out other deep sky observations.

At 23:20 after 2 more alerts, I thought I would check the sky in the north again and at this time I could see a reasonable red glow with the naked eye. I again started taking pictures and the first image I took at 23:25 (see image below) showed a red weak rayed arc (or possibly rayed band) which wasn’t very homogeneous. It stretched from a base height of about 9 degrees to a maximum height of 37 degrees. In azimuth it ranged from 299 degrees to 57 degrees. 

 

There was a very faint green glow looking north west above the red arc:-

 

No green glow was seen below the red arc (probably due to a thin mist).

From 23:25 the aurora display began dissipate, so I had either missed the peak of the display or it had occurred at this time. Around 23:33 UT there was a noticeable (by eye) weird pale light in the north which was reminiscent of a noctilucent cloud and I was confused as to whether this was part of the aurora or some cloud being somehow lit by the aurora. A picture taken at this time shows the pearly looking whorls of cloud:-

The only reasonable explanation I can think of was that it was mist that was being lit from a nearby light source but it dissipated as the aurora dissipated. At 23:33 the height of the red arc was still 37 degrees.

Looking NW at 23:49 UT when the red arc had mostly vanished it was still possible to see a faint green glow. 

I stopped observing at 23:52 UT."

All text and images © Duncan Hale-Sutton 2026

Palomar 2, M34, M42 and IC443

Last Saturday night, the 10th January 2026, we had some decent clear skies and it gave me the opportunity of observing a number of deep sky objects with my Dwarf 3. The transparency wasn't great as it was very cold and I think a thin mist had formed. By the end of the evening there was quite a hard frost but the Dwarf coped very well and it didn't freeze or dew up. The moon was at last quarter and it didn't interfere with observations as it didn't rise until 01:16 UT on the morning of the 11th.

The first object I was interested in was the globular cluster Palomar 2. This was the BAA Deep Sky Section's object of interest for January. This faint object can be found in the constellation of Auriga near the south west boundary and was so named as it was one of 15 globular clusters that were first discovered on the Palomar Sky Survey plates in the 1950s. 

Here is my image from the Dwarf 3 based on 246x15s exposures:-

 

This is approximately the full field of view of the Dwarf and the globular cluster is the small reddish hazy object in the centre of the frame. The reason it is so red is that it has been dimmed nearly three magnitudes by interstellar dust. The start of this 61.5 minute observation was at 18:32 and it ended at 19:47. For all the observations I took that evening I used auto parameters in the Dwarf and in Stellar Studio. The image has been cropped slightly and binned x2. What I think is interesting about this wide field is how you can see a dark area of obscuration in the upper centre of the frame. This is probably the same obscuration that reddens and dims the globular cluster.

Here is a cropped image of the full frame to show more detail:-

The cluster doesn't really resolve into stars and this is not surprising since the dwarf only has an aperture of 35mm.

The next object I looked at was the open star cluster M34 in the constellation of Perseus. Stewart Moore had written about this 'splendid open cluster in the winter sky' in the latest issue of the BAA Journal (Vol. 135, No. 6, p428). It lies near the western boundary with Andromeda  and not far from 14 Persei. Here is my 101x15s observation with the Dwarf 3:-
 

The start of this 25 minute observation was at 19:55 and it ended at 20:32. The image has again been cropped slightly and binned x2.

As Orion is well placed at this time of year I couldn't resist imaging the Orion Nebula (M42). Here is my 121x15s observation of this object:-

 

This has come out very nicely even though the central area has been overexposed. The start of this 30 minute observation was at 21:04 and it ended at 21:43. The image has again been cropped slightly and binned x2. I have photographed this nebula several times in the past and you can see my most recent observation in 2023 here. I hope to make a more detailed comparison of the two images in due course. The Dwarf has made use of the duo band filter in this case.

My final, and most exciting, image of the evening was IC443 or the Jellyfish nebula. This can be found in the constellation of Gemini. It lies between the two stars of mu and eta (Propus) Geminorum. The illuminated nebula is a supernova remnant that perhaps exploded 30 to 35 thousand years ago. Here is my 484x15s observation of it:-

 

The two bright stars you can see are mu (left) and eta (right). There jellyfish is close to eta but there is quite an extended area of nebulosity covering this whole frame. The start of this 2 hour observation was at 21:49 and it ended at 00:17. The image has again been cropped slightly and binned x2. This is the first time I have ever attempted to image this nebula and I am very pleased with the result. Again, the Dwarf has made use of the duo band filter.

All text and images © Duncan Hale-Sutton 2026 

Image of M33 and the asteroid Eros

On the 4th January when it was still very cold and there was snow lying on the ground, we had a relatively clear night and so I thought I would have another go with my new Dwarf 3 smartscope. The moon (one day past full) rose about 17:15 UT but wouldn't interfere too much with my observing until later in the evening. So at about 6pm I set my tripod up with the Dwarf 3. I had been intending to observe some fainter targets but, as a bit of cloud began to roll in, I thought I would photograph something a bit more obvious, so opted for M33 (The Triangulum Galaxy). It was a very fortuitous choice! Here is the result of 216 x15s images:-

This is the virtually the full frame of the Dwarf 3. Auto parameters were used in the observation and in the post processing. I have binned the image x2 and cropped it slightly to remove field rotation effects. The first image was taken at 17:56 UT and the last at 19:05 UT. Midpoint 18:30 UT, approximately. This spiral galaxy is the third largest member of the Local Group of galaxies (after the M31 and our galaxy) and is perhaps just under 1 Mpc from us.

I have also marked a small streak of light to the right of the galaxy with a green line. Initially, I thought that this was some sort of remnant from the processing - the result of a bright satellite or plane being on a few of the frames. However, I learnt from the BAA that this was actually the asteroid 433 Eros and just happened to be in this field of view. The streak of light (40 pixels in length which corresponds to nearly 2 minutes of arc) was caused by the movement of Eros during the period of observation. Eros was about magnitude 10.8 at this time.

Below I include a cropped version of the above image which gives a closer look at the galaxy:-

The open spiral structure of the arms with blue regions of star formation are more easily seen. For comparison I include another image I took of M33 on the 23rd September 2016:-

This is based on 45x30s (22.5 minutes) of observation using a Celestron NexStar 102 SLT and a Nikon D90 camera at prime focus. I think the colour rendition in the Dwarf 3 image is so much better and more detail can be seen. To get the same exposure as this on the Dwarf 3 I would have needed (102/35)² x 1350 = 11466 seconds! I actually got a better image in 3240s on the Dwarf.

All text and images © Duncan Hale-Sutton 2026 

Plate Scale of the Dwarf 3

I wanted to get an idea of how big a patch of sky the Dwarf 3 can image when using the telephoto lens. Here is the unprocessed image of M31 I took on December 21st last year:-

 

It is a shame, in some ways, that this full frame is cropped so much by the post processing. This frame is 3856x2180 pixels. To get an idea of how big an area of the sky this is we can use the positions of the two attendant dwarf elliptical galaxies M32 (lower centre) and M110 (upper centre). M32 is at RA 00h 42m 41.8s and Dec. +40 51' 55''. M110 is at RA 00h 40m 22.1s and Dec. +41 41' 07''. Using my program to calculate the separation of these two objects I find that they are 0.929 degrees apart. Using Photoshop to view this image I find that M32 and M110 are 1204 pixels apart (based on an average 4 measurements of the separation). So this implies that 1 pixel is 0.929x60x60/1204 = 2.78 arc seconds. This is the plate scale. This agrees well with another observer's calculation of 2.75 arc seconds per pixel.

This means that the full frame is something like 2.98 x 1.68 degrees. This is somewhat larger than the field of view of my Celestron NexStar 102 SLT with my D90 camera at prime focus (this has a field of view of 2.07x1.38 degrees) but not excessively so. 

All text and images © Duncan Hale-Sutton 2026 

Comparison between observations of M31

I recently obtained a new image of the Andromeda galaxy (M31) using my recently acquired Dwarf 3 smartscope and I always find it interesting to compare newer observations with those I have obtained in the past. Here is that image again which is based on 2 hours and 4 minutes (536x15s) of integration:-

Here is another image that I took using my Celestron NexStar 102SLT back on the 23rd September 2016:-

I have rotated this image, resized and cropped it so that it matches the one above. This image is 8 minutes of exposure (16x30s) using a Nikon D90 at ISO 3200. To get to the same exposure on the Dwarf 3 (which has an aperture of 35mm) I would have needed (102/35)² x 480 seconds or approximately 1 hour 8 minutes (all other things being equal). So the new image with the Dwarf 3 should be much deeper. 

Comparing the two images it is obvious that I seem to have got the focusing slightly wrong on the older image as evidenced by the pink halos around the stars (this was always a problem with the NexStar). I also seem to have obtained a reddish colour cast. Looking at the images at a 100% there is a lot more noise on the older image as expected and the brighter stars are not so sharp. Also, in the new image the blue star formation areas in the outer fringes of the galaxy are much better defined and do show up as blue in colour. As I said before, I think a lot of this is due to the very good post processing in the dwarf. 

Here are the two crops of the Dwarf Images, one before processing and one after, as before, and for comparison a crop of the same part of the image I took back in 2016:-

 

I think a lot of the gain in image quality from the Dwarf is coming from the post processing.

All text and images © Duncan Hale-Sutton 2025 

A new Dwarf 3 telescope to play with

With all the recent issues I have had with setting up a telescope I decided it was time to move with the times and purchase a smartscope. For various reasons I opted to buy a Dwarf 3 scope and this cost me £459 from First Light Optics. It comes with two lenses - one telephoto and one for wide angle. The telephoto lens has an aperture of 35mm and a focal length of 150mm, whilst the wide angle has an aperture of 3.4mm and a focal length of 6.7mm. The respective equivalent focal lengths (which I assume are compared to a standard 35mm camera) are 737mm and 45mm. It has a Sony IMX678 sensor. What I liked about the Dwarf is that it has a standard 1/4 inch tripod screw fitting and so I could set it up in the garden on my sturdy Manfrotto.

I didn't get to use it right away because of the poor weather but then on Friday (the 19th December) we had a good clear night with no moon (it was one day to new moon). I have leveling bubbles on the head of my Manfrotto and this worked very well with no issues in the initial set up. Everything is run from an app on your phone and, as with anything new, it took a bit of time to get the connection sorted and to figure out how to start a session of observing. The beauty of it is that once the phone is wirelessly connected I can run everything sitting inside in the warm. There was no problem there. 

For my first target I decided to do something obvious until I was more familiar with the controls and so I picked M31 (the Andromeda galaxy). The app has an atlas and you can search for the object you require. I set the Dwarf running with auto parameters and was slightly perturbed when it was scheduled to take 999 images of 15s each, so over 4 hours of observation. I was under the impression that the number of images it would take would be appropriate to the object being targeted, so I wasn't keen to do much else but let it run. However, after about three hours of integration, I thought there must be a way to stop the process and there was (a long press on the shoot button). I was also confused as to whether the scope stacked the data as it captured new images and it does, so I did do further stacking in Mega Stack which wasn't necessary. Once the final stacked image has been acquired the picture can be processed in Stellar Studio to give you a nice noise-free image.

Here is the result of 536x15s (2 hours 4 minutes) of integration:-

 

The images that are captured are usually 3840x2160 pixels in size in telephoto mode but due to image rotation during the exposure, the post processing has cropped this to 2068x1720 so some of the outer edges of the spiral arms are lost. The two satellites of M31, namely M110 (top) and M32 (bottom) show up nicely as do the dark dust lanes of the spiral arms and regions of blue star formation at the outer edges of the galaxy.

It is interesting to compare this processed image with the raw stacked image produced at the end of the observation. Here is a 500x500 pixel area from each for comparison:-

 

The one above is taken from the image before processing in Stellar Studio and the one below after:-

There is quite a considerable difference between the two! The stars have been sharpened significantly, the noise has been removed and the colour rendition improved. I definitely could not do this sort of thing in Photoshop myself! Having said that, I don't think there is anything there that wasn't in the original image even though the noise reduction is supposedly AI powered.

Having had a go at M31 and it not being too late in the evening, I decided to make the most of it and try to image something I have never tried before and that is IC1805 which is known as the Heart Nebula. This large emission nebula can be found in the constellation of Cassiopeia east of the 'W' arrangement of stars. After 346x15s (1 hour 26.5 minutes) I obtained this image:-

 

Again this image has been cropped in post processing so the full shape of the 'heart' can't be seen. In the centre of the image is a cluster of bright blue stars called Melotte 15 and these stars are so powerful that their light is causing the surrounding gas to ionise and then to recombine and emit red light (the H-alpha line). I was very pleased with this image and even though this telescope has a very modest aperture it clearly can do what I would struggle to do with a larger telescope. I am looking forward to photographing other areas of the sky and other suitable targets. It was well-worth the investment.

All text and images © Duncan Hale-Sutton 2025 

 

Saturn on the 3rd December 2025

I have been struggling recently to set up my Orion OMC-140 telescope on my HEQ-5 mount. I find that trying to use the polar scope correctly and then carrying out a 3 star setup isn't that easy and it is very time consuming. I had a session the other day where it looked like it was going to be clear and so I began the process in the afternoon of setting up the mount and the telescope. By the time it was dark I had finally carried out a successful 3 star setup but before I could really do anything the whole telescope (and in particular the front corrector of this Maksutov-Cassegrain) had frozen up! It was very disappointing.

So on the 3rd I thought to hell with it, I wouldn't bother with an elaborate setup. I have three slabs set in the ground where I can place the feet of the tripod mount and on these I had marked where I think they should be placed (this at least was a good outcome from the freezing night). So I just set the feet correctly, moved the telescope until it was pointing at Saturn and switched on the equatorial drive (you can do this in one of the hand-controller options). Bingo! It worked very well and I was able to hold Saturn in the eyepiece for over an hour without having to adjust anything.

I decided to draw what I saw through the scope:-

Saturn's rings, at the moment, are virtually edge on. There is a very good application in TheSkyLive which shows where Saturn's moons are and how the rings are displayed to us. I used this information to label the moons that I was able to see. Two other potentially visible moons Mimas and Enceladus were located close to the rings but I was unable to pick them out. I was very pleased to see four of the moons. There was also a hint of a colour change in Saturn which I have indicated by thin line. North is up and east is to the left. The equatorial diameter of Saturn on this day was about 18.9 arc seconds and its magnitude was about 0.75. Our moon was one day from full.

All text and images © Duncan Hale-Sutton 2025