Galaxy pair NGC 3718 and NGC 3729

Monday night, the 6th April 2026, clear weather returned to our skies with the waning moon (between full and last quarter) not rising until after midnight. I was looking for something to photograph and settled for the pair of galaxies NGC 3718 and NGC3729 in Ursa Major. They sit just below the bowl of the dipper. Here is what I obtained after 327x15s exposures on the Dwarf 3:-

 

NGC 3718 is the larger of the two galaxies in the centre of the image. NGC 3729 is its neighbour. I used a gain of 70 in the Dwarf and the astro filter. The final image was processed in Stellar Studio (auto settings) and has been binned x2. The saturation and sharpening have been increased in Photoshop. The first frame was taken at 21:28 BST and the last at 23:20 BST, midpoint 22:24. There is another prominent galaxy that can be seen at the far left of the frame and this is NGC 3756.

A portion of the full frame around the central pair is shown below:-

 

This shows how NGC 3718 has been distorted by gravitational interaction (possibly with NGC 3729 as they are roughly at a similar distance - 3718 is at 14.7 Mpc and 3729 is at 20.2 Mpc) and the spiral arms have been drawn out into an extended "S" shape. However, note also that there is a dark dust lane running through the centre of the galaxy so we are seeing it edge on with the arms having been drawn out above and below the plane. This galaxy appears in Arp's catalogue of peculiar galaxies as Arp 214. NGC 3729 is a barred spiral galaxy. Strangely enough, just to the right of the tail of stars in NGC 3718 is another group of interacting galaxies and this is Arp 322 or Hickson 56. These galaxies are much farther away at about 130 Mpc.

All text and images © Duncan Hale-Sutton 2026 

The Rosette Nebula

Two days later on 20th March 2026 (one day after new moon) were were continued to be blessed with clear skies and I was able to observe the large Rosette Nebula in Monoceros. This lies a little below (i.e. south) of the Cone Nebula and Christmas Tree Cluster I had observed a few days before. This is what I obtained after 272x15s (68 minutes) on the Dwarf 3:-

 

The first frame was taken at 20:58 UT and the last at 22:56 UT (midpoint 21:42 UT). Here the gain was 60 and duo-band filter employed in the Dwarf 3. Processed in Stellar Studio (auto settings). The image has been binned x2 and the gain and saturation have been increased in Photoshop. 

In the centre of the nebula is a young cluster of stars (NGC 2244, also called Caldwell 50) and these bright stars are illuminating the surrounding nebula (NGC 2239, Caldwell 49). UV light from these stars is ionising hydrogen gas in the nebula and causing the atoms to emit a prominent red line (H alpha) on recombination.  Also seen in this image are denser areas of dust and gas silhouetted against the brighter nebula. These are called Bok Globules and these can be sites where new stars are in the process of being formed.

All text and images © Duncan Hale-Sutton 2026 

Hickson 44 (Leo Quartet)

On the same evening I observed M81 and M82 (the 18th March 2026), I had a go at observing the Hickson 44 galaxy group (also known as the Leo Quartet). These galaxies also appear in the Arp catalogue as Arp 316. What I hadn't anticipated was how small a group these galaxies appear as. Here is the result of 237x15s of observation (just short of an hour) with the Dwarf 3:-

 

The group can be just about made out in the centre of this image. The first frame was taken at 20:36 UT and the last at 21:51 UT. The gain was 60 and the astro filter was employed. Auto settings were used in Stellar Studio (you can click on this image to obtain a larger view). The image has been binned x2. Here is a cropped version of the full size image showing the galaxies in more detail:-

 

Here I have increased the colour saturation and sharpened the image in Photoshop. Moving from left to right we have; the elliptical galaxy NGC 3193 which looks rather stellar like; then the larger edge on spiral galaxy NGC 3190 with its warped central dust lane; above this is the smaller NGC 3187 where again gravitational interaction with other galaxies has stretched its spiral arms into tidal tails; and finally at the bottom right is the barred spiral NGC3185.

All text and images © Duncan Hale-Sutton 2026

M81 and M82

The fine weather continued on the following day, the 18th March 2026, (now over a week and a half ago) and I wanted to find another target for observation. The book "The 100 Best Astrophotography Targets" by Ruben Kier (Springer 2009) is a very good book for gaining ideas about what to photograph. This time I decided to go for the galaxies M81 and M82 in Ursa Major (see page 82 of this book). These galaxies are found up near the head of the bear and not far from the star 24 Ursae Majoris. This time I took two sets of images on the Dwarf 3. One of 136x15s using the astro filter (first frame 23:01 UT and last 23:42 UT) and one of 201x15s using the duo-band filter (first frame 22:00 UT and last 22:59 UT), both gain 60. The ones with the duo-band filter were to capture the red emission light that can be seen in M82 due to the burst of star formation in that galaxy. Here is my resulting image:-

 

M82 (the Cigar Galaxy) is at the top of this image and M81 (Bode's Galaxy) is at the bottom (to obtain a better view please 'click' on the image). The majority of this image is the set of frames which used the astro filter. Just a small portion of this image around M82 is using the duo band filter. Both sets were processed in Stellar Studio with auto parameters. The combined result has been binned x2 and the saturation and sharpening increased in Photoshop. Here is a close up of M82 at the full resolution of the Dwarf:-

 

The strange shape of this galaxy becomes more apparent. M81 and M82 have gravitationally interacted about 20 million years ago and this has caused the deformation and burst of star formation that you see. In deeper images the red light appears to be exploding outwards either side of the galaxy from the centre. Here is a close up of M81:-

 

This is a very nicely defined spiral galaxy and, interestingly, contains an active galactic nucleus resulting from a black hole of 70 million solar masses. What can also just about be made out in this image is another much fainter satellite galaxy of M81, Holmberg IX or UGC 5336. This is a faint but fairly large dwarf irregular galaxy.

All text and images © Duncan Hale-Sutton 2026 

Venus is back in the evening sky

 

On the same evening that I captured the Leo Triplet of galaxies (March 17th) I also took a picture of Venus in the evening sky about 45 minutes after sunset. This planet was at superior conjunction on the 6th January 2026 and is now moving eastwards from the Sun and will be gaining altitude each night after sunset. It will reach its greatest elongation east on August 14th 2026. Between now and August its phase will go from gibbous to half and it will be increasing in apparent diameter as it approaches the earth. Hopefully I should be able to carry out some further observations of this planet in the evening sky as I did last year.

This picture was taken on a Sony RX100 (1/10s ISO 1600) at 18:54 UT. 

All text and images © Duncan Hale-Sutton 2026  

Leo Triplet of Galaxies

A week ago on March 17, the clear skies continued to be available and I decided to have a go at observing the Leo Triplet of galaxies consisting M 65, M 66 and NGC 3628. I have observed this trio before (see below) but I wanted to try this time with the Dwarf 3. It was two days to new moon at this time and the skies were nice and dark. Here is what I obtained after 459x15s (nearly 2 hours) of observation:-

 

M65 is in the centre of the frame. M66 is to the lower left of it and NCG 3628 (the Hamburger Galaxy) to the upper right. The other prominent galaxy at the far right of the image is NGC 3593. Here the gain was set to 60 and the astro filter was employed in the Dwarf 3. The image was subsequently processed in Stellar Studio using auto settings. Binned x2 and sharpened slightly in Photoshop. The first frame was taken at 20:07 UT and the last at 22:57 UT. Midpoint 21:32 UT. This group of galaxies also appears in Halton Arp's catalogue of peculiar galaxies (Arp 317).

Almost exactly ten years ago I obtained this image using my Celestron NexStar 102 SLT:-

 

This was 11 minutes of exposure (22x30s) using a D90 at prime focus (ISO 3200) and was taken on the 5th April 2016. There is obviously a problem with pink halos around the stars. For comparison I have rotated, scaled and cropped my Dwarf 3 image above to match this and this is the result:-

 

To get the same exposure on the Dwarf as 11 minutes on a 102mm aperture telescope I would need (102/35)²x11 = 93 minutes (around an hour and a half). I have gone a bit deeper than this but currently I think I know which telescope I would rather be using!

All text and images © Duncan Hale-Sutton 2026 

The Cone Nebula and Christmas Tree Cluster

In the constellation of Monoceros (The Unicorn) and not far from the border with Taurus and Orion is a large area of nebulosity that contains the open cluster NGC 2264 which has been dubbed the Christmas Tree Cluster. Just below this is a darker area of gas and dust which is called the Cone Nebula. I have tried a few times to image this with the Dwarf 3 but my most successful attempt came a week ago on the 14th March (one day after looking at M101). Here is what I obtained after 506x15s (just over two hours) of observation (you can 'click' on this image to see it in more detail):-

 

All auto settings were used on the Dwarf (which includes using the duo band filter) and in Stellar Studio. The image has been binned x2 and the gain and saturation increased slightly in Photoshop. The first frame was taken at 20:00 UT and the last at 22:46 UT. Midpoint 21:23 UT. 

The Cone Nebula is quite obvious from its shape at the bottom centre of this picture. The Christmas Tree Cluster is the group of bright blue stars that can be seen above this and are responsible for creating the red emission that covers a lot of this frame. There is also a smaller patch of blue reflection nebula. The shape of the Christmas Tree is not so easy to see in this orientation where north is roughly up. The base of the tree is the near brightest star in the centre of the field and its 'topper' is the blue star just above the tip of the Cone Nebula. I have rotated (through 180 degrees) and cropped the original image so that the shape is more obvious:-

Certainly, it looks to me like the nebula provides the shape of the fir tree and the cluster stars are the shining lights and ornaments. However, the stars do seem to make a tree shape in themselves with the brightest star being the bole of tree.

I like the fact that the full frame image contains patches of dark nebulae against a glowing background of red emission light and this is particularly noticeable in the top right (see the image at the top of this blog).

I said that I had tried to image this cluster before and I just want to refer to this. The first time was on the 11th March where I decided to attempt using the Dwarf in EQ (or equatorial) mode. This was supposed to enable you to take longer exposures than 15s and I attempted frames of 60s. However, out of 120 frames that I took 84 failed for one reason or another and I haven't yet got to the bottom of it. I suspect the longer exposure meant that either more satellites were captured crossing the field of view or the tracking wasn't up to scratch.

Anyway, here is the resulting 36x60s image:-

 

Here I used the duo-band filter and the gain was set to 70. Auto settings were used in Stellar Studio. The first frame was taken at 21:03 UT and the last at 22:54 UT. Again I have increased the gain and saturation somewhat in Photoshop. The image is binned x2. You can see that the red emission has not come out so strongly in this shorter overall exposure. However, what EQ mode does give you is a larger image in the vertical direction. This is because the frames are not suffering from the field rotation you get in Alt-Az mode. Also the star in the centre of the fame has come out a lot bluer in this image. EQ mode is a better way to go provided that the frame rejection rate comes down. Perhaps a 30s exposure would be better.

I also had a go at this cluster on the 13th March but I made the mistake of using the Visual filter (which wouldn't get me any of the red emission light). Here is the resulting 53x15s image:-

 

Here the gain was 60. The first frame was taken at 21:41 UT and the last at 21:58 UT. Again I have increased the gain and saturation somewhat in Photoshop. The image is binned x2.  Notice that the blue reflection nebula does come out quite well.

All text and images © Duncan Hale-Sutton 2026