Mastodawn

Last Saturday I spent the day at this year's European Astrofest in London. I learnt a lot, eat too much and tried not to spend a fortune on new toys. These are my reflections on the day ...

https://bobreflected.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-house-of-astronomy-astrofest.html

BobReflected Dec 19

I've written & uploaded the fourth and final blog post in a series which covers the last few years of my deep sky #astrophotography - this one's on galaxies observed from my back garden.

It's been an encouragement to look back and be able to see progress 🙂

https://bobreflected.blogspot.com/2025/12/leaving-milky-way-behind-galaxies-far.html

BobReflected Dec 13

A rare day of clear skies so a golden opportunity to play with a new toy: a hydrogen_alpha filter. It's designed to work with one of my telescopes to reveal the detail of the violent 'surface' as it's affected by the magnetic field and other forces. If I over-expose the surface I can also reveal prominences. Not bad for a first trial run 🙂. All I need now is another cloud-free day - and hopefully some clear nights as well, but at least I now have more options 🙂

BobReflected Dec 13

The third of four planned blog posts: this one on nebulæ of one sort or another. (Taken together, the four posts will constitute a log of my deep sky imaging to date.)

https://bobreflected.blogspot.com/2025/12/beginnings-and-endings-and-rise-of.html
#astrophotography

BobReflected Nov 9

Active regions on the Sun this afternoon, as seen from my garden.

We're only just beyond the peak of the solar activity cycle and it shows in the number and size of the active regions - lots of sunspots 🙂

(Taken through a neutral solar filter using my pet robot - a Dwarf3 smart telescope.)

BobReflected Nov 6

Way back in July, before another grey Autumn settled in, it was my privilege and pleasure to give a talk at the South East Kent Astronomical Society: https://sekas.co.uk/.

I promised a follow-on blog post that would be more widely available - this has been notable by its absence! In lieu I have used the record facility in PowerPoint to add a voice-over to the slides: the resulting very amateur video is now uploaded to YouTube at https://youtu.be/HiaBa32FpxA
#astrophotography #astronomy

BobReflected Nov 5

After nothing since January, two blog posts within a week (with more waiting in the wings). The first was on binary star systems I've imaged from my garden whereas this second one goes up in scale to star clusters.

The posts are image-centred although, as is my habit, I've included a few generic #astronomy #astrophography snippets along the way.

https://bobreflected.blogspot.com/2025/11/clustered.html

BobReflected Nov 1

There is an aphorism within creative writing circles 'I write in order to know what I think'; I definitely buy into the generic sense of the phrase. So, after and absence of several months, here is the first in a planned short series of blog posts in which I try to catch up with myself - in particular, with my hobby of astrophotography 😉
https://bobreflected.blogspot.com/2025/11/binary.html

BobReflected Oct 23

Having told myself to leave well alone and try for better data, I couldn't stop myself having yet another bash at processing my M31 Andromeda data from last year. This really is a tricky target, but I'm learning a lot ... I hope.

BobReflected Oct 14

I've finally got my head back in gear enough to look at some unprocessed data from a clear night way back in August.

This is a second attempt at the Bubble Nebula (NGC7635) but my first use of 'star-removal' software to avoid the dull-glowing hydrogen from being swamped.