A rotating selection of astrophotography from my observatory – galaxies, nebulae, clusters, and the occasional special event. Ten images at a time, refreshed every week, drawn from a growing archive of 56.
I recently purchased a Seestar S30 Pro from BINTEL here in Sydney – my best buy for a long time. It has been a lot of fun imaging the Southern skies using only the Seestar and my iPad. This is a great way for someone to start imaging stellar objects; it is not a replacement for visual astronomy, but if you want to start on the road to imaging this is a simple way to do it. Watch this space. I have the new Seestar S50 Pro on back order, hopefully arriving in October. It should be an interesting addition.
I've also developed a browser-based interface to the Seestar range of telescopes. It can control multiple scopes from a single session. I've yet to fully explore how to make best use of the new software. It's free to anyone who wants a copy.
M16 ColourThe Eagle Nebula spreads across Serpens, a sprawling stellar nursery where dust and gas swirl around newborn stars. Its most famous feature—the Pillars of Creation—rises like dark towers against the glowing emission of hydrogen gas. These towering columns are stellar maternity wards where gravity is slowly sculpting new suns from the surrounding nebular material. The deep crimson hue reveals hydrogen emission, whilst green and blue trace the light of oxygen. The whole scene sits a few thousand light-years away, yet remains accessible to amateur telescopes and shows how turbulent and creative the cosmos truly is.NGC 104 47 Tucanae47 Tucanae sits in the constellation Tucana and ranks among the brightest globular clusters visible from Earth's southern hemisphere. This dense, roughly spherical swarm of ancient stars orbits our galaxy and contains millions of suns packed so tightly that near its centre they seem almost to touch. The cluster glows with a warm, golden hue from its population of old, cool stars. Despite sitting at a considerable distance, its stellar density and luminosity make it an unmissable sight through binoculars or a telescope, a sphere of starlight that rewards closer inspection with hints of colour and subtle structure across its face.C100 Open ClusterNestled in Cassiopeia, this open cluster scatters across the sky like a handful of brilliant diamonds on black velvet. Young stars of similar age and origin drift together through space, their blue-white light cutting through the darker dust surrounding them. Open clusters such as this one are relatively short-lived in cosmic terms—the stars gradually drift apart over millions of years until the group dissolves entirely. For observers, these clusters offer a rewarding target: bright enough to glimpse with binoculars, yet intricate enough to reward a telescope's closer look, revealing the delicate colour variation between individual suns.Milky Way Galaxy CenterThe galactic centre of the Milky Way rises above the horizon in Sagittarius, a region so densely packed with stars and dust that it resembles a luminous cloud rather than individual points of light. This is where our galaxy's supermassive black hole lurks, invisible but gravitationally dominant, surrounded by a swirling ecosystem of stellar nurseries and ancient star clusters. The warm, golden hues come from countless older stars, while darker patches reveal cosmic dust that obscures the view of distant stellar populations behind. On clear nights from dark skies, this region stands out as the most striking concentration of stellar light visible to the naked eye—a humbling reminder of our place within such an immense structure.Gem Cluster widefieldIn the constellation Gemini lies an open cluster of young, hot stars scattered across a region rich with dust and nebulosity. This widefield view captures the cluster nestled within its stellar neighbourhood, where traces of the gas and dust from which these stars formed still linger. The brightest members shine with a blue-white intensity, while dimmer companions populate the scene. Such clusters are cosmic laboratories—they contain stars of similar age born from the same cloud, making them invaluable for understanding stellar evolution. Over time, gravitational forces will gradually disperse the cluster, sending its members into the galaxy on separate paths.Milky Way and LMCThe Milky Way stretches across the southern sky above the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy that orbits our own. Though it appears small and fuzzy from Earth, the LMC contains billions of stars and spans tens of thousands of light-years—a cosmic companion bound by gravity to the Milky Way. From dark sky sites in the Southern Hemisphere, both galaxies reveal their structure: the LMC's irregular spiral form contrasts with the Milky Way's sweeping disc, dust lanes visible in silhouette. Together they form one of the night sky's most arresting views, a reminder that our galaxy is not alone but part of a gravitationally linked family moving through space.NGC6334 Cats Paw NebulaThe Cat's Paw Nebula, sprawling across Scorpius, is a vast stellar nursery where gravity is actively sculpting gas and dust into new stars. Named for its distinctive shape—claw-like fingers reaching across the sky—this emission nebula glows in shades of red and orange as ultraviolet radiation from embedded hot young stars ionises the surrounding hydrogen. Within its structure lie dense stellar clusters still shrouded in their birth clouds, invisible to optical telescopes but active in infrared light. The nebula's turbulent landscape reveals the messy, dynamic process of star formation, where clumps of material collapse under their own weight whilst powerful stellar winds and radiation carve out cavities and pillars. It stands as a powerful reminder that the universe is constantly reshaping itself.Omega Centauri NGC 5139Omega Centauri ranks among the most magnificent globular clusters visible from Earth, a vast sphere of hundreds of thousands of stars packed tightly together in the constellation Centaurus. The cluster's centre blazes with such density that individual stars blur into a luminous glow, while the outer regions resolve into countless pinpoints of light, each one a sun in its own right. This stellar swarm orbits the Milky Way at a great distance, and its unusual properties—its enormous size and the range of colours among its stars—hint that it may once have been the core of a small galaxy consumed by our own. Even to the naked eye, Omega Centauri appears as a fuzzy star; through a telescope, it transforms into one of the sky's most arresting sights.NGC4945 in CentarusNGC 4945 sprawls across the southern constellation Centaurus as one of the brightest galaxies as seen from the Southern Hemisphere, yet it remains surprisingly obscure beyond those latitudes. This edge-on spiral galaxy tilts dramatically across the sky, its dust lanes cutting dark ribbons through a glowing disc. The galaxy's prominent central bar and spiral arms hint at violent cosmic history, while its relatively nearby location makes it a rewarding target for amateur telescopes. Though often overshadowed by its more famous neighbour Centaurus A, NGC 4945 offers its own quiet drama—a massive system of stars and dust seen perfectly sideways, revealing the architectural complexity hidden within.Centaurus A NGC 5128Centaurus A sprawls across the southern sky as one of the nearest giant elliptical galaxies, a cosmic collision frozen in time. Dust lanes carved from a past merger slice through its golden core, creating a striking dark cross that dominates the view. Jets of superheated material stream outward from a supermassive black hole at its centre, extending far beyond the galaxy's visible disc. This violent architecture—the warped dust, the energetic outflows, the chaotic star formation—tells the story of two galaxies that merged long ago, their black holes combining into the powerhouse that Centaurus A remains today.
Australian amateur astronomers have spent years at Ice in Space – it's been home for many of us. Worth a look if you're starting out, or already deep in it.
