Ramsbottom Astro Images

20/11/2025

I’ve not posted much in a while but a little link to an old video showing the equipment I have been using an info on how to get setup with a astrophotography setup.

If you want to keep it budget friendly and much simpler, try a SeeStar S50 or similar Dwarf 3 smart telescope. Great value for money as 1/4 the price of a full separate setup.

In this first video of my astrophotography series, I break down the complete setup I’m using for deep sky imaging – perfect if you’re new and wondering what ...

28/09/2025

I’ve not posted in a while but recently got interested in the global meteor network. This is a raspberry Pi based camera which in my case looks up NNW just to the right of Holcombe Tower. It detects meteors and creates lots of interesting data files and Timelapse’s which I’ve just managed to automate to uploading daily to YouTube (if a meteor is detected).

Skip to the end to see the collection of still images - stacked meteors and various data graphs.

Please check out the channel - skip to the end of the video to see the still jpg images showing the stacked meteor images and various other bits of data … please like a subscribe to the channel - it’ll help me keep the API free to upload and authenticate my account 👍

Located in Ramsbottom, North Manchester, England, the camera points NNW, just to the right of Holcombe Tower and uploads to the Global Meteor Network with st...

01/09/2024

After what felt like an eternity of waiting for clear skies, I finally had a chance to dive back into astrophotography, and here’s my very first shot of the mesmerising Veil Nebula! ✨ Taken from Ramsbottom, North England on the evening of the 30th July 2024.

The Veil Nebula is a stunning remnant of a supernova that exploded around 8,000 years ago, located about 2,100 light-years from Earth. It’s a delicate web of ionised gas and dust, stretching across the sky in a brilliant display of colour and light. What you're seeing here is the aftermath of a massive star's death, a cosmic explosion that scattered its outer layers into space, creating these intricate, wispy structures.

Technical stuff:
I used a SVB220 dual band filter for this shot so bumped the exposure time to 60 seconds, and really probably should have do longer! Despite a perfectly clear night for the full 5 hours of darkness, I only managed about 2 hours of data due to some issues with my mount (which needs fixing!). I was quite pleased how well this turned out. So it was about 110-120 photos, each photo being a 60 second exposure and all stacked on top of each other.

Thanks for looking!

04/08/2024

A view of our own galaxy, The Milky Way, from our hotel roof top in Lanzarote on July 29th 2024.

A series of 30 photos taken around midnight, stacked together with a lighter foreground picture. First time I’ve been anywhere dark enough to photograph the Milky Way and try this! 🙂

04/06/2024

Last Saturday night after a few drinks and a BBQ with my family, it turned midnight and it was a choice between another drink, relax, boxing and sleep or a walk up Holcombe hill…..

Taken between 12:30-2:00am, 1st June, 360 photos, 15 second exposure all stacked.

As the Earth rotates the position of the stars move by a tiny amount each photo. By stacking them on top of one another, you can see the track they make, also known as a star trail. It’s also a great example of us being able to whiteness the Earths rotation on its axis.

29/05/2024

Spent a little time this week going through old photos that I didn`t like when I first attempted them.

This is the Pinwheel Galaxy taken on 16th April. A stunning front-on spiral galaxy located approximately 21 million light-years away from Earth. This galaxy is really massive, nearly twice the size of our own Milky Way!

28/05/2024

Another go at the Sunflower Galaxy 😄

Still not happy, I think a third try lucky is needed! More detail in this one but the colours look over cooked....

27/05/2024

The nights here in Ramsbottom, North Manchester have now totally gone and there is no official "Night Time" until 31st July. The darkest period we get at about 10pm until 3am is known as Astronomical Twilight and isn`t officially "Night" and never fully dark! I`ll try and get out with the telescope but the weather is as much a battle as the lack of true dark!

Taken on10th May, The Sunflower Galaxy, from Ramsbottom, UK. This is known as a flocculent spiral galaxy. Unlike "grand design" spiral galaxies with well-defined spiral arms, flocculent galaxies like this, have many discontinuous arms. The Sunflower galaxy is massive, about the same size as our own Milky Way and it is about 35 million light years away from Earth. They think there is a super massive black hole in the centre which has a mass of about 30 million times our Sun.

I haven`t posted this as the data/photos used were not the best. There was a lot of gradient on the original photos and it took quite a while to process. Definitely a target I`ll try and take again in the future but I was pleased to get something out of the rare cloudless sky opportunity.

18/05/2024

This was my first attempt at lunar photography and whilst I took 1000 photos, I could only use about 200 of them! I know exactly where I went wrong so hopefully I`ll improve next time. Still quite happy with my first attempt!

Moon - 17-5-24 from quite a cloudy night in Ramsbottom, UK.

13/05/2024

At the end of each night imaging, I have been taking flat calibration frames with an iPad over a stretched tshirt. Considering the iPad isn’t even big enough to fully cover the end of my large Newtonian scope, I really wanted and needed a proper flat panel. I decided to have a go at building “Dark Sky Geeks” plans for an ASCOM Wireless Flat panel. It’s a pretty cool design considering there isn’t a wireless flat panel on the market to even purchase!

A £5 clock from B&M Bargains, a £20 microcontroller and some other cheap components I already owned, a few nights of hard work and I finally managed to make this!

Firstly full credit to Dark Sky Geek for providing this project free of charge and that can be found here: https://github.com/jlecomte/ascom-wireless-flat-pa...

10/05/2024

Sat out with my telescope enjoying the evening, only to get the Northern Lights, Aurora, appear right above my head! What an amazing night. 😝

04/05/2024

It’s been a hard week at work so I treated myself to an autofocuser. No more manual focusing with a bahtinov mask and I can say hello to hands free perfect focus all night 🤩 😂
However when it arrived, fitting it to the 200p is not quite as straight forward as it is with other scopes! This is the ZWO EAF fitting to a Skywatcher 200p

The ZWO EAF is a great auto focuser but fitting to the Skywatcher Explorer 200p isn’t quite as straight forward as some scopes. By replacing all four bracket...