Supernova 2008ij in NGC 6643, imaged by Ron Arbour using a 40cm newtonian reflector and a Starlight Express SXV H9 CCD camera, on 2008 Dec 29.744 UT

A remotely imaged shot of comet C/2007 N3 (Lulin).

This was taken using GRAS 005 at Mayhill, New Mexico and is cropped and 50% resampled. The comet was quite low at the start of morning twilight, near the Libra-Scorpio border. The field is just over 40' wide.
As others have pointed out this comet's inclination of 178 degs is favourable from a dust plane anti-tail perspective and the image shows both a faint narrow tail to the west and an anti-tail like feature on the opposite side. The bright star bleeding charge just north of the comet is 47 Librae (mag 6.0).

Technical Details:

Object: C2007 N3 (Lulin)
Date: 2009 Jan 8.536 UT
Equipment: GRAS 005 (Epsilon 0.25m f/3.4, New Mexico)
Camera: SBIG ST10XME
Exposure: 120s

Image of Venus taken in very good seeing on 2009 Jan 26.

Celestron C11 at f/30, SkyNyx 2-0M camera.

On February 25, 2009 Ceres will be the closest to the Earth for the next 1000 years. Reason the more to try to image the dwarf planet. With its 0.83" it has the size of the theoretical resolution of an 11 inch telescope. As a comparison I used Denebola. Despite the fact that collimation was not perfect, the disk of Ceres is clearly visible. Perhaps other members would like to try.

Atmospheric conditions:          Seeing 7/10, Transparancy 8/10
Telescope :                              Celestron C11 with Televue 3x Barlow and Astronomik RGB filters
Camera:                                   DMK2AF4.AS
Exposure time:                        1/5 sec; gain 100%; gamma 40%; per color  2x 2 min exposures total of 980 frames
Processing:                              Registax 4.0 and finally per color 500 best frames stacked

Comet C/2007 N3 Lulin imaged by Maurice Gavin on 2009 Feb 21 at 22:13UT.

3 x 14 x 30s exposures (21 minutes), using a piggy-backed ETX 70 and an MX9 CCD camera.

More images are available on the Lulin Gallery .

An image of Lulin and Regulus using GRAS 014 in New Mexico on 2009 Feb 28. This is a 180 sec exposure with a Takahashi FSQ 106 (106mm aperture f/5) and SBIG STL11000M CCD. As well as Regulus, the faint 11th mag galaxy UGC 5470, just above Regulus, is visible.

An image from March 1st in rather good seeing for the altitude which was never more than 45º.

Celestron C14 telescope.

Although low in Monoceros, making imaging difficult from the UK, this is one of the most beautiful PN of the entire sky and a very good example of the butterfly morphology.

Taken using a Canon 20Da DSLR and 200 mm telephoto lens at f/4. The camera was tracking using an Astrotrac under misty skies at Dengie marches on the Essex Coast. An IDAS LPR filter was used over the front lens to help reduce light pollution. North is to the left of the picture. Two of Orions belt stars are to the left of the picture. The Horsehead nebula and M42 and M43 regions are very prominent, but the image also shows delicate patches of emission nebula across the whole field of view. Various knots of blue reflection nebulae are visible near the belt stars which can be seen better on the full resolution image. See www.astromania.co.uk . The picture is a stack of 20 no 3 minute exposures at 800 ISO taken on 2009 January 23rd.

Dale Holt writes:

"Last week using the 14" Newt & Watec Camera, I sketched each member of the Leo Triplet individually. There is only a very narrow FOV when using the video camera with this scope but the detailed revealed is quite incredible. Having made 3 individual sketches I asked my very good friend & accomplished planetary imager Simon Kidd if he could make up a composite for me in Photoshop and add some field stars.

Venus at inferior conjunction with sun, shows the thinly illuminate planet, as it swing 'around' the sun.

30cm Meade LX200 SCT with OG mask for safe use in daylight as demoed in video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3GCPZwJcVk

A mosiac showing Eratosthenes and Stadius just after sunrise on April 3rd 2009, 20:30 UTC.

Celestron C14.

An image of the bright supernova painfully close to the core of NGC 4088.

I had extremely good seeing last night, with very tight star images, and noticed that the image of the SN was slightly elongated E-W. After much investigation I unearthed a really high quality image taken at Kitt Peak which shows there is a bright region (star/HII??) near the core just 1.5" from the supernova. Further processing of my images managed to almost separate object and SN in my own image. As a final test I rescaled and blinked my image at 1000% scale with the best pre-discovery image I could find..... This clearly showed the supernova blinking just 1.5" east of the existing core brightness. In all the other images I've studied the supernova appears circular or just slightly elongated, even in the Bernd Gahrken image with an 80cm instrument. The older image (NB, it's mirror flipped) at AOP, clearly shows the permanent bright object in this galaxy's core.

http://www.noao.edu/outreach/aop/observers/n4088shade.jpg

I have not even attempted photometry in these cluttered galaxy core surroundings!!! Of course, part of the reason my star images were so sharp was that the galaxy was so close to the zenith!