The night was young, the Earth had not yet rotated into the glare of the gibbous Moon and in South East London we were treated to a limiting visual magnitude of +4.3. It was time to get the telescope out...

I’d watched one of those docu-dramas over Christmas about a werewolf from America in the ‘80’s that had visited London and run amok. This made me think more about the relationship between these creatures and the Moon, and a thought struck me, it was so obvious I don’t know how it had eluded me until now, if I avoid the Moon, I’ll avoid these creatures as well, this is no doubt why imagers prefer moonless nights. So armed with this new insight I limited my imaging until just after Moon rise.

So I’m sure you can imagine my delight, imaging in this super dark sky, and I thought, why not, everyone says it’s impossible from South East London unless you have narrowband filters, but if you don’t try you won’t know for sure, could Barnard 33 really be within reach? And it appears the answer was yes! And to put the icing on the cake my new strategy to avoid the Moon meant I didn’t see a single werewolf. What a night. :-)

Now, I image only for pleasure, I’m really a visual observer, if I wanted to see a great image of the Horsehead I’d google it, but it is here for all to see and hopefully it will make someone happy when they see that their image is better.
As an aside I’m thinking of lining my garden path with garlic plants and making a picket fence using nice oak stakes that I can grab quickly, I did think of putting consecrated water in my pond as well but I’m not a suspicious sort.