Amateur Astronomy Images and Local Weather Information from the Pumpkin Patch Observatory

What's New

2018 02 09

New Mk2 All Sky Camera installed and operational.

2013 07 06

Presentation on "Hidden in Full View - revealing the hidden universe with astrophotography" for the Wysing Arts Center's Open Weekend 2013.

2013 06 26

Presented an "Narrowband Imaging Primer" at the Cambridge Institute of Astronomy as part of the Cambridge Astronomical Association's Astro Imaging Course.

2013 03 24

NGC 6888 - The Crescent Nebula added to gallery.

2013 03 13

Comet Pan-Starrs taken from garden with DSLR.

2013 01 23

NGC 281 - The Pac-Man Nebula added to gallery.

2012 09 12

To Catch A Shooting Star - The Perseid Meteor Shower Radiant image added to gallery.

2012 07 18

Presented an "Introduction to Narrowband Imaging" at the IoA as part of the Cambridge Astronomical Association's Astro Imaging Course.

2012 06 29

The Great Orion Nebula added to gallery.

2012 04 20

Presentation on "Astrophotography and Art" for the Wysing Arts Center's Cosmos residency lecture series.

2012 01 14

Lagoon and Triffid Nebulae region HaRGB image added to gallery.

2011 12 29

Completely revamped the Weather Section pages.

2011 10 28

Presented "Astrophotography - A Whistlestop Tour" at the IoA as part of the Cambridge Astronomical Association's Star Party lecture program.

2011 06 23

Added example all sky camera movies to the Timelapse Gallery.

2010 11 27

Added M31 Andromeda Galaxy continuum subtracted Ha image. The continuum subtracted image reveals M31's hidden central Nuclear Spiral.

2010 11 07

M31 Andromeda Galaxy narrowband image

2010 10 10

Abell 1185 Galaxy Group and Ambartsumian's Knot. Also added new floating thumbnail resizable gallery.

2010 08 10

Leo I Galaxy Group

2010 07 07

New video server h/w installed for All Sky Camera after original one failed.

2010 05 05

Galaxy Trio in Leo

2010 04 01

All Sky Camera converted to colour from mono after failure old older camera. Introduced offline averaging of 8 frames per image to reduce image noise.

2010 02 12

Revised Elephant's Trunk nebula in IC1396 - colour narrowband image - sharper, better contrast and colour. Improved starless processing.

2009 10 20

All Sky Camera catches Centaur Rocket dumping fuel and DMSP-F18 satellite it just launched.

2009 09 04

Elephant's Trunk nebula in IC1396 - colour narrowband image of a cometary globule and dark nebulae embedded in an emission nebula complex.

2009 06 08

All Sky Camera continous update last hour animation loop added.

2009 05 23

Added timelapse gallery and populated with some old sequences.

2009 05 14

M106 Seyfert galaxy

2009 04 30

All Sky Camera was Offline for a while. Hopefully now more reliable. Slightly wider FOV and focus tweaked.

2009 04 12

Abell 1367 Leo Galaxy Cluster - A froth of tiny galaxies - many interacting, and a 10.3 billion light year distant quasar.

2009 03 27

Updated DSLR control cable page - Joe Zeglinski's simple modification to the design adds support for Nikon DSLRs.

2009 03 02

The Moon, original f9 first light image.

2009 02 23

Rosetta Nebula prime focus image. Gallery page created.

2009 02 01

Live weather reporting added to website. Data from cloud monitor and weather station mounted on observatory.

2008 06 19

Mysterious object in Cygnus mosaic - Solved!? Sung-Nan Lin provides likely explanation.

2008 06 17

Wow, almost a year since the last real update of the site!... New All Sky Camera project that provides real-time images and time-lapse movies of the sky, day and night, 24/7. Stay tuned for news of new observatory's construction and installation of new instruments that's been taking place over the last year.

2007 08 17

A long time since I put anything up on the site, so here's a quick update. I recently had the luck to spend a night under the stars during a pack trip in the US Eastern Sierras. I shot ~2hrs of 30sec exposures with a Canon 300D DSLR, generating a few seconds worth of fisheye lens Milky Way time lapse movie [Warning 6.4MB download]. It shows the milky way rotating across the sky reasonably well. XviD codec required. If you don't have it, the CCCP Codec Pak is a quick way to get the codec installed. Most of the firefly tracks you see are aircraft, but a few are Perseid meteors. Here's a composite star trails picture of all the frames in the movie, and a cropped single frame of the brightest Perseid from the sequence.

2007 03 22

Added the Heart & Soul Nebulae to the gallery.

2007 03 21

Reprocessed the Cygnus mosaic to better emphasise the dimmer nebulosity and dark rivers.

Minor updates to DSLR serial control cable page.

2007 02 25

Finished developing generic page template for gallery items. Added image details to the Cygnus mosaic page.

2007 02 22

Site temporarily down for a couple of days due to dns configuration error

2007 02 06

Site goes live

Basic structure in place: menus, search, translation.

Minimal content: About, Equipment, old standalone DSLR serial control cable page completely revamped and revised

Images: Northern Cygnus mosaic, IC1396