North East London Astronomical Society - NELAS

👻 The Soul Nebula — IC 1848

Drifting through the constellation Cassiopeia, the Soul Nebula is a vast cloud of glowing hydrogen shaped — with a bit of imagination — like a curled-up embryo or a ghostly figure. It's the eternal companion to the nearby Heart Nebula (IC 1805); together they form the famous "Heart & Soul" pair, physically linked by a bridge of gas. 💗

Lying roughly 7,500 light-years away, this stellar nursery spans about 100 light-years across. Its glowing cavities are carved by radiation and stellar winds from clusters of hot young stars buried inside — a textbook case of "triggered star formation," where each generation of stars ignites the next along the compressed cloud edges. 🌟

You can also spot small embedded star clusters within the nebula's brightest regions, some only a few million years young.

📍 Coordinates (J2000)
RA: 02h 55m
Dec: +60° 25′
Constellation: Cassiopeia
Distance: ~7,500 light-years
Apparent size: 150′ × 75′ (about 5 × 2.5 full moons)
Also known as: Westerhout 5, Sharpless 2-199

📷 Acquisition & Processing
Telescope: DWARF 3
60 × 60s exposures (1 hour total integration)
Duoband filter
Stars corrected in DwarfLab Stellar Studio
Nebula processed in PixInsight (HOO palette)

Swipe to see the annotated field and finder chart 👉

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🐘 The Elephant's Trunk Nebula — IC 1396A

Buried inside the vast glowing cloud of IC 1396 in the constellation Cepheus, this winding column of dark dust and gas is one of the sky's most striking shapes — an "elephant's trunk" stretching nearly 20 light-years long.

It sits about 2,400 light-years from Earth, sculpted by fierce radiation from the hot blue multiple star HD 206267. That same radiation is squeezing the cloud from the outside in, triggering a stellar nursery — over 250 young stars are forming inside this region, some less than 100,000 years old. 🌟

The whole IC 1396 complex is enormous: more than 3° across (about six full moons side by side) and over 100 light-years wide — a giant faint bubble that's a favourite target for wide-field and narrowband imagers.

📍 Coordinates (J2000)
RA: 21h 38.6m
Dec: +57° 30′
Constellation: Cepheus
Distance: ~2,400 light-years
Apparent size: ~3° (parent nebula IC 1396)

📷 Acquisition & Processing
Telescope: DWARF 3
60 × 60s exposures (1 hour total integration)
Duoband filter
Stars corrected in DwarfLab Stellar Studio
Nebula processed in PixInsight (HOO palette)

Swipe to see the annotated field and finder chart 👉

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🌌 North America & Pelican Nebulae — NGC 7000 + IC 5070

Here we are looking at one of the most beautiful regions of Cygnus: the North America Nebula on the left and the Pelican Nebula on the right.

These are huge glowing clouds of hydrogen gas, shaped by young hot stars and crossed by dark lanes of interstellar dust. The dark “Gulf of Mexico” region in NGC 7000 and the separation between both nebulae are especially striking in this wide-field mosaic.

⭐ The bright star near the upper right is Deneb, one of the main landmarks of the summer sky and part of the Summer Triangle. This whole area sits in the rich Milky Way fields of Cygnus.

The nebula complex is roughly 2,000–2,600 light-years away.
Deneb is also commonly placed at around 2,600 light-years, although its exact distance is difficult to measure precisely.

📍 Approximate centre:
RA 20h 58m | Dec +44° 20′

🔭 Capture details
Taken from Bortle 8–9 suburban London on 03/07/2026 using the Dwarf 3.

📷 Mosaic: 4 panels, 30 light frames per panel
⏱️ Exposure: 60 seconds per frame Gain: 120
🕒 Total integration: 120 minutes
🧪 Processing: PixInsight, HOO palette
✨ Stars: finished in StellarStudio

Even from heavy light pollution, careful mosaics and narrowband-style processing can reveal huge structures hidden in the summer Milky Way.

A lovely celebration was had in our April meeting to celebrate NELAS's 70th anniversary! 🎉🎉

🌌 Christmas Tree Cluster & Cone Nebula (NGC 2264)

A compact star-forming region in Monoceros, where young stars are still embedded in gas and dust. The bright central cluster shapes the surrounding nebula, while the Cone Nebula appears as a dense column silhouetted against the emission glow.

📍 Kelling Heath (Astrocamp), Norfolk 19th March 2026
🧭 Coordinates (J2000): RA 06h 41m | Dec +09° 53′

🔭 Captured with the DWARF 3 smart telescope

🛠️ Processing
Dual-band (60s, gain 120) combined with broadband (15s, gain 60), ~single-session capture.
Stars corrected in Stellar Studio (), with further processing and blending completed in PixInsight.
Time 1hr and 30 min approx.

🌌 California Nebula (NGC 1499)
A wide, faint emission nebula in Perseus, glowing mainly in hydrogen-alpha and illuminated by the bright star Xi Persei (Menkib). Because it stretches across a huge area of sky, it works far better as a mosaic target than as a single frame.
📍 Taken at Kelling Heath Star Party (Astrocamp), Norfolk, UK on the 20th of March 2026 — a great chance to work under some of the darkest skies in the UK.
🧭 Coordinates (J2000)
RA 04h 03m | Dec +36° 25′
🔭 Captured with DWARF 3, using a 4-panel mosaic to cover the full length of the nebula.
🛠️ Processing: 4-panel mosaic with two datasets combined.
Dual-band (Hα/OIII): 60s, gain 120 → nebula signal
Broadband (RGB): 15s, gain 60 → stars + banding control
~5h total integration.
Stacked/assembled in Stellar Studio, then blended in Pixinsight to smooth gradients, reduce dual-band colour banding, and restore natural star colour.
Workshop will be available shortly.
✨ It is not a nebula that shouts at you straight away. Most of its beauty is in the subtle structure — long soft clouds of hydrogen spread across the field — and that makes it a really satisfying one to build carefully.

🌞 Same Sun — 3 different looks

Captured with a mobile phone through a solar telescope at Astrocamp.

With just small adjustments in contrast and tone, the same single image can reveal very different aspects of the Sun’s photosphere — from a natural view to a more enhanced look, and finally a monochrome version where the subtle granulation becomes easier to see.

No stacking, no complex processing — just a single frame and a few tweaks.

Which one do you prefer: 1, 2 or 3?

Astronomy MobileAstrophotography

🌞 Our restless Sun — captured with a mobile phone

Taken through a dedicated solar telescope at Kelling Heath Star Party (Astrocamp), March 2026 — Norfolk skies giving us both stunning nights and a chance to turn our attention to the Sun by day.

This is the photosphere (~5,500 °C), where convection creates the fine granulation pattern — countless cells of hot plasma rising and cooling across the surface. Subtle structures and magnetic activity are visible across the disk, even on a relatively quiet day.

The darker edge (limb darkening) appears because we’re looking through cooler, shallower layers of the Sun’s atmosphere at an angle.

Captured simply with a smartphone through the eyepiece, with only light adjustments to enhance contrast and detail — a reminder that solar imaging can be accessible, even without complex setups.

Even when it looks calm, our star is anything but still.

Astrocamp SolarImaging Astronomy MobileAstrophotography

Flower Moonrise Tower Bridge by Nelas member Ikram Haq 02/04/26

Flower Moonrise Tower Bridge London 02/04/2026 #towerbridgelondon #flowermoon #fullmoon Flower Moonrise Tower Bridge London 02/04/2026