King's Bruton pupils in the Astrophotography Club have just published an amazing image of the Heart Nebula...

The Astrophotography Club aim to take photos of deep sky objects using a telescope attached to a tracking mount and guided by a second telescope and camera. This allows for very long exposure times to enable fine detail to be captured. Multiple photos are then stacked using Deep-Sky Stacker software and then edited in PhotoShop to bring out the detail. This photo is the pupils' first effort using eleven ten-minute photos. The object is called the Heart Nebula, which can be found in the constellation Cassiopea. It is an emission nebula showing glowing Hydrogen gas and darker dust lanes, whilst also containing ionised Oxygen and Sulphur gases. The Club will look to add more detail to this over the coming weeks as well as photograph other objects such as the Orion Nebula and the Andromeda Galaxy.

Paul Brice - Astrophotography Club Leader & Maths Teacher