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Gordon Payne Photography

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Gordon Payne Photography

Just somewhere for me to collect my photos in one place for now. Mostly weather/nature/astro photos.

02/03/2026

About a year ago I posted the Carina Nebula but that was only about 6 hours of SHO data at the time. I’ve kept that but added more over the past couple of weeks bringing it to about 25 hours total. I expect I’m probably finished with this one for a while now. If I ever add to it then it might be to do the stars in RGB as they come out fairly white in SHO.

08/02/2026

As always, I’ve been gathering more data whenever I reasonably can and this one was collected over 3 nights. It’s the Seagull Nebula, shot and processed in SHO. I love that it really does look like a seagull that has spotted its next chip, right down to the beak and eye. I thought I might need an extra night to capture more oxygen due to the moon being fairly prominent however it came out good enough as is so I’ll leave it there. Perhaps I’ll add more detail to it next year or the year after, who knows.

25/01/2026

About 4 months ago I shared an interim version of the Helix Nebula in HOO. It was so foggy that night which killed much of the data. I went and added another night a few weeks later so I ended up with about 11.5 hours total. I then never got around to reprocessing it until now, so here is the version I’m much happier with. I think I’ll come back to it one day as I suspect there’s more to be seen, but that could be in a year or 5 years…

09/01/2026

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. I’m hoping to step up my game with better processing methods and spending longer on individual targets so here is my first “reboot”. This is the Large Magellanic Cloud. I spent about 18 hours on it capturing RGB, Ha and Oiii using my 135mm lens.

21/09/2025

It’s been about 3 months since the weekend hasn’t been cloudy but I finally made it back out last night to capture the Eye of God Nebula, otherwise known as the Helix Nebula or NGC7293. Now while there wasn’t a cloud to be seen, it ended up getting foggy for most of the night. Also the Sulfur images didn’t really pan out so I only ended up with 4h40m of usable images to create the HOO palette. This definitely deserves more time but it was good to finally dust off the old scope after so long.

08/06/2025

Well what a week. After being down in Dunsborough for most of the week, I then decided that sleeping is more of a suggestion than a rule. I went out on Friday and Saturday night with the idea of capturing two objects. The Cat’s Paw Nebula, and the Great Cluster in Hercules. Now because the cluster is just a bunch of stars (a lot to be fair) it doesn’t require a lot of time, so I spent 1.5 nights on the nebula. I wonder if you can spot the sneaky little galaxy in that cluster photo

05/06/2025

The clouds have worked hard against me lately so here are a few photos I’ve taken while I have been away in Dunsborough. Hoping to have my eye on the sky over the weekend… weather permitting

11/05/2025

No full moon is gonna stop me! I was doing my thing again last night and I’ve gotta say this is one of my favourite results so far. To be clear, like any SHO image, these are not the natural colours (it’s naturally just red), but rather I have allocated the various elements to the three colour channels to show more detail and contrast. Finishing the night with ma massive green fireball in the sky that burnt out in an orange flame over the hills just before dawn was a great way to end. These are the Fighting Dragons of Ara

25/04/2025

Moonless night? No Clouds? I’m booked! Last night I braved the cold to get working on Centaurus A. This is a bit of a weird galaxy due to that S-shaped dust lane running through the middle. I photographed this in LRGB and while I managed to gather over 8 hours of data, I ended up only being able to use about 6 and even then that was a bit sketchy. Still, I have enough there for a decent result. This time of the year is a bit tough as it’s known as galaxy season. This means that a lot of the good nebulae rise either too early or too late and it tends to be galaxies that reach their zenith around midnight, making them all night targets. The problem is I photograph in south Mandurah and galaxies mostly are found in the north. Because they are RGB targets, it means they are heavily affected by the light dome created by Perth. Galaxies also usually appear tiny which makes them hard to justify spending time on them. It’s just that there aren’t many other options. Whinge whinge…

21/04/2025

Was that another weekend with a cloudless night? I guess that means more telescope time. This one is the Statue of Liberty Nebula (NGC3576) and it’s another one that I did exactly one year ago but this time using SHO filters. It has turned out so green due to the dominance of Hydrogen over the Oxygen and Sulfur. Hydrogen only gets allocated to green because that’s how the Hubble images are processed, but I’m not sure how I feel about it as Hydrogen is naturally red. I might change things up in the future.

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