KernowCosmos

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KernowCosmos Dedicated to capturing and sharing the wonders of deep space through the art of astrophotography.

Join me on this cosmic journey using images taken from our home in Cornwall, UK. More details can be found on my website…go take a quick look, link in bio.

🌌 The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula — IC 1396AThis is a close-up view of the famous Elephant’s Trunk in the constellation Ceph...
15/09/2026

🌌 The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula — IC 1396A

This is a close-up view of the famous Elephant’s Trunk in the constellation Cepheus, around 2,500 light-years from Earth.

What looks like a relatively small pillar is anything but — the trunk stretches for more than 20 light-years, or around 200 trillion kilometres through the surrounding cloud of gas and dust.

Its distinctive shape is being sculpted by intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from the young, massive stars of the nearby Trumpler 37 cluster. The radiation is eroding the cloud while compressing denser pockets of gas, some of which are sites of ongoing star formation.

Captured at around 900mm focal length through an Optolong L-eXtreme filter and processed in HOO, with the hydrogen emission rendered in golden tones and oxygen in cyan.

Twenty light-years of interstellar sculpture — and this is just one small part of the enormous IC 1396 nebula. 🔭✨

The Eastern Veil Way Out WestCaptured through a 900mm f/4 reflector over 4 hours and 40 minutes of integration, this ima...
26/08/2026

The Eastern Veil Way Out West

Captured through a 900mm f/4 reflector over 4 hours and 40 minutes of integration, this image provides an intricate, close-up view of the Eastern Veil Nebula, part of a supernova remnant known as the Veil Nebula. The dual-band OSC data beautifully accentuates the veil’s delicate filaments, revealing the complex web of glowing interstellar gas and dust.

This region, designated as NGC 6995, is part of the larger Cygnus Loop, a vivid tapestry left behind by a supernova explosion that occurred between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago. The original star, approximately 20 times the Sun's mass, ended its epoch in a brilliant explosion, sending shockwaves that continue to traverse the cosmos, spanning over 100 light-years. The radiant arcs are not merely residual stardust but carry the historical echoes of the explosive energy as they shock and heat the surrounding gaseous medium.

In ancient times, had this supernova been visible to human ancestors, it might have illuminated the northern night sky as a temporarily brilliant point of light. Today, it stands as a stunning monument to the dynamic and ever-changing nature of our universe, offering a celestial spectacle with each captured image.

Swarm of Stars 🌟 - The Great Globular Cluster of HerculesPossibly the last deep sky photograph of the season as we lose ...
29/05/2026

Swarm of Stars 🌟 - The Great Globular Cluster of Hercules

Possibly the last deep sky photograph of the season as we lose true darkness until mid August. These Globular clusters are extremely dense and very old stars. Imagine the night sky from a planet orbiting one of the stars deep in its heart. No deep sky photos for whomever might be there! đź‘˝

Windy Pinwheel…M101 The Pinwheel Galaxy taken last week under conditions at the edge of what was possible. Windy with g...
18/05/2026

Windy Pinwheel…
M101 The Pinwheel Galaxy taken last week under conditions at the edge of what was possible. Windy with gusts of 20mph meant guiding and tracking where compromised, out of more that 2 hours of exposures I processed only an hour of reasonable images.

21 million light years from us, 1 trillion stars 🌟 and about 3 times the diameter of our own Milky Way 🌌.

05/05/2026

Taken from our back garden in Cornwall. The final image is definitely worth a close up on the individual galaxies.
Two panels each of around 2 hours exposure with the 900mm focal length f/4 reflector where used to create the final image.

29/04/2026

Something a little different, showing the Whirlpool Galaxy with its position at the far end of the Plough in Ursa Major.

🌌 NGC 4725 — The One-Armed SpiralSome galaxies look like they follow the rules… and then there’s NGC 4725.Located around...
21/04/2026

🌌 NGC 4725 — The One-Armed Spiral

Some galaxies look like they follow the rules… and then there’s NGC 4725.

Located around 40–50 million light-years away in Coma Berenices, this galaxy is a fascinating oddball in the Coma I Group. At first glance it’s a barred spiral—but look closer and you’ll see its most striking feature: a single dominant spiral arm.

That asymmetry is not just aesthetic—it’s a clue. NGC 4725 is thought to have been shaped by gravitational interactions with its nearby companion, NGC 4747, slowly distorting its disk and reshaping its structure over hundreds of millions of years.

Despite its unusual form, the galaxy still shows a bright central bulge and a faint inner ring, with its main arm hosting active regions of star formation—young stars, dust lanes, and the raw ingredients of future stellar generations.

NGC 4725 is a reminder that galaxies don’t always evolve symmetrically. Sometimes, the most interesting structures are the ones shaped by cosmic encounters—and a little gravitational disruption.

See more on my website.

3.5 hours of exposure
Astro cooled camera
900mm Focal Length Newtonian at f/4

🌌 M106 – Beyond the Spiral Captured from Cornwall under dark Atlantic skies, this is Messier 106, a galaxy around 24 mi...
13/04/2026

🌌 M106 – Beyond the Spiral

Captured from Cornwall under dark Atlantic skies, this is Messier 106, a galaxy around 24 million light-years away in Canes Venatici.

At first glance, it looks like a classic spiral… but look closer. This galaxy hides something extraordinary.

At its heart lies a supermassive black hole, actively feeding and blasting energy back into the galaxy. That energy carves out mysterious “anomalous arms”—structures you won’t see in most galaxies.

Even more incredible? Deep within the core, water molecules are amplifying microwaves like natural lasers, allowing astronomers to map the motion of gas orbiting the black hole with astonishing precision.

From a quiet Cornish night to a galaxy millions of light-years away… not bad for 2 hours under the stars.

📸 2 hours integration | 900mm | OSC
đź“Ť Cornwall, UK

A new image on my website, What a Hoot!This is the Owl Nebula, a planetary nebula 2-3000 light years away. Our Sun will...
06/04/2026

A new image on my website, What a Hoot!

This is the Owl Nebula, a planetary nebula 2-3000 light years away. Our Sun will eventually go through the phase of throwing off its outer shell of gas as it goes from being a red giant to a white dwarf star, in a few billion years.

Nothing to do with Planets, just an old name when these looked disk-like through early telescopes.

This is around 3 hours taken last night in what I think might go down in my records as the worse winter for astrophotography in the 6 years I have been doing this.

After months of Cornish cloud, the sky finally cleared 🌌This is M82 — the Cigar Galaxy — about 12 million light-years aw...
21/03/2026

After months of Cornish cloud, the sky finally cleared 🌌

This is M82 — the Cigar Galaxy — about 12 million light-years away, captured at 900mm with my new f/4 reflector.

Those red plumes aren’t jets, but colossal outflows of glowing hydrogen gas from intense star formation — a galaxy literally blowing itself apart 🔥

Amazing what you can see from the edge of Cornwall on a clear night 🌊✨

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