Cornwall Photography Tours

21/07/2026

Cornwall Night Sky Alerts is now Cornwall Photography Tours.

Don't worry, the aurora alerts aren't going anywhere. I'll still post whenever there's a chance of catching it from down here. I'm just opening the page up a bit, to cover the rest of what I shoot and the tours I run.

So, hello if you're new.

I'm Jeremy. I take small groups out after dark across Cornwall. The coast mostly, but the moors too, and the old harbours. We might be stood waiting for the full moon to come up behind St Michael's Mount, or setting up under the Milky Way next to a lump of granite that's been there five thousand years.

You don't need to know what you're doing. Honestly. Most people who come out with me have a camera they've never taken off auto, and I'll sit with you and get it set up properly on the night. That's half the fun of it.

One honest thing about the aurora. We've just come off the peak of the solar cycle, so the big displays we've had these last couple of years are going to get rarer from here. That's just how the sun works. It'll come back round, but it'll be quieter for a while.

Which is really why I'm widening the page out. There's a lot more going on up there than the aurora.

Follow along, turn notifications on, and you won't miss a clear night.

Next one out: the full moon rising behind St Michael's Mount. Tuesday 28 July, from 7.30pm. Weather permitting, as always.

Book here:

Small-group photography tours across Cornwall — coast, moors and beyond. Beginners welcome.

05/02/2026

💫 Comet Lemmon over Godrevy Lighthouse 🌌

This image was taken on a clear night on the north Cornish coast, with Comet Lemmon sitting perfectly above Godrevy Lighthouse — one of those sessions where timing, sky conditions and composition all aligned.

The photograph is a stack of 20 × 5-second exposures, which allowed me to bring out fine structure in the comet’s ion tail while keeping the foreground clean and natural.

Because comets move independently of the background stars, stacking can be more challenging than standard night-sky images. For this shot I used comet stacking mode, which aligns on the comet itself rather than the stars. Without this, the comet would blur or fade during stacking as it drifts relative to the star field.

Capture details:

Camera: Nikon D500

Lens: Sigma 85mm f/1.4 Art

Aperture: f/1.4

Exposures: 20 × 5 seconds

Tripod-mounted

Comet-aligned stacking

Processed for improved signal-to-noise and natural colour balance

Short exposures were key — long enough to collect light, but brief enough to avoid motion blur in the comet’s core and tail.

📸 Tips for photographing comets

📐 Use the 500 Rule (as a starting point)
A simple guide to avoid star trailing on a fixed tripod is the 500 rule:

500 ÷ focal length = maximum exposure (seconds)

At 85mm, this gives roughly 5–6 seconds, which is exactly why I settled on 5-second exposures here.
Bear in mind this is a guideline, not a guarantee — high-resolution sensors, crop cameras and comet motion often mean you’ll need to be more conservative.

🔭 Plan carefully

Check timing, altitude and direction — comets are often low.

A clear horizon matters more than perfect darkness.

Watch the Moon phase; moonlight can quickly overwhelm faint tails.

🌍 Choose your location

Coastal viewpoints and elevated ground work well.

Be mindful of sea haze and thin cloud, which can soften detail.

📷 Shooting technique

Fast lenses (f/1.4–f/2.8) help enormously.

Keep exposures short and take lots of frames.

Stack using comet mode if available.

🖥️ Processing

Align on the comet, not the stars.

Keep processing subtle — comet structure is delicate.

Comets are unpredictable and fleeting, but with a bit of planning they’re very achievable from Cornwall — often far more visible through a camera than to the naked eye.

Nevow glan — clear skies 🌌

04/02/2026

🔗 Instagram link in the comments

📸 We’re now on Instagram

A quick update to say that Cornwall Aurora & Night Sky Alerts now has an Instagram page.

The aim is the same as here on Facebook — sharing night-sky updates relevant to Cornwall — but with a slightly stronger focus on images, including occasional astrophotography and visual highlights from around the county.

Nothing changes here:
Facebook will remain the main place for detailed posts, forecasts, and context.
Instagram is simply an extra space for visual updates and shorter posts.

Thanks, as always, for the continued support — and for keeping expectations realistic when the clouds inevitably roll in.

Nevow glan — clear skies 🌌

03/02/2026

🌌 Andromeda Galaxy (M31)

This image of the Andromeda Galaxy was taken from my back garden in Cornwall using a DSLR camera and a 180 mm telephoto lens — a good reminder of just how much can be captured without specialist telescopes under the right conditions.

Andromeda (Messier 31) is the nearest large spiral galaxy to our own Milky Way, located around 2.5 million light-years away in the constellation Andromeda. Spanning more than 220,000 light-years, it contains hundreds of billions of stars, prominent dust lanes, and bright star-forming regions. Also visible in the image are its two small companion galaxies, M32 and M110, appearing as faint, elliptical glows nearby.

The image is the result of a stack of approximately 180 individual exposures, each 30 seconds long, all taken over the course of a single night. To make this possible, I used a star tracker, which slowly moves the camera during the night to counter the Earth’s rotation and keep the camera aligned with the galaxy, allowing longer exposures without star trailing.

The stacking process was carried out using specialist astrophotography software DeepSkyStacker and PixInsight, reducing noise and revealing fine detail in the galaxy’s core, dust lanes, and spiral structure.

Final editing was completed in Lightroom and Photoshop, where the colour balance was refined and the galaxy’s core, dust lanes, and spiral structure were carefully enhanced while keeping the surrounding star field natural.

This image also serves as a reminder that you don’t need a large telescope to photograph deep-sky objects. With a DSLR, a good telephoto lens, a simple tracking mount, and thoughtful processing, it’s possible to capture remarkably detailed views of galaxies well beyond our own.

Nevow glan — clear skies 🌌

02/02/2026

🌌 Cornwall Night Sky Outlook – February 2026

We’ve already covered the Snow Moon in a post a few days ago, so this is what’s relevant for Cornwall for the rest of February.

We’re now past the Full Moon, and evening skies will slowly start to darken over the coming days.

Key dates for Cornwall:

9 Feb – Last Quarter Moon (evenings get noticeably darker)

17 Feb – New Moon → best dark-sky conditions of the month

The period from mid-February onwards is the best window for:

• General stargazing
• Astrophotography
• Faint objects and star fields
(weather and cloud cover permitting, as always)

⭐ What’s actually worth looking at from Cornwall

February is classic winter sky season:

• Orion is prominent in the southern sky during the evening
• Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, is low but very bright
• The Pleiades and wider winter star patterns are still well placed

These are reliable, easy targets and don’t require perfect conditions.

🪐 Planets

Jupiter is the standout planet for Cornwall this month — bright, steady, and well placed after sunset.

Mercury and Venus appear very low in the western twilight later in the month. These are challenging, low-altitude targets and not especially exciting unless you enjoy planet spotting.

🌌 Aurora outlook (Cornwall)

Nothing notable on the long-range outlook at present.
Aurora forecasting is difficult at the best of times, and cloud cover is likely to be the limiting factor this month. I’ll post updates if conditions improve.

🌍 Elsewhere (not visible from Cornwall)

An annular solar eclipse occurs **on **Tuesday, 17 February 2026. The partial eclipse phase begins at approximately 09:56 UTC, reaches its peak (maximum eclipse) around 12:12 UTC, and ends by about 14:27 UTC.

This eclipse forms a thin “ring of fire” only along its path over remote parts of Antarctica — it will not be visible from the UK, and observing it requires special eye protection.

🔭 Bottom line for Cornwall:
February isn’t about dramatic events — it’s about long winter nights, classic star fields, and a good dark-sky window around mid-month if the weather plays ball.

Nevow glan — clear skies 🌌

02/02/2026

🌕 Snow Moon over Godrevy Lighthouse (Composite).

I headed over to St Ives to photograph the Snow Moon rising behind Godrevy Lighthouse, with a very specific shot in mind. As is often the case with moonrise photography, conditions didn’t quite play ball.

At moonrise the light was brighter than expected and there was a noticeable amount of haze in the atmosphere, which softened contrast and made it impossible to capture the exact alignment I’d planned in a single frame.

I completely understand that composites aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, and I’d much rather have captured this shot naturally in-camera on the night. That’s always the goal. However, I didn’t want to simply discard the images I did manage to capture, so I chose to use them to create the final photograph you see here as a composite.

This involved carefully editing and repositioning the Moon so it sat directly behind the lighthouse during post-processing, then cropping and upscaling the image to refine the final result. The intent wasn’t to exaggerate or misrepresent the scene, but to realise the composition I’d planned once conditions made it unachievable in a single exposure.

It’s important to note that the Moon’s size is 100% accurate. I was around 4 miles from the lighthouse, using a 500mm lens on a Nikon D780. At that distance, focal length compression naturally makes the Moon appear much larger relative to the foreground — an optical effect created by distance and lens choice, not by enlarging the Moon artificially.

The second image (posted in the comments) shows the individual frames used to build the composite, so you can see exactly what was captured on the night.

Moon photography doesn’t always go to plan — especially with haze, brightness and timing all working against you — but careful planning and thoughtful post-processing can still bring a creative idea to life when the conditions fall short.

Nevow glan — clear skies 🌙

31/01/2026

☄️ Comet watch: C/2026 A1 (MAPS)

A newly discovered comet, C/2026 A1 (MAPS), is beginning to generate a lot of interest — and while it’s still very early, there are some genuinely encouraging signs.

C/2026 A1 (MAPS) was discovered in early January 2026 by astronomers using robotic survey telescopes in Chile as part of an automated sky-mapping programme. These surveys continually scan the sky looking for new and moving objects, allowing comets to be detected while they are still very distant from the Sun.

Early observations suggest this may be a sun-skimming comet, meaning it will pass extremely close to the Sun around April 2026. This point in its orbit is known as perihelion — the moment when a comet receives the most heat from the Sun. If it holds together, this is often when a comet brightens dramatically as gases and dust are released to form a visible tail.

What makes MAPS particularly interesting is that it was detected while still a long way from the Sun, which can be a positive indicator. There are also early estimates suggesting it’s not especially small, increasing the chances that it could survive perihelion and become visible — possibly even from the UK, including Cornwall, later in April.

That said, comets are notoriously unpredictable. Their brightness and visibility can change rapidly, and even experienced astronomers can’t say with certainty how bright one will become until much closer to the event. Some comets exceed expectations; others fade or break apart entirely.

📸 Attached image

The image attached shows Comet Lemmon (C/2012 F6), which I photographed from Godrevy, Cornwall, on 16 October 2025. Although comets often appear faint to the naked eye, modern cameras are far more sensitive to low-light detail.

This image was captured using:

70 × 60-second exposures

f/2.8

ISO 1000

By taking multiple long exposures and stacking them, it’s possible to build up detail in the comet’s coma and tail that simply isn’t visible in a single frame. It’s a good example of how even relatively subtle comets can still be photographed successfully from Cornwall with the right conditions and planning.

🌍 What to expect from MAPS

If C/2026 A1 (MAPS) survives perihelion:

Southern Hemisphere observers are likely to get the first views

Northern Hemisphere visibility may follow later in April

From Cornwall, it’s more likely to be a camera-friendly comet rather than a guaranteed naked-eye object

Low horizons and timing will be important

I’ll be keeping a close eye on this one and will share updates as we learn more. With comets, optimism and realism have to go hand in hand — but this is certainly one worth watching.

👉 If you know someone who enjoys the night sky or astrophotography, feel free to share this post — it really helps the page reach others who might enjoy these updates too.

Jeremy Tucker
📷 https://www.instagram.com/jeremytuckerphotos/

Nevow glan — clear skies 🌙

30/01/2026

🌕 Full Moon outlook for Cornwall – Sunday 1 February

The next Full Moon (Snow Moon) rises on Sunday evening — a great opportunity to enjoy the moonrise and spend some time under the evening sky.

Moonrise times:

Land’s End: ≈ 16:41
Saltash: ≈ 16:33

These times mark when the Moon first appears above the horizon and can vary slightly depending on your exact location and local terrain.

🌥️ Cloud cover & viewing conditions
Current forecasts suggest patchy cloud across Cornwall, with clearer skies more likely inland and across western parts of the county, while the south coast and offshore areas may hold thicker cloud at times. Some locations should get clear views, while others may need to wait for breaks in cloud.

The Moon will rise low in the east–north-east, so a clear horizon will help, and visibility often improves as the Moon climbs higher.

📸 My plan — and an open invitation
I’ll most likely be heading just south of Penzance to try and capture a timelapse of the Full Moon rising behind St Michael’s Mount, from a distance of just over 3 miles.

I also have a spare Nikon D500 and 400mm lens, and if anyone would like to join me to photograph the moonrise, please comment or send me a DM.

Please note there will be a charge for the use of the equipment and the guided session.
All photographs taken will be yours to keep, and further information will be provided once I receive a comment or DM. You are of course more than welcome to bring a friend or partner.

As always with winter skies in Cornwall, conditions can change quickly — but if the clouds cooperate, it should be well worth stepping outside.

Jeremy Tucker

Nevow glan — clear skies 🌙