Charles Thody Photography

20/12/2025

Finally, after months of waiting, we had a clear sky last night! Time to polish off the dome, read the operating manual (it's so long since I've opened it!) and collect some data!

First image is a composite of the night, showing 82 meteors detected by my meteor camera. Sadly missed the recent Geminid shower thanks to cloud 🙁

The second image is the result of 3.2 hours of data collection of the Fox Face Nebula (NGC 1788). I've never looked at or imaged this before and it needs a lot more data to bring out more detail, but I'm please with what I have so far.

It's good to be back exploring the skies!

The "Fox Face" Nebula is somewhere between 1300 and 2000 lights years away. It is a region of star formation associated with the Orion constellation.

04/01/2025

A few images taken this week with my Mavic 2 Pro. Newport Bay, Pembrokeshire and a snow storm heading in from the Irish Sea towards Dinas Head (necessitating a fairly quick landing as it was travelling in at some speed!)

08/06/2024

Nice afternoon walk with Patience Thody around the Castle Walls. LOVE the dragons 🙂

11/05/2024

Never did I ever dream that I would see the Aurora over my house in such detail and for so long! This was at least an hour and a quarter!

06/12/2023

Some drone images from North Yorkshire at the weekend. Frozen waterfalls and frozen fingers, but great scenery!

02/12/2023

Sometimes black and white is the only way to go...

Winter scenes today

25/11/2023

Drone flying and walk in Twigmoor Woods earlier today

15/10/2023

After what seems like an eternity (pun intended!!) I have got my astro-imaging mojo back... IC410, a large area of nebulosity in our galaxy, some 12000 light years away from earth. It measures around 100 light years across.
The stars in the centre were formed about 4 million years ago (mere youngsters!) and their radiation pushes the gas away from them, hence the darker area in the middle and the streams of denser gas that can just be made out in the middle that have resisted the radiation.

For those interested, this image is made up of 107x240 second exposures, some taken in 2020 and some last night...

02/10/2023

29/09/2023

Video link to my images of the White Tail Sea Eagles taken yesterday (28th September 2023). The images were taken in 50mph, handholding the camera while trying my hardest to remain standing!

White Tail Sea Eagle learns to hunt

29/09/2023

Close encounter with a Juvenile White Tail Sea Eagle (it was close, I had to zoom out a bit!) More images to follow of this youngster being trained to hunt by one of it's parents.