Hi there! My name is Neil Fleming, and you can reach me at neilfleming at hotmail dot com. This site is dedicated to my enthusiasm for astronomy and astrophotography. Although I've only been re-enagaged in this hobby since April of '05, I have some results and techniques that I would like to share with the growing community of astrophotographers.
Although I do some regular RGB/LRGB imaging, I now specialize in "narrowband" imaging. While regular RGB imaging is suseptible to the effects of light pollution, narrowband imaging is not. Each of the filters used, hydrogen-alpha (Ha), ionized oxygen (OIII) and ionized sulphur (SII) let through only a tiny bit of very specific light. These wavelengths are not the same as most of the sources of light pollution, so the results, even from the suburbs of Boston, are of a much higher quality.
I re-started in this hobby with some very modest equipment, including the Meade DSI. Even so, the results were good enough to encourage me to continue on in the path of this fulfilling hobby! Now, I have access to an SBIG camera, and am having the time of my life! I hope you enjoy looking at my photos as much as I did producing them.
These are images of various types of nebula. (Plural is 'nebulae'). They are classified into these types; emission, reflection, dark, planetary, and supernova remnants (SNR)
Clusters are groups of stars, and they come in two basic types: "Globular clusters" are very tightly packed, resembling compact little fuzzballs or cotton balls. "Open clusters" are also groups of stars, but are much more loosely packed than are globular clusters. Since they can take many shapes, some of them have been given names, such as, "the beehive".
