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Interested in astronomy? Thinking about a holiday? We have a half meter Dobsonian and a well set up Experience all the wonders of the night sky.
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We cater for enthusiasts or beginners who want to combine a holiday with an interest in astronomy. We have a half meter Dobsonian and a well set up imaging facility for you to use under some of the darkest skies in England. The Milky Way, galaxies, nebulae and planets. With the absence of light pollution all can be seen or imaged at their best. We are situated in glorious North Devon, right on the

Devon & Cornwall border. Within easy reach of coastal resorts such as Bude, this is a marvellous holiday destination. Enjoy comfortable, self catering, family accommodation in a peaceful, rural location.For 2022 we have one timber lodge set in attractive grounds with an outdoor swimming pool. The Devon countryside, with its beautiful beaches & national parks plus local attractions such as the Tamar Lakes, is easily accessible. This area known as Ruby Country is ideal for family holidays. We are also a great venue for out of season short breaks. From only £350 weekly in the low season to £700 weekly in the high season.

19/10/2024

Finally!! Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS). As seen on the night of Thursday 17th October from the nearby, to us, Upper Tamar Lake under a full Moon.
There was a lot of waiting around under cloudy skies before I was treated to a break in the cloud that lasted just a few moments.
Canon 80D, Sigma 17-70mm . 8 second exposure @ ISO 800.

30/07/2024

Yes, we're still here and doing stuff it's just that I'm very bad at adding to social media!
Last night/this morning it was the turn of the Delta Aquarids Meteor Shower to disappoint. 🙂 (I believe this shower favours the southern hemisphere.)
Here we have the trails recorded from stars as the Earth turns, some late evening clouds and, streaking from the south east, a Delta Aquarids Meteor. The picture is automatically generated by the camera software. The other picture is a conventional image of the frame that contained the meteor.
Raspberry Pi3B+ 1GB. RPi HQ camera. 1.55mm f2 lens TJ AllSky software.

11/05/2024

We were treated to the most glorious display of Aurora last night. This is a composite image from 7 portrait (upright) pictures blended together into one large landscape image with Affinity photo. All taken within seconds of each other. I tried various automated software to generate the image but ended up blending them 'old school' with layers in Affinity.
Canon 80D. Samyang 10mm f2.8. Five second exposures at 1600iso

05/05/2024

Our night sky from a couple of nights ago. Taken with our All Sky Camera. Despite the night sky being quite bright for most of the night at this time of year the Milky Way has been nicely captured along with a bright meteor streaking in from the south east.
Pi3B+ 1GB. 1.55mm f2 lens AllSky software.
(This really needs to be seen on a large screen - looks like nothing on a phone.)

24/12/2023

To all our guests ... past and future.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
The Christmas tree nebula. NGC2264. Including the Cone and Fur Fox nebulae. Taken by us back in 2017.

17/09/2023

We've been a bit quiet here on FB but we're still going strong and have now come to the end of the summer season. The nights are drawing in and it's getting dark earlier ... perfect for astronomy!
Andrew stayed with us last week and together, using his camera and our imaging kit, we imaged these summer splendours. The East and West sides of the Veil Nebula in Cygnus. The Veil is a supernova remnant.
Each image was 8 x 8 minute exposures with flats and darks.
Taken with our 25cm f4 Quatrro, EQ6 and Andrews Canon 60Da.
Software used: APT, PHD2 and Carte du Ciel.
Processing (by Tony): AstroPixelProcessor, Affinity Photo and Topaz.

24/04/2023

Last night an intense solar wind rattled our Earth's magnetosphere so strongly that we saw the Aurora from here in North Devon. It's very unusual to see it so far south.
Important note! With the unaided eye all that was visible were vague brightenings in the sky. Some of us could see a hint of pink, myself mainly grey. It took the camera lens and 30 second exposures along with image processing to really show the Aurora in its full beauty.
Last picture shows it much more as it appeared to the unaided eye.
Canon 80D and Samyang 10mm f2.8 lens. Processed from RAW with Affinity Photo 2.

11/02/2023

Two nights ago we finally had the opportunity to image C/2022 E3 (ZTF) aka the 'Green Comet'. It's well past it's best now as it begins it's exit of the Solar Ssytem but it still shows two tails, a dust tail and a gas tail.
The comet is moving very fast against the background stars and as a consequence if the comet is tracked the background stars become streaks. One image has had the streaks much diminished and the other has them left in. There are 10 pictures stacked and they were taken over a 30 minute period.
Canon 80D at prime focus of our Sky watcher 25cm Quattro CF.
10 x 180 secs stacked and processed in APP and Affinity Photo.

18/12/2022

We haven't posted anything for a while but that doesn't mean we're not doing anything! :-)
This is the planet Mars taken a couple of nights back with our 25cm Skywatcher Quattro and imaging setup. The camera used was a Celestron Neximage5 and the software used was, SharpCap, AutoStakkert, Registax and Affinity Photo.
The picture is the result of taking a 5000 frame video, grading the single frames according to quality, throwing away the worst 60% of them and then combining the remaining best 40%. The white streak at the 10-o-clock position is Mars' southern polar cap.
The video is a very short clip showing what the unprocessed video looked like before processing!
Mars is roughly half the size of earth and at the moment is around 53,223,450 miles from us.

25/10/2022

A quick image of this mornings (very) partial eclipse of the Sun as seen through the inevitable cloud. It was not a full eclipse anywhere on earth but it did reach 86% in north-west Russia.

24/10/2022

There is a slight partial solar eclipse on Tuesday 25th October. It is at its maximum at about 10.55am down here in the south west.

11/07/2022

Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) scuttling through the constellation of Lyra last night.
25cm f4 Quattro CF. QHY8L. 3 x 3minute exposures with a Moon in the sky. Processed in AstroPixelProcesor, once for the stars and once for the comet then the two were combined in Affinity Photo to get sharp stars and a sharp comet.

11/03/2022

The Moon from last night. This is a 'first quarter' Moon. At this time of year a first quarter Moon is very high in the sky and presents a great opportunity to get detailed images.
Canon80D
25cm Skywatcher Quattro + 2" x2 Barlow giving an EFL of 2000mm.

28/01/2022

Taken last night: Often overlooked because of the proximity of the Orion nebula this is NGC 1977 or the Running Man Nebula in Orion. This is about one hours worth of exposure. The blue clouds are dust and gas reflecting starlight and the red clouds are gas glowing rather like a neon tube.
Taken with our Skywatcher Quattro CF 25cm f4. QHY8L. EQ6 mount & autoguider.
Software used create the final picture: APT. PHD2. AstroPixelProcessor. Affinity Photo. Topaz DeNoise.
7 x 8 minute exposures stacked with calibration frames.

13/01/2022

A wonderfully clear sky last also corresponded with a 77% Moon riding high in the sky! So out came the magic one shot colour TriBand filter and this 80 minute exposure (total) is the result.
It's a large cloud of glowing hydrogen. Sometimes called the Pac Man nebula or NGC281. It's in the constellation of Cassiopeia.
Taken with our 25cm Quattro telescope and a QHY8L OSC camera.
This was x10, 8 minute exposures stacked along with calibration frames.

24/11/2021

A couple of clear nights recently gave us the chance to image this autumn favourite. As is often the way a clear sky coincided with a nearly full Moon, the light from which would normally prevent imaging objects as faint as this. However a rather clever filter lets us image objects like this even under full moonlight!
It's sometimes called the Triangulum Galaxy (It's a galaxy in the constellation of Triangulum!) and it's also known as M33.
It's about 3 million light years from us and is about half the size of our own Milky Way galaxy.
Taken with our 25cm Quattro telescope and a QHY8L OSC camera.
This was x13, 5 minute exposures stacked along with calibration frames.

20/11/2021

Andy Atterbury stayed with us back in September and he bought his own kit with him to make good use of our dark skies. Taken during his stay this excellent image of NGC 281 or 'The Pac Man Nebula' was shot with a modified Canon camera. This nebula is in the constellation of Cassiopeia. The dark speck near the centre of the nebula is a Bok Globule. These are dark clouds of dust and gas in which young stars are forming!

15/10/2021

Jupiter from the night of the 13th October at around 9pm. The moon toward the right is Io, a very volcanic body and one of the four Galilean moons.
As Jupiter is only 24° above the horizon this is probably as good as it gets for us until Jupiter works it's way toward a higher position in the sky. That won't be until 2025/26 though, so don't hold your breath! :-)
Taken with our 25cm Quattro telescope.

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Facebook keeps telling us we haven't posted anything for a long time so.. A project from last night. This shows the Milky Way gliding across the late summer sky over a two hour period. One 15 second exposure taken consecutively for two hours. 381 frames! Each frame was then processed and resized in Photoshop. They then had noise reduction in Topaz AiDenoise and then made into a AVI movie with Virtual Dub. Finally converted to an MP4 with APowersoft video converter. The red lights moving around are a group of astronomers staying here at the moment. The camera was a Canon 80D with a Samyang 10mm f2.8 lens. I had a heater element wrapped around the lens to prevent dewing. It's not perfect but it was fun and a good learning experience.

Skywatcher EQ6 mount slewing

Well, we've finally finished upgrading and refurbishing our EQ6 mount. It's been fitted with a Rowan belt drive kit, a few new bearings and a thorough clean and re-grease. It's now working superbly and is ready for our guests to use come the end of lockdown. Here is a short video of it doing a three star align and a slew to M31. :-) The sound these mounts make when slewing is surely a joy! ( see in the comments below for a video that actually has sound 😏 )

Cloudy day gives way to a clear night!

During the course of the week we have had a couple of really good nights. This time lapse video was taken by Paul Gibbons during his stay. The video just goes to show that a cloudy, rainy day sometimes gives way to a beautiful sunset and stunning night!

We were out with guests on Thursday night and just happened to be looking south at the moment the biggest meteor I have ever seen came slowly (relatively) down the sky, starting from about 45 degrees and sinking to the horizon. It started off a vivid green but slowly changed to red. It was still visible just a few degrees above the horizon. Absolutely awesome! This is a video from a security camera on Dawlish seafront which luckily caught the very same event. (although not the colour) Thanks to Gareth for finding this video.

Well, this was unexpected! Dave and Zoe (members of the Milton Keynes AS) are staying with us this week. Last night, while imaging M101 with our Intes they also set up their GoPro 4 camera to do a wide angle timelapse. Luckily they had aimed the camera north and as many of us know from social media, last night solar activity erupted and caused aurora to come marching far down south. Watch what happens at around the 10 second mark!!

There's an occultation of Saturn from the southern hemisphere on Wednesday (their Wednesday has already started). We in the northern hemisphere will see...nothing!So here is a short video we shot of the last occultation of Saturn seen from the UK on on the evening of the 22nd of May 2007. Taken with our Intes MN71 in daylight. Somewhat mangled by facebook rendering but interesting all the same!

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Holidays & Astronomy

We cater for enthusiasts or beginners who want to combine a holiday with an interest in astronomy. We have a half meter Dobsonian telescope and a well set up imaging facility for you to use under some of the darkest skies in England. Experience all the wonders of the night sky. The Milky Way, galaxies, nebulae and planets. With the absence of light pollution all can be seen or imaged at their best. We are situated in glorious North Devon, right on the Devon & Cornwall border. Within easy reach of coastal resorts such as Bude, this is a marvellous holiday destination. Enjoy comfortable, self catering, family accommodation in a peaceful, rural location. We have two timber lodges set in attractive grounds with an outdoor swimming pool. The Devon countryside, with its beautiful beaches & national parks plus local attractions such as the Tamar Lakes, is easily accessible. This area known as Ruby Country is ideal for family holidays. We are also a great venue for out of season short breaks. From only £280 weekly in the low season to £607 weekly in the high season.