iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 13/08/2026

Our meteor cameras have finished processing the data from last night! Our NE facing camera captured 425 Perseids and our N facing camera captured 224. The stacked images are below along with the meteor radiant analysis plots which clearly show the point in the sky from which they get their name 🔭🧪

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 12/08/2026

It's not just Perseids on display tonight. Look at this beautiful sporadic meteor captured last night from Billingborough Observatory 🔭🧪

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 09/08/2026

The Perseids are already doing their thing. The night of the 12th August looks set to be "Amaze, amaze, amaze" 🔭

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 21/06/2026

Wishing you all a very happy Litha and a fabulous Summer Solstice! Today marks the exact point our hemisphere reaches its maximum tilt towards the sun, giving us the longest day of the year. Have a beautiful day! 🔭🧪

The sun rising over fields on the summer solstice.

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 17/06/2026

A beautiful evening, a prelude to another heatwave. Stunning crescent Moon and Venus in the evening sky. 🔭🧪

A crescent Moon and Venus above, against a blue/orange evening sky.

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 10/05/2026

Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to live in a village like this 💚

An aerial view of an English village. Image by: Kevin Bourne.

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 01/05/2026

Happy Beltane 🌿🔥 Wishing you warmth, renewal, and joy as summer begins to stir. May your days be bright, your hearts full, and your paths rich with growth and possibility. ✨

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 22/04/2026

There you go....! Perhaps I've made the situation worse but surely it's the thought that counts 😊

A cellophane wrapped sherbert lemon sweet.

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 14/04/2026

I took this photo from my garden on 27th February 2025. You're welcome to use it if it's suitable.

A photo of the night sky showing the constellation of Orion and the Pleiades amongst others.

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 13/04/2026

Here's our view of last evening's fireball over Yorkshire, UK looking from one of our south Lincolnshire, AuroraCams. 🔭🧪

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 06/04/2026

Excuse the mess but this is just crazy that I can watch this live. Thank you NASA and the Artemis 2 crew. #NASA 🔭🧪

Dual screen computer and messy desk showing Artemis 2 mission live streams.

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 06/04/2026

Someone please reassure me that the toilet has been flushed on the Orion capsule and this is not a fuel leak happening right now at almost 240000 miles from home #Artemis2 🔭🧪

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 05/04/2026

A lovely sporadic meteor captured in the early hours of Easter Sunday. Orbit data in the comments courtesy of the UK Meteor Data Archive 2013 © 🔭🧪

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 20/03/2026

There she is. All 4% of her. Welcome to astronomical spring Moon 😊 🔭🧪

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 19/03/2026

Terrible seeing tonight with all the chemtrails, I mean contrails 😁, drifting across the sky, but I managed to capture Jupiter with (L to R) Europa, Ganymede and Io. Ganymede's shadow is visible on Jupiter with the Great Red Spot just visible to the right.🧪🔭

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 19/03/2026

For what seems like the first time in an age, we've finally had clear skies. Jupiter captured on the evening of 18th March 2026 at 20:00 UTC from South Lincolnshire. 🔭🧪

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 11/02/2026

I oppose the proposed cuts to funding to astronomy and space science in the UK. Do you?🔭 🧪

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 11/02/2026

At this point I'm wondering why I even built an Observatory? 😭🔭🧪

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 20/12/2025

Wow! A beautiful fireball captured on our zenith-facing AuroraCam in south Lincolnshire overnight. Green hue and a persistent ionisation train lasting well over a minute 🔭🧪

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 02/12/2025

The Sun at 13:00 UTC. Just 13° above the horizon from my location in the UK. Sunspots 4294 and 4296 give the impression of one behemoth sunspot, rivalling Carrington's of 1859. If we're lucky, or unfortunate, it will unleash a large X-ray solar flare this coming week, causing spectacular aurora 🔭🧪

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 23/11/2025

Have you seen the double cluster in Perseus? These two clusters of hot, young stars appear close together from our perspective but are actually hundreds of lightyears apart, the nearest being about 7100 lightyears away. This photo is a stack of 272, 20-second exposures taken this evening 🔭🧪

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 18/11/2025

That fuzzy, blue ball is actually the planet Neptune. It's appearing very close in the sky to Saturn, only 4.5° (about 3-middle widths held at arms length), but is much fainter at magnitude +7.5 or so. The fact the I can photograph the disk of an object that is 4.35 x 10⁹ km away is awesome to me 🔭🧪

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 18/11/2025

I love Saturn, but I'm finding imaging underwhelming at the moment, I don't know whether its poor seeing or just the fact the rings are "edge-on" from our perspective. Anyway, here's last night's attempt from a rather chilly Lincolnshire, UK. 🔭🧪

An image of Saturn with its rings edge on to Earth.

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 17/11/2025

We have clear skies, with northerly winds so seeing is probably quite good. However, it's absolutely freezing out there (not literally) and I have a physics tutorial at 19:30. Do I open the Observatory or not? 🔭🧪

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 13/11/2025

A second night of aurora, albeit less intense. The clouds amplify the effect by forward-scattering the auroral light towards the viewer on the ground. Here's 5-hours squished into 1-minute 🔭🧪😊

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 12/11/2025

An X5-class solar flare erupted from the sun towards Earth yesterday and it hit the magnetosphere with a wallop overnight. The result was a severe geomagnetic storm. The aurora was so bright, it was visible through the clouds. Here's 3-hours, squished into 60s, of what you may have missed. Enjoy 🔭🧪☺️

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 09/11/2025

A nice sporadic meteor captured in the early hours. Yes, that is the Moon. Details can be found here: archive.ukmeteors.co.uk/reports/2025... 🔭🧪😊

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 04/11/2025

I'm never convinced my Dobsonian is focused perfectly when imaging so I'm printing a 305mm (12") Bahtinov mask to reassure me. I find the process mesmerising and spend far too long watching it. Credit to "@michelegz" for this design. 🔭🧪

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 03/11/2025

There are some amazing images of comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon). However, this was taken (Nov 2nd) at 18:01 UTC with a regular Canon 250D 50mm, f/5.6, ISO1600, 5-sec exp. I took 35 exposures and stacked them in Siril and denoised in GraXpert. It tempers expectations, yet it's still very cool to see. 🔭🧪

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 02/11/2025

There's a particularly bright spot on the Moon this evening. It's the sunlit crater wall of Aristarchus. It has one of the highest reflectivities on the Moon, making it appear brighter than fresh snow under direct sunlight. Schroter's Valley and the crater Herodotus are both to the left. 🔭🧪

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 29/10/2025

Here's comet C\2025 A6 Lemmon from Billingborough this evening. Taken with a Canon 250D 255mm f/5.6 ISO6400 1s exposure x10 stacked in Siril 🔭🧪

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 29/10/2025

Whilst out photographing Comet C/2025 A6 Lemmon this evening I happened to see a rocket fuel dump move from west to south. Here's a short video from one of the AuroraCams 🔭🧪🚀

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 27/10/2025

I built an Equatorial platform for the Dobsonian and it's great for planetary, where the exposures are a few milliseconds. I've tried M42 before but there is vibration from the tracking and I limited exposure to 100ms. Of course the other issue is a very small FOV!

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 27/10/2025

I've not really had a go at M45 "Pleiades" before. I used the mosaic mode on the Seestar S50 to capture this. 106 x 20s exposures, processed in Siril and Graxpert. Seeing was pretty poor with strong winds. I gave up using the Dobsonian because it was being buffeted by the wind too much 🔭🧪

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 26/10/2025

The vastness of space is captured here as distant Jupiter, reveals intricate cloud bands while Ganymede, Io, Europa and Callisto, orbit gracefully against the profound darkness of space. 🔭🧪

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 22/10/2025

I've switched my study to Master of Physics (Astrophysics with Space Science).... Yikes! 🔭🧪😮

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 22/10/2025

After what seems like weeks of clouds, here's Jupiter this morning high in the south-east. Two moons visible here, Europa seen transiting Jupiter's disk, and volcanic Io on the right. 🔭🧪😁

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 19/10/2025

Forgive the wobbly video, but I thought I'd show you what I see when I look at Jupiter through the eyepiece in the day. The video, taken this morning with my Pixel 8 Pro, was handheld, as I've mislaid my mount. It's still cool to see the planets against a hazy, blue sky with the sun on my back. 🔭🧪

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 13/10/2025

This task is NOT to be undertaken lightly! I've had my 305 mm Dobsonian for about 3-years and finally the time has come to clean the primary mirror. It's heavy and very delicate, but with care, warm water, liquid soap and fingertips the dust, spiderwebs and insect debris will be removed. 🔭🧪

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ˢᶦᵐᵒⁿ ᵐᶦⁿⁿᶦᶜᵃⁿ ᶠʳᵃˢ ☀️🌙🌍✨ @minnican.com · 11/10/2025

NGC 7635, also known as the Bubble Nebula. The "bubble" is the front of a stellar wind travelling at 2000 km s⁻¹. The star responsible is 40 times more massive than our Sun and 7100 lightyears from Earth. Captured with the Seestar S50, 100 x 60 s exp, stacked and tweaked on a Google Pixel 8 pro. 🔭🧪

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