Archive for July, 2007

Jul 28 2007

Starscape II Exhibition (August 2007)

Posted by Greg Parker in Announcements, Starscape II

We are pleased to announce that the Starscape II Exhibition will open at 7.00 p.m. on Friday 17th August 2007 at the Brockenhurst Village Hall – which is within short walking distance of Brockenhurst main line station.

The exhibition is in support of the Brockenhurst Village Trust Stage Completion Project and is kindly sponsored by Exxon.

It will be open from the 18th August 2007 until the 24th August 2007 between 10.30am and 4.30pm.  Admission is £1 for adults and children admission is free.

We will be showing our latest images and Greg will be giving a talk about imaging deep-space objects (DSOs) at 7.30pm on the opening evening (definitely something not to be missed).  Opening night charges are £5 with free admission for Trade and Press delegates.

Note: Bar facilities will be available on the opening night only. 

So, please come down and have a look, ask questions and mix with other Astronomy enthusiasts! Download the Starscape Brochure to find out more about what we will be showing – but note – there are 19 new images to see in the Exhibition that you won’t find in the brochure!

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Click the download icon to download a PDF version of the brochure.

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Jul 21 2007

Sir Arthur C Clarke’s Tribute to Sir Patrick Moore’s “The Sky at Night”

Posted by Greg Parker in People and Places

We are incredibly proud that we have been given permission by Sir Arthur C Clarke to publish his tribute to both the BBC television programme The Sky at Night and to Sir Patrick Moore.   If you do nothing else today – READ THIS!

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Jul 19 2007

The Brightest Known Object in Our Universe

Posted by Greg Parker in Deep Space Objects

According to the Guiness Book of Records this Quasar in the constellation Lynx is the brightest known object in our universe and who are we to argue with them [oops – see the Postscript below]! Read the rest of this entry »

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Jul 15 2007

Sky Atlas 2000.0 (Will Tirion and Roger W. Sinnott)

Posted by Greg Parker in Recommended Reading

Cover Picture of the Book  If you are to explore the heavens – you need a good map to guide you.
In my opinion there is only one star atlas you need to consider, Will Tirion and Roger W. Sinnott’s “Sky Atlas 2000.0”. 

Be prepared, this is quite big when it comes through the post measuring some 30 x 42 cm!  Each page has large clear maps showing stars, clusters and nebulae.  A must have book

You can purchase the book at Amazon or any other good book retailer.

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Jul 10 2007

mini-WASP Array Project

Posted by Greg Parker in Announcements, mini-WASP Array

The name for this project comes from the Wide Angle Search for Planets or SuperWASP project.   As you can guess it is used for hunting exo-planets.  

If you look at the SuperWASP site you will see an impressive imaging array comprising 8 Canon 200mm f#1.8 lenses with their associated Andor CCD cameras all sitting on a massive torus fork mount – certainly very nice gear!

Living in the U.K. we have a major problem to contend with trying to pursue our hobby – the weather.  There are very few good clear Moonless nights to take those perfect images.  I have also compounded the problem by moving from a very fast (Hyperstar) imaging system that worked at f#1.85, to a much slower refractor-based system working at only f#4.5, i.e. six times slower. 

I’m going to tackle this problem piece by piece and I will be posting details of my thoughts in the mini-WASP Array category.  You can also see a list of the posts below:

I hope you’ll keep reading as I learn about what is needed and my experiences of putting together such an exciting piece of equipment.

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