Monthly Archives: March 2008

The Veil nebula – reloaded

Noel reprocessed the Veil nebula data making the stars less obtrusive and sharpening up the nebulosity a little to emphasize the filaments.  It’s a personal choice as to which version you prefer – I like the down-played stars myself.

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The last Sir Arthur C Clarke EGOGRAM – 2008

The last Egogram to be sent out by Sir Arthur came to me on the 30th January 2008.  As you can see he was anticipating the next big milestone – 2010 – the year we make contact. Sir Arthur Clarke                                                                           … Continue reading

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Sir Arthur C Clarke 16th December 1917 – 19th March 2008

I have just heard the terrible news that Sir Arthur C Clarke died today.  Sir Arthur transformed my life at age 19 when I started my first job at Harwell and began reading his mind-expanding Science Fiction.  As I told … Continue reading

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The Veil nebula in Cygnus – a supernova remnant

Today is a landmark day for the New Forest Observatory.  After a marathon processing session involving a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and a hallucination-inducing lack of sleep – Noel Carboni has just finished processing the Summer 2007 mega-project, the … Continue reading

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St. Patrick’s day party at Farthings Selsey

Sir Patrick Moore threw a party at Farthings yesterday – St. Patrick’s day!  We even saw a few moments of clear sky after a week of being totally overcast – I think Selsey is famous for being able to see … Continue reading

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The whole of the Veil nebula in Cygnus

The last few days Noel has been working right through the night to get the images sorted for Star Vistas.  As I write this, Noel is working on the mammoth Veil Nebula data set.  In a previous post you can … Continue reading

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The Rosette nebula in the infrared

The accompanying image shows the Rosette nebula in the infrared (720nm – 1,000nm) part of the spectrum.  The image is composed of 7 subs at 1600 seconds per sub, just over 3-hours total exposure time – and – there’s virtually nothing … Continue reading

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Abell 1367 galaxy cluster in Leo

The first image where I carried out multiple re-focuses during the imaging session was with this image of Abell 1367, a galaxy cluster in Leo.  This image was taken on the night of Tuesday 4th March 2008 using the IDAS … Continue reading

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Robofocus first light

I used the Robofocus for the first time last night.  Beautiful clear Moonless night, not what you usually get when you are trying out a new piece of astro gear.  There is an auto Wizard jobby that comes with FocusMax … Continue reading

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PEC training and Robofocus

Last night I PEC trained the Celestron Nexstar 11 GPS (wedge mounted altazimuth) mount for the first time.  The Celestron software made a 5-average learning run very easy to carry out.  Since a worm-gear rotation is around 8-minutes this exercise … Continue reading

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