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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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