We have now acquired 50% of the entirely new image portfolio for inclusion in Star Vistas II 🙂  I estimate that the full set of images for the next publication will be completed late 2009, early 2010.  If you liked SVI, then SVII will really impress you!

Sir Patrick Moore hosted one of his legendary St. George’s Day parties from his Selsey home.  The camera-shake was real as he wielded his Sword of St. George with a little too much enthusiasm 🙂

I’ve been kicking my heels waiting for a clear night since hearing of the new supernova in NGC 4088 a few days back.  By some miracle I have a clear Moonless night tonight (18th April 2009) and I’m locked on and imaging the supernova which is still pretty bright and obvious.  Will try to get at least a couple of hours on this, weather permitting, just so I have it for the records.  A couple of other small galaxies can be seen within the 2.4 x 1.6 degree field of view, but apart from NGC 4088 and the supernova it is a pretty uninteresting region at first sight (might find more hidden in there when processed).

The talk at Southampton University on 1st April went very well, and the few copies of Star Vistas that I brought along sold out 🙂

Tomorrow I will be on a local radio station – I have no idea what the format will be – tune in from 8:00 until 9:00 a.m. if you want to hear what happens.

From deep-space images back to inner space images once again!  Just found this in the shed this afternoon and had to take a macro of it:

A wasp’s nest, with the honeycomb region about half an inch across.  Amazingly beautiful structure crafted in paper 🙂

It does look like an artificial grouping of stars to make up the number 37 – but the group of stars at the centre of this image are for real and clearly show the number 37, proving Douglas Adams although very close with 42 – was actually slightly out.  The 37 cluster is today’s Earth Science Picture of the Day (APOD) – thank you Jim for a good choice of image on this April Fool’s Day.  The 37 cluster can be found residing in the constellation Orion.

This month’s imaging object is a star – but a rather special star of course – it is La Superba, one of the redest stars in the sky and it resides in the constellation Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs).  La Superba (Gamma Canum Venaticorum) is a semi-regular variable star, it is also a Carbon star and at a temperature of around 2800K it is one of the coldest true stars known.  La Superba is therefore a pretty unique object and highly worthy of our attention.  La Superba may, or may not be in your telescope’s “go to” database – if it isn’t you will need the co-ordinates which are R.A. 12h 45m 07.83s Dec. +45 26′ 24.92”.  You won’t need particularly long subs as La Superba will be between magnitude +4.8 and +6.3 – but it is certainly worth getting as many subs as you can to obtain a nice smooth image.

Wishing you clear April skies and the opportunity to get some great data on this unique object!