It is the first clear day in ages - makes a great change from the dull, dark, grey, completely overcast days we have been experiencing for quite a while now.  This is the view towards the West from the New Forest Observatory.  You can see a prime example of the wooden optical obstacle course I have to negotiate on my imaging sessions sitting right behind the observatory.

There hasn’t been a huge amount of progress since the last report.  The only change to the array is that I’ve now added the second Sky 90 to the frame as I now use the lightweight Celestron 80mm refractor to guide the Hyperstar on the C11 as the Sky 90 was a bit too heavy and led to poor tracking.

However, this Christmas break I have decided to try and get some funding to put the rest of the observatory together for the mini-WASP array - so retailers are currently being pestered for their best prices.  I hope to be able to submit the grant proposal early in the New Year and will keep you informed of any developments.

Last night there were some breaks in the cloud and it was also unusually mild.  So I took the 40D outside on the tripod (I should have taken the TT320 as well but I wasn’t thinking straight yesterday for reasons that will become clear on the 23rd December 2008 - come back to the NFO then and I took some frames of the dome and Orion.  ISO 800, 10-second exposures, 28mm focal length, f#5.6, about 15 stacked frames.  As I did a manual 2-star lock on the stars when stacking, the dome (and tree behind it) are blurred - but what this image does show is the nicely Sodium illuminated dome courtesy of about half a dozen close-by street lights!!  Needless to say lights stay on blazing away all through the night when the only thing they are doing is showing the way home to the foxes.

I have security alarms, and a fire extinguisher handy for the observatory - but it took a recent catastrophic failure of a PSU to make me think about putting a smoke alarm in there!  Fortunately I had two battery operated smoke alarms in the loft (builders put mains operated alarms in the house when they did some work).  So now there’s an added bit of protection for the observatory.  I would strongly recommend you do the same if you have your observatory within earshot as there have been several cases of fires going unnoticed with the obvious consequences.

It is just as well I don’t have the funds available to proceed with the mini-WASP concept as it has given me time to think about the whole system.  Since coming up with the idea of multiple imaging scopes to effectively cut down the total imaging time on an object, I have had real trouble trying to couple the colour imaging system with the narrowband imaging system.  Basically, no combination of scopes and cameras could cover what I wanted to achieve.

But sometimes a walk with the dog over the forest can achieve wonders, and it came to me that I should not try to combine both systems in one.  It would make far more sense to keep the Hyperstar III system as is for taking the colour data, although this will mean a 4-frame mosaic for each object, and use the mini-WASP array with its FSQ106 scopes and 35mm format mono cameras for just taking the narrowband data.  The colour and narrowband data can then be put together by Noel to create unique wide field images.  In addition the framework of the mini-WASP can be adapted to hold up to 10 scopes plus a finder scope, so this flexible system allows for a variety of FOVs to be taken.  Since the mini-WASP array will now only be used for narrowband imaging I have renamed it the Narrowband Imaging Platform or NIP.  Now all I need is a substantial Lottery win!

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.

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 Veil nebula in Cygnus!

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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 see the upper region of the Veil, and Noel just sent me a “taster” of the lower Veil region.  This is going to be a classic!  Keep viewing this site - it will be posted soon

The mini-WASP framework was delivered to the New Forest Observatory by the CEO of NTE Poole, Eric Kennedy, on Wednesday 5th December 2007.

If you have just joined us then make sure you read all about the mini-Wasp Array Project from the beginning.

The accompanying photos show the all-Aluminium black-anodised mini-WASP framework with the Megrez 80 mm guidescope, and one of the two Sky 90 imaging scopes attached. 

The fourth aperture will be used to house a Takahashi FSQ106 with reducer/corrector, camera rotator and filter-wheel.  The imaging camera for the FSQ will be the Starlight Xpress monochrome H36.

The next component I need for this project is the one that will cause the longest delay - it’s the mount!

Have you ever had the problem where the time indicated on one of your clocks (including your computer’s clock) is different to another one?  Well, I have and it can certainly cause headaches when trying to analyse the large amounts of data that we generate from our images. 

I now have one of those “radio-controlled” clocks that gives me the precise time via an atomic clock in the UK.  The clock broadcast signal is controlled and monitored by the National Physics Laboratory in Teddingtion and the transmitter was moved to Anthorn in 2003 - although everyone still refers to the atomic clock as “The Rugby Transmitter”.

So now the observatory computer is always giving me the correct time for the FITS data files and other astronomical programs that I might be running as I always “synch” it to my local atomic clock before each imaging session.