A nice astrophoto-opportunity arose on the 6th May 2008 – in the twilight sky, beautiful Mercury lay very close to a new Moon. In a big departure from my normal astrophotography – I took the accompanying image with the Canon … Continue reading
There are a superb pair of galaxies that are ideally positioned during May for imaging, and I find myself drawn back to them year after year. The galaxies are M81, also known as Bode’s galaxy and M82, also known as … Continue reading
Well our definitive version of M31 with all the added H-alpha made Picture of the Month in the May 2008 issue of Astronomy Now. Thank you Nik Szymanek for the very nice accompanying write-up 🙂
A couple of weeks ago I imaged La Superba – a carbon star in Canes Venatici. This is only 11 subs at 6-minutes per sub, but you can just make out a few interesting faint fuzzies in the background. I … Continue reading
The New Forest Observatory makes an appearance in Scientific Computing World this month. Thank you Felix Grant for producing a very informative article.
In an earlier post I showed how I take large terrestrial mosaics (panoramas) using the Canon 40D in a manner similar to taking deep-sky mosaics. Not only does this give you a bigger field of view, it also gives you (ultimately) … Continue reading
So yesterday it was snow. Today it is hail, rain and sunshine in equal measure. This afternoon this rainbow appeared over the New Forest Observatory. A good omen for 2008??
So after an unbelievably mild winter we get snow on April 6th! Here’s a view of my garden this morning at 7.30 a.m. Now [3.00 p.m.] it is sunny, warm, and the snow has almost completely disappeared.
Further to the Image of the Month below, I did in fact manage to get nearly 5 hours of 750-second subs on that third frame (to the left) for the Markarian Chain mosaic, just a couple of nights ago. The … Continue reading
You will probably know that Leibniz and Newton, working independently, came up with that torment for schoolchildren and an invaluable aid for engineers, the infinitesimal Calculus. However, did you realise that the formulation of the Calculus, at least that … Continue reading
