What’s the significance of 288888? Just saw that the New Forest Observatory had that number of hits at 17:14 p.m. today 🙂 Keep visiting people, there’s always something new and exciting going on at the New Forest Observatory (except last night that is when absolutely nothing wanted to work properly).
Noel Carboni has just processed all the recent Hyperstar III data to create this groundbreaking image of the region 🙂
Three hours of 10-minute subs, 1-hour of 1-minute subs and 1-hour of 50-second subs went into the creation of this image. Why the short sub-exposures? Because there was just a trace of burnt out of M13’s core with the 10-minute sub-exposures, surprisingly little actual and says a lot for the Starlight Xpress camera and the well overflow protection.
Noel also found a star with the very high proper motion in this image when he overlaid it with DSS data that he had processed some time ago. So in twenty years the star shifted quite a bit (in distance on the image).
Managed to polar align the mini-WASP array last night, while in parallel I was taking some LONG subs with the HSIII on M13 going for the faint stuff. Now it really is just a few odds and ends to fine tune and sort out before the array should be showing its stuff.
Another image from the New Forest Observatory appears on Simon Parkin’s Meridian Weather slot on Sunday 20th May 2012. Video footage Copyright Meridian News & Weather.
There will be an annular solar eclipse on May 20th (tomorrow!) – YAY!!!!!!!! 🙂 🙂
Unfortunately, for people in the U.K. it begins after Sunset – Boooh!!!! 🙁 🙁
I just used Registar to add two earlier original Hyperstar M13 datasets to the very recent (2) datasets taken using the Hyperstar III. This is the result 🙂
Testing out the re-collimated Sky 90s I took an image of the Vega region using both scopes and cameras. This is a Registar combine of both sets of data. There is some field rotation in all 4 corners of the image, but that will soon be sorted 🙂
I have wanted to image this object for years ever since I saw it in a picture. However, being a planetary nebula I always thought it would be far too small on the Hyperstar III rig to be interesting. As it turns out – it is quite a bit bigger than I was expecting. The blue sphere in the centre of this image is Abell 39 – a planetary nebula in the constellation Hercules – and it is the object I find the most fascinating of those known out there in deep-space 🙂
Captured with the Hyperstar III on the C11, 20 subs at 5-minutes per sub, processed by yours truly.
Thank you Jim for publishing the New Forest Observatory’s “Virgo/Coma mega-mosaic” as today’s Earth Science Picture of the Day.
After a great deal of grief and pain I have worked out how to collimate the mini-WASP Sky 90s and they are now both sorted 🙂
Fourth clear night in a row, and no Moon, so I am imaging the Vega region with both scopes and the M26C one-shot colour cameras. Camera synch running, dome rotation running, Hyperstar III imaging in the south dome – I tell you it doesn’t get any better than this.
Last major job to do on the mini-WASP array is to get the polar alignment sorted, it’s reasonably close, but not good enough.
