Thank you Tom How (Curdridge Observatory)!!!

Posted on August 7, 2010 by Greg Parker

Today it was brought home to me just how dangerous it is to work on your own in this imaging business.  Tom How is a local guy and an imaging expert, and we only recently realised that we hadn’t met up for (too many!) years.  So Tom popped over to Brockenhurst this morning to see what I had been up to in the intervening years.  Tom also educated me about darks, bias frames and flats, something he has spent a lot of time on getting properly sorted out on his system.  It was when he showed me the bias frame from my M25C that he immediately knew that something was wrong with the camera – there was a large top-to-bottom gradient.  As I’ve never looked at a bias frame before it meant nothing to me.  However – it did kick me into action – and the long and the short of it is that (after mailing Terry Platt) it looks like the Peltier cooler is open circuit.  I have no idea how long the CCD hasn’t been cooled, but I suspect it goes back to when the power supply gave up the ghost a couple of years ago!!  Blimey – Noel and I have been turning out some pretty nice images without a cooled CCD.  We were getting a bit cheesed off with the hot pixels mind you – and I was very surprised (after having used the H9C for a few years) that I couldn’t do a decent job on CTB1, the supernova remnant in Cassiopeia.  Now we know why!!  So it is a trip up to Starlight Xpress ASAP for some surgery on the M25C and hopefully we’ll see a big leap in image quality brought about by some decent chip cooling!!  If Tom hadn’t popped over and pushed me along to see about bias frames and the like I would have carried on in ignorance.  This is the risk you run if you work on your own in this technologically demanding hobby 🙂


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A Perseid from my Sodium light-polluted back-garden in Brockenhurst from early this morning

Posted on August 5, 2010 by Greg Parker

Testing out my all-sky imaging rig ready for next week’s maximum in the Perseid meteor shower.  AstroTrac, Canon 5D MkII camera, Canon 15mm fish-eye lens and Canon electronic shutter controller.  You might just make out a faint Perseid bottom left in this image.

img_1378_perseid1_forum

I intend taking the rig over to a dark spot in the Forest next week provided we get the clear skies.

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Blast it! Another go-deeper job I didn’t really want.

Posted on August 5, 2010 by Greg Parker

Last night I managed to grab the frame to the right of the Cocoon nebula – whilst at the same time getting some ultra-wide-fields of the Perseids using the Canon 5D MkII, 15mm fish-eye lens and AstroTrac.  Anyway – I quickly bolted the Cocoon right hand frame on and what do I find?  In order to get all the dark nebulosity in the region I also need the two frames off the top and bottom as well!!  Talk about a go-deeper job.  Well at least we all know what this summer’s mega-project will be.

cocoon_alldata
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Just one month to go!

Posted on August 2, 2010 by Greg Parker

Just a reminder that the Star Vistas Exhibition at the ArtSway gallery is now just one month off – put it in your diary now if you want to see the latest and best images from the New Forest Observatory.

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Another little rant courtesy of LibCon, ConLib, or whatever they’re called:

Posted on August 1, 2010 by Greg Parker

Yes, I know this is meant to be all about the New Forest Observatory – but as I mentioned before – it’s my blog and I can write what I damn well like.

Welcome to the Big Society – are we all feeling nice and cosy as the latest shambles of a Government continues to flush the country down the toilet?

As the bulk of you didn’t see the “going decimal” con, or the “tuition fees and loss of student grants” con – no doubt you’ve missed the latest biggest and best con.

O.K. so you are all aware that the Bankers took the country to the brink of  Bankruptcy, nothing new there it was all mentioned in my last rant.  We – that is the last of us still in a job – bailed them out, you and I BAILED THEM OUT, keep that one in mind – it’s very important – shouldn’t you now be seeing some dividends from all the Banks you bailed out as Investors? – oh yeah, dream on.  To show their appreciation of our magnanimous (involuntary) gesture the Bankers will of course continue to take their obscene “Bonuses” but that was to be expected wasn’t it.

No – the really good bit is just coming up.  Having bailed out the completely inept Bankers with OUR money, we’re now in for a double-whammy – how unexpected was that then?  Massive cuts in the public sector, that is both in terms of jobs and pay – oh – and take a very close look at what is going on with your pension while your at it, and your retirement age, the Government  can’t afford you to quit work in case you haven’t noticed.  If you are stupid enough to fall in with their wishes you’ll be working up to the point they nail down the lid and you won’t have had any of that special time you were looking forward to (and thoroughly deserved) – when you retired.

Big Society – hope you are all comforted by the “Newspeak” because the next few years are going to be the most unpleasant you’ve ever spent in the U.K. – unless you’re a Banker or a Politician of course.

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IOM August 2010 – The Cocoon nebula in Cygnus

Posted on August 1, 2010 by Greg Parker

Imaging conditions steadily improve as we proceed through August and once again reasonably dark skies can be had in the late evening – the only problem being if you have a day job to get up early for the next morning!!  Day jobs notwithstanding August sees the real beginning of the new imaging season and as we’re still in summer it’s the summer constellations that we’ll still be interested in.  Cygnus again (same as last month) but this time a beautiful nebula rather than the open cluster we saw last month – this time we’ll look in some detail at the Cocoon nebula [IC5146].

The Cocoon nebula itself is a beautiful little emission nebula some 10′ x 10′ in size at a distance of around 3,300 light years.  But it is not just the nebula that is interesting – look at its surroundings!!  This one lies in the rich Milky Way and there’s yet another bonus – look at those dark nebula streamers billowing out from behind the Cocoon – it looks like the Cocoon has blundered its way into this Milky Way region of stars from the right, pushing stars out of its way as it travelled through and finally came to rest.  This amazing dark nebula is Barnard 168 [B168] and is one of the northern sky’s most visually stunning dark nebulae when viewed through a low-power instrument.  It is also large!  The accompanying image is a two-frame Hyperstar III mosaic measuring some 4 degrees across – and it still wasn’t a big enough FOV to capture the full extent of B168!

Now go back to the Cocoon nebula again – and look at that amazing stream of stars coming out the top of the nebula looking like some celestial whale head blowing sea water out of its blow-hole – incredible!

This region demands a LOT of exposure time AND a huge field of view as well.  It is well worth the time and effort to put together a nice mosaic of this area to capture the full richness of the region.  For my Hyperstar III/SXVF-M25C setup I recommend 5-minute subs to get some real depth to the Milky Way stars, and as per usual, at least 4-hours per frame, preferably 5-hours to give around 60 subs for a decent stacking and good signal to noise.

I will almost certainly go back to this one to get the third frame off to the right to get a little more of the amazing B168 into the final image.

Until September, when we WILL be getting those darker skies – clear skies and happy imaging!!

coccoon_nfo
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Over 12 orders of magnitude in exposure time between subjects

Posted on July 30, 2010 by Greg Parker

I am using a Bryan Mumford Time Machine and the high speed flash gear from http://www.highspeedflash.com/ to create some visually stunning images of water collisions – an example is here:

spiked_drink

Some spikes added to the highlights using Noel Carboni’s plug-in 🙂  So this water drop collision took an exposure time of 9-millionths of a second, and the beer can pinhole camera project used a 6-month exposure time – that’s over 12 orders of magnitude difference in exposure time!

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Why the cloud at night?

Posted on July 28, 2010 by Greg Parker

Why is there so much cloud at night recently when it’s been relatively clear through most of the day?  Well I have the AstroTrac ready and set up with the new Canon 5D MkII and the Canon 15mm fish-eye lens so that I can take some whole-sky pictures (the 5D and 15mm fish-eye gives me a full 180 degree field of view so I can get horizon-to-horizon shots).  So that’s why it’s cloudy 🙁  Don’t forget we are also in Perseid season (that’s the main reason I’m ready with the AstroTrac), and although we won’t be getting any Moon problems at the height of the shower, we can’t guarantee clear skies on the main nights, so it’s fingers-crossed time again, as usual.


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Big – BIG – jump in U.K. Amazon sales of Star Vistas today

Posted on July 28, 2010 by Greg Parker

Huge jump in sales of Star Vistas on U.K. Amazon today – no idea why – if you’ve seen a recent review somewhere please let me know 🙂

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150,000 not out

Posted on July 28, 2010 by Greg Parker

Well some time during last night NFO had its 150,000 th visitor 🙂  Wow!!  Thank you all for taking the time to visit my site – I hope you enjoy all the goings-on at the New Forest Observatory.  Next milestone – 200,000 – another report when we get there.

Prof. Greg Parker


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