New Forest Observatory ®

Sky at Night (May 2007 Issue)

Posted on April 12, 2007 by Greg Parker

We have won photo of the month in the Sky at Night magazine with this Sky 90/SXVF-M25C image of the Rosette nebula. The Rosette nebula in Monoceros features as photo of the month on page 26. You’ll also find it included on the CD-ROM.

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British Journal of Photography (Nikon Project Assistance Awards)

Posted on April 4, 2007 by Greg Parker

I’ve submitted a portfolio of my work to the British Journal of Photography for the Nikon Project Assistance Awards.

So why am I entering? Well, if I win an award, I would purchase a second colour CCD camera and computer to be mounted on a long focal length telescope to get a high resolution, narrower field of view image.

Placing the two images side by side would give a widefield view of an object, with a ‘zoomed in’ section of the same object next to it. For example, we could have a widefield image of the Horsehead nebula region in one frame, and in the accompanying frame a close-up of just the Horsehead itself.

There is tough competition!

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Astronomy Now Magazine (April 2007 Issue)

Posted on March 25, 2007 by Greg Parker

Astronomy Now are printing one of our images of M31 in “the night sky” on page 51. It is certainly a dramatic image and one of our favourites. This is just the central core region of M31 taken with the Hyperstar/SXV-H9C – BUT – it contains 311 sub-exposures!!

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Sky at Night (March 2007 Issue)

Posted on March 18, 2007 by Greg Parker

We are very pleased that Sky at Night have chosen two of our images for the March 2007 issue – both are Sky 90/SXVF-M25C images:

An image of M42 in landscape mode with no H-Alpha data (page 27)
The Horsehead Nebula wide field (on the CD-ROM)

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Hampshire Society Magazine (March 2007 Issue)

Posted on March 15, 2007 by Greg Parker

Faith Eckersall has written an article titled “Shining Example” for the March issue of the Hampshire Society Magazine.

A lot of the article is about Greg’s background which you also can read on this site. The article has been published with one of our favourite images – the region between NGC1977 and M43 in Orion taken using the Hyperstar/SXV-H9C combination.

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Astronomy Now Magazine (March 2007 Issue)

Posted on February 19, 2007 by Greg Parker

The accompanying image made Picture of the Month in the March 2007 issue of Astronomy Now! You can find this one on page 92. The image taken with the Sky 90/M25C combination and shows the Cone Nebula, Christmas Tree cluster region in Monoceros. The beautiful little golden open cluster at the bottom/centre of this image is designated Trumpler 5. There was no additional H-alpha data taken for this image, something I shall attempt to do during Winter 2007.

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Curdridge Observatory Use Our Bode Nebula Image

Posted on February 14, 2007 by Greg Parker

Tom How over at Curdridge Observatory dropped me a note to say that he has just finished some interesting work with our image of M81 [Bode’s Nebula]. We produced our single frame Hyperstar image with the SXV-H9C one-shot colour cmaera which gave us a reasonably large field of view (FOV) of one degree by three-quarters of a degree.

Once again they have used our image as a chrominance layer with their own image as a luminance layer and once again the result looks great.

Make sure you take a look at the original M81 Bodes Nebula Image by Tom How at Curdridge Observatory. Tom’s image is on the left and our image is on the right.

M81 by Curdridge Observatory and New Forest Observatory

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EPOD: Pleiades Open Star Cluster

Posted on February 10, 2007 by Greg Parker

Fantastic! Earth Science Picture of the Day (EPOD) have chosen our extremely deep image of the Pleiades open star cluster taken on the Sky 90/SXVF-M25C as today’s picture.

This is the famous Pleiades open star cluster in the constellation Taurus, also known as Messier object 45 (M45). The arrival of this familiar star cluster in the evening sky is a precursor of winter. Continue reading →

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Dorset Society Magazine (February 2007 Issue)

Posted on February 9, 2007 by Greg Parker

Faith Eckersall has written a great article for the February issue of the Dorset Society Magazine titled “Twinkle, twinkle” using a set of Hyperstar/SXV-H9C images. If you see the magazine, you will find the article on pages 48-49.

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M25C Horsehead Area

Posted on February 8, 2007 by Greg Parker

Managed to get a few good images these last couple of months (despite the terrible weather). However, this one was above expectations.

A total of over a dozen hours exposure using 15 minute and 5 minute RGB subs as well as 1,000 second H-alpha subs not to mention over a dozen hours of image processing by Noel Carboni in Florida, U.S.A.

This is probably the best image we’ve turned out so far.

Usual equipment, Sky 90 telescope with an SXVF-M25C CCD, Maxim DL for data acquisition, autoguiding, colour conversion and stacking.

Hope you like the surreal image…

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