CAS News

Cosmic Jellyfish

2010-03-09T21:17:00.002Z

IC443, commonly referred to as the Jellyfish Nebula can be seen swimming to the right of the bright yellow star Propus in this image.

William Optics 80mm with 0.8x reducer
Canon 300D modified
Autoguided EQ6
12 x 10 minute exposures @ ISO800

I took the image last night (8th March 2010) in a brief 2 hour period of clear skies. I plan to take several more hours to bring out the depth of the surrounding nebulosity to the East of the Jellyfish.

The image processing consisted of dark (3), flat (10) and bias (10) frame calibration, Extended Addition and Digital Development (DDP) stretch. The image was tweaked for noise (NeatImage) and colour balance in Photoshop.

Institute of Physics Lecutre

2010-03-02T19:44:00.002Z

"Searching In The Dark" - a talk on the ZEPLIN collaboration searching for dark matter particles in salt & pot ash mines in the North East of England.

The speaker is Alex Murphy of the University of Edinburgh.

The venue is the Samuel Lindow Building, UCLAN's Westlakes Campus.

The time is 6.30pm on the 23rd March.

If you're interested then email: WestCumbriaIOP@googlemail.com

Recent Images

2010-02-27T07:59:00.004Z

Thanks Chris, glad you enjoyed the talk. Some of the latest images are below, for those who missed the meeting.

California Nebula
3x10min H-alpha + 18x5min RGB @ ISO800

Christmas Tree Nebula
10x10min H-alpha + 12x5min RGB @ ISO800

February meeting report

2010-02-24T11:25:00.000Z

Thanks to Jeremy for a facsinating talk at our February meeting last night. After a brief news update and discussion Jeremy covered the topic of astrophotography right from the basics of pointing a camera at the night sky and recording star trials to the very advanced and spectacular images Jeremy is now making with his own equipment. Illustrated with many images some of which have been published in astronomy magazines the talk was appreciated by everyone.

Chris

CAS look-ahead

2010-02-16T21:40:00.003Z

Just to keep everyone up to date on the next few months CAS meetings, we have the following speakers lined up:

February 2010 - An Introduction to Astrophotography (Jeremy Hunt)
March 2010 - Mapping The Milky Way (Dennis Kelly)
&
The Alternative History of Astronomy (Ian Smith)
April 2010 - Guest Speaker Stuart Atkinson

Jerry

February Meeting

2010-02-09T06:39:00.002Z

Hi All

Sorry about the lack of posts on the blog for some time, I'll try and do better in the coming months!

Hopefully many of you saw the spectacular night launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour. If not check out the NASA launch website for great rocket-cam footage.

Our next meeting is Tue 23rd February and following Chris' space newsround I'll be talking about DSLR Astrophotography. If anyone has any burning questions they'd like answered then email me before the 23rd (or surprise me on the night). j.g.hunt@btinternet.com

Anyone who has been taking pictures themselves over the last month or so is welcome to bring along their pictures on a USB stick to share with everyone.

Jerry

January Meeting Details

2010-01-22T19:31:00.002Z

As Chris says the meeting will be on as normal on Tuesday 26th January @ 7.30pm in St Joseph's church hall, Cockermouth.

This month's guest speaker is from the Border Astronomical Society:

David Pettitt's talk is entitled "How I Built My Observatory"

And as usual Chris will be doing the round up of astronomy and spaceflight news.

So please come down and bring any interested friends and family with you.

Jerry

January meeting

2010-01-20T23:32:00.001Z

Just a quick update to say that our January meeting is on. I've had a few questions about whether the hall is available. I'm trying to get 'official' confirmation, but I know other groups are using the hall and I have no indication that it is not available.

Jeremy has details of our speaker for the month and will post details separately.

See you all on tuesday.

Chris

Christmas Social

2009-12-05T23:32:00.001Z

As our November meeting was cancelled we said we would try and arrange a social event in a local pub before Christmas. I suggest we meet on Thursday 10th December at 8pm in The Swan on Kirkgate in Cockermouth.

If you can make it and can let me know that would be ideal. If you're not sure feel free to just turn up and find us. We are just meeting for an informal chat and a few drinks, nothing special planned but it would be great to see you all.

Chris

November Meeting Cancelled

2009-11-23T11:26:00.000Z

Just to confirm that due to transport infrastructure and flood damage in Cockermouth our November meeting is cancelled. We will look to arrange an informal meeting sometime in mid December.

Chris

November CAS Meeting

2009-11-21T20:53:00.000Z

I'm not sure what the status of St Joseph's Church and Hall is following the serious flooding in Cockermouth over the last few days but from the TV footage I've seen, I think it will have been affected so it seems unlikely that our meeting will be going ahead on Tuesday. I'll post more when I know.

My thoughts go out to all affected by the floods. I hope you are all OK.

Chris

The Jewellery of Luminous Giants & Dim Dwarfs

2009-11-05T21:56:00.002Z

Notice of an event hosted by the Institute of Physics to be held at the Sellafield Visitors Centre:

Dr Christianne Helling of the University of St Andrews will be lecturing on the nature of interstellar dust, the effects of dust on luminous giant star formation and dim dwarfs.

Wednesday 18th November 2009, Sellafield Centre, Refreshments at 6.30pm talk starts at 7pm.

Please book by emailing WestCumbriaIOP@googlemail.com

November CAS meeting

2009-10-29T21:29:00.002Z

Just to confirm that the November CAS meeting will be held on 24th November. The agenda will be as follows:

Astronomy & Spaceflight News
An Introduction to Astrophysics - by Dennis Kelly
An Alternative History of Astronomy: The Unbelievable Truth - by Ian Smith

We have an "alternative" agenda this month, with the usual news slot followed by two brief presentations to get your mind going. The first will focus on Dennis' part-time Astrophysics studies. This will be followed by something to tease your imagination and test your knowledge of astronomical history.

See you there at 7.30pm.

Jerry

CAS forward programme

2009-10-24T21:32:00.000Z

It's been a while since we've had a published forward programme for CAS meetings, but thanks to Jeremy's efforts we now have a programme of meetings over the next few months. We are working on adding to it for the rest of 2010 so if you have any ideas let us know.

You can find the latest version of the programme by following the "Meeting Programme" link in the toolbar above. Or simply follow this link.

Chris.

Lots of new exoplanets

2009-10-22T09:36:00.002Z

A recent announcement of exoplanet discoveries has boosted the number of known planets to over 400. The haul of planets consists of 32 planets including so-called super earths. More details in this Universe Today article (and just about anywhere else you care to look on the web)

More details next week at our October meeting of course.

Chris.

October CAS Meeting

2009-10-20T19:20:00.002Z

Our October meeting is next Tuesday 27th October and this month our guest speaker is David Ramshaw from the Border Astronomical Society. David will be talking about Medieval Astronomy.

Of course we'll also have our usual round up of the latest in space and astronomy news.

See you there,

Chris.

Saturn: The Big Picture

2009-10-20T06:07:00.004Z

I talked about the equinox at Saturn at our September meeting. There were some pretty amazing images available at the time. However the Boston Post blog The Big Picture has put together this collection of some of the best images, including many I hadn't seen before.

If you haven't checked out the Big Picture it's well worth a regular check as it covers a wide variety of topics and news stories using just a collection of great images.

Chris

IC405 & IC410

2009-10-17T21:14:00.003Z

IC405, better known as the Flaming Star Nebula is located in the constellation of Auriga. It surrounds the hot blue star AE Aurigae which energises the gas. The nebula is both an emission and reflection nebula region, hence the blue, red and purple colours. The nebula is about 1500 light years away and spans about 5 ly.

Nearby is IC410, 1.5 degrees across the sky from IC405.

The following image is a combination of 14 x 5 minute exposures at 1600ISO.

IC405 & IC410
William Optics ZS80 & Canon 300D
14 x minutes @ 1600ISO
EQ6 autoguided
Approx. fov 3 x 2 degrees

Pleiades shines bright

2009-10-17T21:06:00.004Z

Another clear night kept me out until 3.30am on Friday/Saturday. The following picture is a combination of 28 x 5 minute exposures.

M45 - Pleiades Cluster

William Optics ZS80 and Canon 300D

28 x 5 minutes @ 400ISO

EQ6 autoguided

Approx. field of view 3 deg x 2 deg

More Mars Meteorites

2009-10-16T19:59:00.003Z

As always Stuart, over at Cumbrian Sky, has been keeping a keen eye on goings on at Mars and points out on his "road to endeavour" blog that Opportunity has stumbled (rolled?) across yet another meteorite.

Check out Stuart's post for more details. I'm wondering just how many blogs Stuart is running now ?

Cassini is back amongst the moons

2009-10-16T19:44:00.004Z

You might have noticed that we've not seen many of those nice images of Saturn's moons from Cassini over the last few months. That's because Cassini has been orbiting over Saturn's poles and giving us some fantastic views of the rings instead.

However that's changed again as the the spacecraft is back in an equatorial orbits and has already sent back some amazing images including this great image of Tethys below. As usual Emily Lakdawala has much more information and images on the Planetary Society Blog.

3,000 visits and counting

2009-10-10T20:32:00.005Z

It's traditional to keep a track of visitors to websites and blogs on the Internet and I noticed the other day that Stuart's Cumbrian Sky has passed the landmark of 100,000 (yes one hundred thousand) visitors. That's a fantastic milestone, well done Stu.

That prompted me to check our own counter and we have reached the somewhat more modest milestone of 3,000 visitors. That's not bad for a blog that's really just designed to keep society members up to date on whats going on. We've been going for almost four years (since January 2006) and have over 400 posts on CAS News now.

So to 'celebrate' I've added a search panel to the side bar on the blog to help you search through some of those 400 older articles. It's over there just under the calendar.

While on the topic of posting I'd also like to pass on my thanks to Jeremy who has really picked on the mantle of the blog over the last few months posting news articles and his excellent images, while I've not been so active. Hopefully other things will calm down a bit for me soon and I'll be able to spend a bit more time blogging.

And of course thanks to all of you for keeping coming back.

Don't forget you can contribute by leaving comments on posts, just click on the "x comments" link under the relevant post. It only take a minutes and it doesn't hurt ;-)

Chris.

Scale model of the Solar System

2009-10-10T19:28:00.005Z

Today Kendal's Eddington Astronomical Society held an event introducing the solar system in a very interactive way, as a scale model. The event was a great success and I was delighted to be able to go along and help out.

The real attraction of this scale model was that both the distances between planets and the size of the planets were done to the same scale thanks to lots of hard work by Doug Ellison of the Unmanned Spaceflight forum. The scale was really enlightening, even for those of us who have been observing and reading about the solar system for years, you really got an appreciation of how much SPACE there is out there!

Thanks to Stuart's organisational and publicity skills plenty of people turned up to experience the event themselves, around 200 in total.

I spent the day 'orbiting' somewhere around the asteroid belt, talking to people, answering questions and generally trying to convince people that there is more to that part of the solar system than just Mars!

Congratulations to Stuart, Doug, EAS and everyone who turned out to make the event the fantastic success it was.

Chris

Heart Nebula - NGC1805

2009-09-26T21:21:00.003Z

I finally managed to have a quick go at processing last week's latest image, NGC 1805 or the Heart Nebula.

The image needs a lot of work, but here's a quick preview. Close up the image is full of noise, but reduced in size it's not too bad.

William Optics ZS80 with 0.8x reducer
Canon 300D modified
23 x 5 minute exposures @ ISO800

September CAS meeting

2009-09-24T20:37:00.003Z

A brief reminder that the September meeting will be held on Tuesday 29th September 2009 at 7.30pm in the Church Hall.

Topics for the evening include:

Summer Space News Update
Saturn's Equinox
International Astronomy at a Danish Star Party
Local Members Observing Updates - Robin & Jeremy

Please encourage friends to attend.

Jerry