EAA, or Electronically Assisted Astronomy is an ever increasing popular way to do Astronomy. While it uses as camera to make observations, it’s not astrophotography and because you are not looking through an eyepiece, you don’t need to be at the telescope to do it. Nick will give an overall view on what EAA is and how you can simply and relatively cheaply use your existing go-to telescope- no matter what kind it is…
Sun & Stars: 20, April – Carnewas
The first of this years Sun & Stars events held on 20th, April. These events , are always, is dependant on clear skies, but this evening we got lucky. Lots of visitors were able to observe spot activity on the surface of the Sun and then watch Jupiter set as more and more of its Moons appeared as darkness fell. Thanks as always, thanks to the National Trust for allowing us to use their…
Twinkle, Twinkle GINORMOUS Star
Looking up at a Chinese night sky Confucius poetically said: “Stars are holes in the sky from which the light of the infinite shines.” Scientifically, we now know that the stars are actually giant balls of hydrogen converting to helium in a nuclear fusion process and kicking out huge amounts of heat, light, plasma, particles and radiation in the process. But is our Sun a “normal” size and “type” of star and how does it compare…
Technique for Combining Continuum and Emission Wavelength Data in Astrophotography
by Dean Ashton, April 2024 There are many examples where we image an object that is predominantly a full continuumspectrum object, a galaxy or a reflection nebula for example, but it also contains emissionline nebulae components. Capturing both a full spectrum RGB image and narrowbandemission image which are then combined may reveal more information about the objectand create a more interesting and complete image. With so many new advances in Pixinsight processing methods, one…
Collision Course – Brace for Impact!
You will probably have heard of the Hubble Space Telescope. It has orbited our planet 333 miles up since 1990 and has spectacularly opened up our view of the Universe with many beautiful images and discoveries. It was named after the American astronomer Edwin Hubble. He fought in the Great War and when he returned in 1919, Hubble joined the Mount Wilson Observatory with its 100-inch mirror Hooker Telescope that was the most powerful…
Next Meeting: March 21st – Summercourt
Image Credit: US Airforce Dan’s talk will be on Aurora. He will start with what the aurora actually are , i.e. the reactions with charged particles with different elements in the atmosphere and how the magnetosphere channels them. He’ll then move onto solar events that release them and why they like equinoxes. He’ll also describe how other phenomena, that look like aurora, are formed. We meet at 19:00 for a 19:30 kickoff