Image credit: NASA Hubble Heritage
Welcome to Astronomy in Herefordshire
Latest News:
News and items of interest to Herefordshire Astronomical Society members
Next Meeting at the Kindle Centre - Thursday 9th January 2025
Season's greetings and wishing you a Happy New Year!
Our next meeting will be at The Kindle Centre on Thursday 9th January 2025.
This will be our AGM followed by Christmas/New Year members' chat.
As always, look out for emails from Chris with details of what HAS is doing next. If you are not on our emailing list, please contact Chris for the latest news - contact details here.
Thursday 9th January 2025
7 pm - Kindle Centre
AGM and members' chat
Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS
Chris mentioned at our October talk that here is a comet exciting observers at the moment - Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS. Visible after sunset, low down in the western skies - our members have reported it's difficult to see without binoculars - but worth it.
David has just submitted this wonderful image of the comet taken at about 7:30pm at home in Clyro. David used a ZWO ASI 533 camera with his 80mm f4.8 triplet scope. To build this image he took 27x 30 second photos stacked and processed.
Members Discussion Group
We've set up an online community for HAS members where you can raise questions, share your experience and suggest topics for talks or visits. We've created a discussion group on the Groups.io platform. This is a "fremium" based platform and promotes itself as "We don't run advertising and your data is never submitted to any ad tracking networks.". There are a lot of other astronomy and expert groups using this platform - it looks like a safe place to be online.
We've set the permissions for the group to be listed publicly but content is private - only HAS members can see what you post. We are moderating new members joining the group to manage spam bots and spurious content. This means new member requests have to be approved by an Admin before being admitted to the group.
Once admitted you can follow discussions and post entries. It's an email based platform by default - you'll receive new posts by email from other members. However, if you don't want individual emails you can go online and change your "Subscription" to turn off emails and receive digests etc.
Have fun!
FAS News
Look out for emails from Keith with the regular FAS Newsletter and news and information about other events and talks that you may be interested in attending at FAS and other Astronomical Societies
Member's Photos
Taken any astronomy photos over the last few months? Share them here with HAS members!
Take a look at what HAS members have managed to do over the years on our Images page (here).
We have been treated to some wonderful Auroral displays this year. Several members managed to capture the recent display on 10th October.
Francis took this series of images from Kingstone sports field where the display started as a green/slightly blue dome to the north then gradually reds appeared from the east and spread across the sky until fading in the west. He used a static Nikon DSLR on a tripod with no filters. Exposures ranged from 6 to 30 seconds and varied depending on the ISO setting used. Aperture remained at f3.5:
and Chris took this series of images using his mast mounted all sky camera running continuous 30 second exposures:
Keith took a time sequence video of the last display on 10th October:
Keith has been peering (using suitable equipment) at the sun during the current "solar maximum" activity. Here's a lovely image of a solar flare with an overlaid image of earth to appreciate the scale of these eruptions!
Here Keith has created an animation of a big and bright CME:
Francis has sent in a stunning image focusing on the Squid Nebula sitting inside the Flying Bat Nebula. This is a tough imaging target - one of Francis's longest imaging runs requiring 14.25 hours of scope time. With his dual imaging rig, this "only" took 7 hours of his time to capture the data. One scope captured Ha and OIII narrowband data, the other scope captured SII and OIII narrowband data.
The image is built up from 171 sub frames of 5 minutes each. These are all processed and stacked using PixInsight software. To make the Squid really stand out, Francis created a mask the same shape as the squid to allow him to hold back or enhance the processing of the squid and it's background. Francis's processing workflow has him removing the stars from the stacked image early on so that he can get the nebulosity looking good, then adding the stars back in at the end to produce the final image. Fabulous! We've shown both the final image and the starless version below:
The Flying Bat Nebula (Sh2-129) and Squid Nebula (Ou4)
The Squid is a fairly recent discovery by French amateur astronomer Nicolas Outters in 2011. The blue emission is from doubly ionised Oxygen atoms the red is from Hydrogen. Sh2-129 is about 1,300 light years away with Ou4 sitting behind some 2,300 light years away. They are located within the Cepheus region.
Keith has been out under the stars again and was lucky enough to have clear skies to view the wonderful Auroral displays in August. He's also been under Francis's tutelage to learn how to enhance a nebula image using PixInsight - dramatic improvement in clarity of the nebula. Lastly, Keith has captured the Tulip nebula SH2-101 in Cygnus:
NGC6888
Crescent Nebula is an emission nebula in the constellation Cygnus.
Keith has used PixInsight to process his original image (left) to significantly reduce the intensity of the stars and so reveal far more detail of the nebula itself (right).
SH2-101 Tulip Nebula
Sharpless 101 (Sh 2-101) is a H II region emission nebula located in the constellation Cygnus. It was catalogued by astronomer Stewart Sharpless in his 1959 catalogue of nebulae. (Wikipedia)
Francis has been busy again and looking forward to longer and darker nights. He's sent us two images taken earlier in July using a dual mount rig. Francis has two Askar 120 APO refractors with 0.8x reducers giving 672mm focal length and f5.6 focal ratio. To capture the nebulosity Francis has used a dual Ha/OIII 6nm narrow band filter. Francis took 22x 120s subs (44 mins) for the Veil nebula and 26x 120s subs (52 mins) for the North American nebula:
Veil Nebula near and including NGC6960
The Veil Nebula is a cloud of heated and ionized gas and dust in the constellation Cygnus.
It constitutes the visible portions of the Cygnus Loop, a supernova remnant, many portions of which have acquired their own individual names and catalogue identifiers like NGC6960. (Wikipedia)
North American Nebula NGC7000
The North America Nebula (NGC 7000 or Caldwell 20) is a large emission nebula in the constellation Cygnus, close to Deneb. It is named because its shape resembles North America. (Wikipedia)
In this image, you can see how the nebula gets its name - Mexico and Central America at the bottom, Gulf of Mexico to the right and a rather stubby Miami to the right!
Meetings:
With meetings now allowed indoors, we are delighted to be able to have a mix of virtual Zoom talks and talks back at the Kindle Centre. Our next meeting is:
Thursday 9th January 2025
7 pm - Kindle Centre
AGM and members' chat
Many of our speakers at the Virtual Talks have allowed us to record and share their talks for society members to view if they missed the meeting. We've started a HAS YouTube channel here where you can visit or subscribe to and watch these talks.
To watch recordings of previous talks, they are on the "Recordings" page here.
Our last recorded meeting was a talk given by Owen Brazell. Owen allowed us to record the talk and you'll find it here:
Thursday 5th December 2024
A talk given by Owen Brazell to Herefordshire Astronomical Society on the 5th December 2024.
Owen is President, Director of the Galaxies Section, Joint Meetings Organiser and DSO Editor for The Webb Society. He has previously been the Assistant Director of the British Astronomical Association's Deep Sky Section and is a columnist for Astronomy Now.
For our December talk, Owen delves into Globular Clusters - what are they, who discovered them, where do they come from, how do you describe them, what different types of star groupings are there, are there any in other galaxies, and how can you find and observe them.
Observing Session:
As always, look out for emails from Chris giving proposed date and details and look out for any last minute alterations. We will endeavour to stick to these dates unless weather means 'sliding' it, in which case it will likely be a few days earlier or later and members will of course be advised. Each date is centred on the first Thursday after Third Quarter.
If you are not on our emailing list, please contact Chris for the latest news - contact details here.
Remember that there are some great online observing guides - a good one is run by Telescope House. Look out for the monthly night sky emails from Chris.
Thursday 23rd January2025
6:30 - 9 pm
Observing Highlights
Observing highlights for this month:
Links for weather and observing forecasts:
Visit:
Once or twice a year, members like to jump in cars or climb in a mini-bus and make their way to go and see something interesting outside of Herefordshire (passports not required - so far). Previous trips have been to the Spaceguard Centre, the International Astronomy Show, the National Space Centre, Jodrell Bank, the Norman Lockyer Observatory outside Sidmouth, the Herschel Museum in Bath and the Hanwell Community Observatory just outside Banbury.
At our September meeting, Keith described the potential sites we could visit and took a poll of those present. Based on your feedback we've now had a fab trip to visit to the Spaceguard Centre in Knighton and Keith is now looking to organise a longer visit to Jodrell Bank in 2024 with an overnight stay to make the travel easier.
Look out for emails from Keith explaining more about the proposed visits and asking members to register for the trips.
TBC
Where would you like to go?
More information here.
Members pay for shared transport and any entrance fees as appropriate..
Star Party:
We hope to hold Star Parties again this session - Covid-19 allowing. Maybe we'll be able to run one at the Madley Environmental Study Centre (MESC) again.
MESC is right next door to the Madley Satellite Earth Station - a well known Herefordshire landmark. There are some location maps and directions to the MESC web site here.
TBC
Star Party with MESC
More information here.