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September 2024:
Next - Kindle Centre Meeting - Thursday 5th September 2024
We take a break after July's brilliant talk by Ezzy Pearson on "The Chelyabinsk Meteor" (if you missed it, watch the video here).
There are no meetings in August.
Our next meeting is the kick-off meeting for the 2024/2025 session. For our first talk we'll meet back at the Kindle Centre - a great chance for members new and old to get together again.
For our first talk, we are delighted to welcome Dr Jane Clark. Jane is a retired engineering physicist now concentrating on her main interests of astronomy and learning languages. She is an amateur astronomer and member of Cardiff Astronomy Society where she is their observatory manager. She has given talks to astronomy societies, is the author of three books on the Solar System and has written articles for the BBC Sky at Night magazine. She specialises in photographing galaxies and studies the dynamics of interactions between galaxies.
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 5th September 2024
7 pm - Kindle Centre
Webb Anniversary talk - Tycho Brahe
Dr Jane Clark CSci CEng CPhys FInstP FRAS
Local News - Chris Millington on BBC Hereford & Worcester!
Just in case you weren't glued to your radio listening to BBC H&W the morning after the last Full Moon ... Chris was interviewed by Tammy Gooding who wanted to know all about the Blue Super Moon!
Tammy_Gooding_-_Did_you_see_the_blue_super_moon_last_night_2024-08-20.mp3Visit - Jodrell Bank - June 2024:
HAS members and partners went on an overnight visit to see Jodrell bank in June. We also visited the National Trust site at Little Moreton Hall, a fabulous Tudor house and gardens on the way to the overnight hotel in Congleton
The beautiful weather continued for the visit to Jodrell, which has a number of immersive video shows on the history of the site as well as explaining that we are all made of stars 🙂
Wandering around the site to see the main radio telescope, a truly impressive piece of engineering, still in active use and part of e-Merlin linked telescopes, now stretching around the world.
Smiles all round with the HAS party and a wonderful mini-escape.
Now watch this space for possible future events 😉
Keith
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!
Observing Highlights
Observing highlights for this month:
Links for weather and observing forecasts:
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).
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 5th September 2024
7 pm - Kindle Centre
Webb Anniversary talk - Tycho Brahe
Dr Jane Clark CSci CEng CPhys FInstP FRAS
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 meeting was a talk given by Ezzy Pearson. Ezzy allowed us to record the talk and you'll find it here:
Thursday 4th July 2024
A talk given by Ezzie Pearson to Herefordshire Astronomical Society on the 4th July 2024.
Ezzy is a space journalist for BBC Sky at Night Magazine, for which she has written dozens of articles on all aspects of space science, exploration and history. Prior to her journalistic career, she did a PhD in Astrophysics at Cardiff University. She regularly speaks at astronomy societies, conventions and other science events, and in the last five years has made over 100 international, national and regional media appearances on TV and radio as an expert on all manner of space and astronomy stories. In 2013 she presented a documentary for Channel 4 on the Chelyabinsk meteor strike.
Ezzy tells us all about the Chelyabinsk Meteor - a story which inspired her to move full time into space journalism!
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.
TBA October 2024
6:30 - 9 pm
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.
October 2024:
Next Talk - Virtual Meeting - Thursday 3rd October 2024
After our excellent season kick-off meeting with Dr Jane Clark, we are delighted to welcome back Dr Steve Barrett to give our October talk .
Many of you will recall that Steve has previously given two very entertaining and informative talks to the society: "The Great Moon Hoax" and "The End of Everything". If you missed either of these, Steve kindly gave us permission to record the talks and you can go back to watch the recordings on our "Recordings" page here.
For our October talk, Steve has gone all the way from the end of time to the beginning of time to tell us about "The Beginning of Everything".
Dr Steve Barrett is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Physics at the University of Liverpool. His research interests span all aspects of imaging, image processing and image analysis. This includes medical imaging (biophysics), scanning probe microscopy of atoms, molecules and surfaces (nanophysics), microscopy of earth materials (geophysics) and astrophotography.
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 3rd October 2024
7 pm - Virtual Talk
The Beginning of Everything
Dr Steve Barrett (University of Liverpool)
Local News - Chris Millington on BBC Hereford & Worcester!
Just in case you weren't glued to your radio listening to BBC H&W the morning after the August Full Moon ... Chris was interviewed by Tammy Gooding who wanted to know all about the Blue Super Moon!
Tammy_Gooding_-_Did_you_see_the_blue_super_moon_last_night_2024-08-20.mp3- Next Activity - Observing Session - Thursday 24th October 2024 - CANCELLED
We have our first observing session in October - just before the clocks go back. We will meet at our Lugg Meadows site - more information about our site and location here.
As always, look out for emails from Mark and Chris giving details and 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 Mark and Chris for the latest news - contact details here.
Latest update from Chris:
Well it seems we have started the new season like we ended the last. But we have (at least) 5 more opportunities to get together, so don't be dispirited.
On a general note (further to my last email about how the observing sessions work and are 'called'), I realise that we have recently just had a couple of good nights of clear skies.
But generally I try not to bring forward a date once it's in the diary (Martin has put up all the provisional observing night dates on the HAS website). People have their own plans and I find deferring (if possible) far less disruptive than bringing forward.
Unfortunately I can't really see a good night in the near future either.
It is a difficult game with the Moon giving us 7-10 days max (when it rises after or sets before our session so as not to be a problem) AND a good forecast needed for everything to come together. Some people have a lot of kit to drag along and it's really not worth the commitment and effort if the weather is really 'iffy'.
Hope you all understand.
24th October 2024
6:30 - 9 pm