Grant

Fair point, plenty is now several.

That statement questions the integrity of SGL so I must ask, can you please provide proof of this either publicly or privately? I do not believe stuff has been posted about OO by an ex employee on SGL without our knowledge - if that were true OO would be within their rights to report it to us to have it removed and no such request has ever been made. I do know of several cases of disgruntled OO customers though.

It is a great pleasure to welcome back to SGL Dave Eagle of https://www.star-gazing.co.uk/ to set us some more observing challenges for Autumn. Dave is an amateur Astronomer, Planetarium Operator, Presenter, Author and Tutor, you may have read some of his books or come across one of his talks before. Dave is going to treat us to an overview of interesting Autumn observing targets and challenges Meeting details below: Topic: EP21 - Sunday, 27th September 2020 7:30pm BST - Autumn Observing Challenges by Dave Eagle Time: Sep 27, 2020 07:30 PM London Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/99196725021?pwd=R1VTM0t2clFVQ1RCQ3IrZVhtczNLdz09 Meeting ID: 991 9672 5021 Passcode: 693924

The Crescent data for this has been released here:

M33 is in progress 🙂

This is our second release of IKO data 🙂 More to follow very soon. The small print: We will be releasing all public data from the Ikarus Observatory project under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence. What this means is you are free to share, copy and redistribute the data as you see fit and adapt, remix, transform and build upon it but you must attribute 'Ikarus Observatory' as the source of the original data and must not use it for commercial purposes - i.e. no sticking images on the side of mugs and selling then Beyond that, enjoy and have fun! You can find out more about the IKO project here including details of the equipment used, observatory site etc.. This image was processed in the Pixinsight Weighted Batch Pre-Processor and comprises: Ha - 80 x 20 mins OIII - 80 x 20 mins SII - 80 x 20 mins Bias 101x Flats 21x for each filter Darks 21x 20 mins These have been stacked and calibrated in Pixinsight. The raw XISF, FITS or TIF files can be downloaded here. Details of the processing competition are here. I hope you enjoy playing with the data and we look forwards to sharing more very soon!

We've just released the second set of data from the Ikarus Observatory project here. Following the wonderful entries from the first processing competition we are running another to see who can get the most from this data and create the 'best' image! The winner will receive £150 of First Light Optics gift vouchers and two runners up will receive £50 of gift vouchers. Details below: Closing date: 4th October 2020 @ 22:00 Please post your entries into this thread Please only use the data we've released - don't blend it with other data or add to it with other sources Use what ever processing software and techniques you like, potential bonus points for sharing your workflow and techniques with others - that way, we all get to learn as well 🙂 Multiple entries are allowed but, please refrain form posting multiple attempts that are very similar - better to update an earlier attempt if it's just an incremental improvement but, it would be interesting to see totally different attempts using different narrowband blends etc... If you win or are a runner up, we would really like to use your creation in future marketing materials, on our website etc.. so by entering the competition, you are giving us permission to use your image in this way. Judging will be done by a small team of judges from the FLO team - It's completely subjective but will be based on what image(s) we think do the best job of extracting the most from the data released and, look the 'prettiest' We will announce the winners by the 9th October 2020 via SGL Thanks all and look forward to seeing your entries! P.S - We won't run a competition each release just every so often - we have more data to release very soon!

Gary's talk starts in just under an hour 🙂

It is a great pleasure to welcome back to SGL Gary Palmer of http://www.solarsystemimaging.co.uk/ to give us his talk: A look around Pixinsight. Gary is a highly regarded solar and deep sky imager and one of the leading solar imagers in the world with images widely published in books, magazines and online. He is the author of many articles and reviews in various astronomy magazines and tv programmes and works closely, alongside many manufacturers to develop and test upcoming astronomy equipment. Gary also offers many workshops across the UK for groups and 1-to-1 via http://www.astrocourses.co.uk/ which some of you may have attended before. We've already had some talks that touch upon Pixinsight but Gary is going to start more from the beginning and run through ways to keep it simple and look at some of the issues people might have using the software. He will be looking at the weighted batch pre-processor as well as a run through using some CMOS data from the new 2400MC camera from ZWO and some Crescent Nebula data from our latest release from the IKO observatory project. Meeting details below: Topic: EP20 - Sunday, 20th September 2020 7:30pm BST - A look around Pixinsight by Gary Palmer Time: Sep 20, 2020 07:30 PM London Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/95544815757?pwd=MU9rd2JwOXRDWGU5dy9rcytwelNSZz09 Meeting ID: 955 4481 5757 Passcode: 630765

Matt has asked us not to share this publicly so I will PM you the link.

Talk has just started 🙂

Talk starts in just under two hours. See you there!

Wow! What a tough one to judge, so many fantastic, unique, innovative entries (see them all here). It was a great pleasure to see them all coming in and it feels like a really successful data launch for the IKO project. A group of us here at FLO plus David Wills from Pixel Skies picked our favourites and the results are: Winner - Spongey Runner Up: X6GAS Runner Up: MartinB Honourable Mention: Whistlin Bob Thank you all for taking part and we are looking forward to the next data release in just over a weeks time. I will be in touch with Spongey, X6Gas and MartinB to arrange their prizes 🙂

It is a great pleasure to welcome back to SGL Dr Matthew Bothwell to give us his talk: Big Bangs and Big Rips: Cosmology in the 20th Century. Matt came to the 2018 SGL SP and gave us our keynote talk "Monsters in the Dark" - searching for the Universe’s most massive galaxies’ so it's fantastic to have him back again to deliver another talk. Matt is one of my favourite astronomy speakers so I am particularly looking forwards to this one. Matt is an outreach astronomer at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University. He was an undergraduate at the University of Southampton, and studied for his Master’s at the Harvard Center of Astrophysics. He received his PhD in 2011 from the University of Cambridge, working with Prof. Rob Kennicutt and Dr. Scott Chapman on the thesis “Galaxy evolution, near and far”. Before taking up his current outreach position, He was a postdoctoral researcher at Steward Observatory, University of Arizona (2011-2012), and the Astrophysics group at the University of Cambridge (2012-2017). His research interests are centred around understanding galaxy evolution across cosmic time. At high redshift, He studies some of the most luminous and extreme galaxies in the Universe. These extreme galaxies are a great laboratory for testing our knowledge of gas physics, star formation laws, and galaxy evolution, while providing an important challenge for our understanding of the growth of structure in the Universe. In the local Universe he uses large surveys for gas, metals, and stars, to shed light on the physical processes governing the evolution of galaxies across all cosmic epochs. Big Bangs and Big Rips: Cosmology in the 20th Century In the early decades of the 20th century, our understanding of the Universe was completely revolutionised. As amazing as it may seem to us now, just a century ago the prevailing wisdom was that we lived in a tiny and eternal Universe. I will discuss the debates and evidence that allowed us to finally understand the Universe around us. Meeting details below: Topic: EP19 - Sunday, 13th September 2020 7:30pm BST - Big Bangs and Big Rips: Cosmology in the 20th Century by Dr Matthew Bothwell Time: Sep 13, 2020 07:30 PM London Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/96859041375?pwd=VzlDZnNwWWllWGc1UjJSUlRCZXJ2dz09 Meeting ID: 968 5904 1375 Passcode: 082133

That’s a good thought which for all I know has already been attempted but I will mention it just in case. To be fair Adam, I didn’t think of this either and should have, having owned an NEQ6 for nearly 15 years!

I think it could've been across a whole range of Southern Counties - I've not been given anything more specific.

The police have recovered a number of items they suspect were stolen including an NEQ6 mount in a very recognisable, custom black case (photo attached). They have contacted OVL the UK Sky-Watcher distributor who in turn have asked us if we could publicise this. If you recognise this please get in touch. Thanks, Grant

Links to software and the actions download are on here:

You read my mind Carole - I did a test shot of this a few days ago and the FOV is a nice fit so I would like to try this - especially after seeing the recent amazing image of this object in the deep sky section!

We have an Affinity talk organised for later in the year 🙂

Reminder that this talk starts in a little over an hours time 🙂

An update of imaging progress so far: M16 Eagle Nebula - 100 Hours SHO, Complete, Released NGC6888 Crescent Nebula - 80 Hours SHO, Complete, Released M17 Omega Nebula - 80 Hours SHO, Complete, Released IC 59 and IC 63 Ghosts of Cassiopeia - 80 Hours SHO, Complete, Released DWB 111 Propellor Nebula - 80 Hours SHO, Complete, Released M33 - LRGB Complete, Released LBN 487 Iris Nebula - LRGB Complete, Released SH2-155 Cave Nebula - 80 Hours SHO, Complete IC434 Horsehead Nebula - LRGB 4 Pane Mosaic - Pending, In Progress M81 and M82 Galaxies - LRGB+Ha - Complete, Released Opening up for suggestions for our next target? You can see the FOV details here: http://astronomy.tools/calculators/field_of_view/?fov[]=7500||35||1|1|0&messier=17 And bear in mind our location in Spain here: https://www.pixelskiesastro.com/ Ideally we want to be imaging above 30º and an object that will stay up a good chunk of the night so we can build through the data nice and quickly or, several objects we do each night which is what we did with M17 and IC59 recently.

Thank you everybody - this has been a fantastic experience for me personally to follow along with so I really hope we do more of these in future - we will release the next chunk of data in 2-3 weeks time with another live workshop 🙂 I'm going to lock this thread now to stop any more entries.