Grant

I've been really enjoying seeing all the submissions so far - it's a real pleasure to see how much fun you're having with the data and it's very inspirational to see all the different 'takes' on how to process this - each one brings something different to the table! This is going to be hard to judge!!!

We are very, very pleased to welcome back our very own Steve Richards @steppenwolf of http://www.nightskyimages.co.uk/ to StarGaZine to continue from his first talk with his new talk 'Dark Art or Magic Bullet?'. This is a follow-on to the ‘Finish’ section from his original ‘Making Every Photon Count’ talk and is aimed at beginners to the dark art of image processing. The aim will be to show a complete processing workflow to produce an LRGB image of the Whirlpool Galaxy, M51. The following topics will be discussed:- Data Preparation Bias/Dark/Flat Frame Calibration Image Alignment Image Stacking Initial Stretching Combining Red, Green and Blue Data Removing Light Pollution Levels Adjustment Curves Adjustment Saturation Adjustment Adding Luminance Data Increasing Colour Saturation (PhotoShop Action available to download) Final Colour Balance Adjustment Sharpening (PhotoShop Action available to download) Demonstrating the contribution of the Luminance Data Links to Software Downloads: FITS Liberator Version 2.3 Deep Sky Stacker (DSS) Stargazine Actions.atn Meeting details below: Topic: EP18 - Sunday, 6th September 2020 7:30pm BST - Dark Art or Magic Bullet? by Steve Richards Time: Sep 6, 2020 07:30 PM London Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/93254088501?pwd=K0lDa2w5NktnMTc3ZVkvUUpTSEg3QT09 Meeting ID: 932 5408 8501 Passcode: 939401

This starts in just under an hour 🙂

Off to bed now but that was a fun experience - I hope it paves the way for us to do some virtual star parties between ourselves here on SGL so, if you have a rig you would be up for sharing virtually let me know and I will put something together - especially if we have people spread around a bit in the hopes it's clear somewhere!

78 x 30s live stack of the Crescent coming in - the SX 694 is a really great camera for this, lovely and sensitive and so low noise!

It dropped momentarily but should be back now - we're still going 😄

It works really nicely - very reliable which is what you want for remote work and flats are nicely controllable as you can set the brightness in software.

Moving on to the Veil now but, will be here all night so taking requests 😄

I'm going to be joining in on the European virtual star party tonight from 10pm - organised by Explore Scientific, details here: https://explorescientific.com/pages/explore-alliance-live I hope to do some live stacking from Spain using the Ikarus Observatory setup 🙂

This week we are joined by Stefan Berg the creator and maintainer of N.I.N.A - Nighttime Imaging 'N' Astronomy - a free, open source, astrophotography imaging suite that's been getting a lot of attention and interest recently. It is a software designed for all deep sky object imagers. Whether you're new to the world of DSO imaging or an experienced veteran, this project's goal is to make your image capture easier, faster, and more convenient. You can find our more information and download N.I.N.A from here: https://nighttime-imaging.eu/ Stefan will be giving us an introduction and overview of the software 🙂 Meeting details below: Topic: EP17 - Sunday, 30th August 2020 7:30pm BST - An overview of N.I.N.A. - Nighttime Imaging 'N' Astronomy by Stefan Berg Time: Aug 30, 2020 07:30 PM London Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/94026841093?pwd=allHblhuY25DUU1sWVBobm1yNUZEZz09 Meeting ID: 940 2684 1093 Passcode: 979003

Just a reminder that this talk is on later today at 7:30 🙂

This week we are joined by Anastasia Kokori the co-ordinator of the ARIEL ExoClock project and the project manager for the ExoWorlds Spies project. Anastasia will be giving us a talk titled: ARIEL and ExoClock: the future of exoplanets and how the public can get involved Anastasia is also the Astrographic Officer at Greenwich Royal Observatory and also a planetary scientist in training at Birkbeck University of London. She is a graduate of the Space Studies Program (SSP) 2018, organised by the International Space University (ISU), and also holds an MSc in Science Communication from Dublin City University (DCU), and a Primary Education Degree from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She has a long experience in observing with small ground-based telescopes and also organising projects and events that involve the public and school students. Talk Synopsis: ARIEL is a space mission led by the European Space Agency, planned to launch in 2028. It will be the first dedicated mission to measure the chemical composition of many exoplanets. The main objective of ARIEL is to study in detail a large diverse sample of exoplanets orbiting different types of stars. The key science questions ARIEL will address are: • What are exoplanets made of? 
 • How do planets and planetary systems form? 
 • How do planets and their atmospheres evolve over time? 
 Understanding worlds beyond the Earth is a key issue for humanity and it concerns everyone, not only the scientific communities. We strongly believe that research and science is an effort that everyone can take part in. ARIEL will observe around 1000 transiting exoplanets and for this survey to be as efficient as possible, we need to have a good knowledge of the expected transit time of the planets observed. This is where small and medium-scale telescopes can contribute significantly. To better organise this effort, we have created the project ExoClock that is open to everyone, professional and amateur astronomers as well as members of the public can get involved and contribute to the mission. In this presentation we will outline the current status on exoplanets, followed by the key points of the ARIEL mission and how the ExoClock project is contributing. Meeting details below: Topic: EP16 - Sunday, 23rd August 2020 7:30pm BST - ARIEL and ExoClock by Anastasia Kokori Time: Aug 23, 2020 07:30 PM London Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/93663661099?pwd=aU9qR0lRNEJhdzJYZW55V29OOHM4UT09 Meeting ID: 936 6366 1099 Passcode: 032530

That's odd - I just checked and 1080P is an option? Perhaps try on a different device or, it can sometimes take YouTube longer to process the HD version so maybe it wasn't available when you tried?

Well spotted - typo fixed

Hi Andrew - we are still using SGP, we tested Voyager but I didn't like some of the ways it worked vs SGP so have stuck with that. There are similar limits in SGP, you just have to set them (d'oh!). I'm now imaging multiple targets a night to ensure we get the target at it's best / highest.

Excellent Dave - great to see a totally different spin on it!

Very nice first entry! 🙂

Here:

I've made a tweak on the server which will force your browser to download these rather than try and open them.

Try right clicking the fits link and the a save as - sounds like your browser is trying to open it as a txt file rather than downloading it. I will look tomorrow, I should be able to do something to force download the fits files.

Dave's StarGaZine video is here for you to follow along 🙂

Data released so you can follow along 🙂 Thanks to Dave @ Pixel Skies for a super talk!

We got there in the end - M16 data now released. We have a whole load of Crescent data ready to release in a few weeks and then hopefully, within a few weeks of that M17 and then next up, IC59 / IC63. Accepting suggestions for next targets after that 🙂

We've just released the first set of data from the Ikarus Observatory project here. To celebrate, we are running a processing competition 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 September 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 11th September 2020 via SGL Thanks all and look forward to seeing your attempts 🙂