Grant

We've just released the latest set of data from the Ikarus Observatory project here. Following the wonderful entries from the first and second processing competitions 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: 29th March 2021 @ 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 4th April 2021 live on StarGaZine then on SGL Thanks all and look forward to seeing your entries!

Our latest released of data from the Ikarus Observatory project 🙂 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: Luminance 360x 5 mins Red 120x 5 mins Green 120x 5 mins Blue 120x 5 mins Ha 120x 20 mins Bias 101x Flats 21x for each filter Darks 21x 20 mins & 21x 5 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. This is our first LRGB release - any feedback or tweaks you think we need to make to processing etc.. please let me know.

We have the pleasure of being joined by Mary McIntyre FRAS of http://www.marymcintyreastronomy.co.uk/ this week to give her talk 'Astronomy Sketching and Artwork'. Mary is an amateur astronomer and astronomy communicator based in Oxfordshire, UK. She is a keen astrophotographer and astronomy sketcher and is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. She has a busy talks schedule and also writes for Sky at Night Magazine and the Yearbook of Astronomy, is a co-presenter of the Comet Watch radio show and recently joined the Astro Radio team. In this talk Mary will show some of her favourite astronomy sketches to date and includes mini-tutorials to show how she created them. It also covers astronomy and space themed art that she has created, not only on canvas, but hand-painted tote bags, shoes and clothing. It even includes nebula inspired hand-painted jewellery and bracelets made from recycled guitar strings which are inspired by orbit diagrams. We are really looking forward to this talk, Mary produces some stunning artwork so we hope to get an insight into how she does it and hopefully, it will inspire some of us to have a go ourselves! See you all Sunday 🙂 Meeting details below: Topic: EP39 - Sunday, 7th March 2021 7:30pm GMT - Astronomy Sketching and Artwork by Mary McIntyre Time: Mar 7, 2021 07:30 PM London Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/91649362719?pwd=VTNhREFobzVmVVRLVGxSQTN4N3k4UT09 Meeting ID: 916 4936 2719 Passcode: 166309

Norman's was on the 25th January @ 21:12:28. Great capture there though - there was a massive one last night as well that I've seen a lot of talk about this morning.

That's beautiful! Great to see something different as well. Thanks for sharing 🙂

We announced the winners live on 'StarGaZine' tonight and I am very pleased to post them here as well - many thanks for all your entries, I really hope the data gave you some enjoyment during lockdown, I certainly enjoyed seeing all the entries. You can see all the entries here, the data is still available here if you want to have a play. The winners are: Winner - Xiga Runner Up: Skipper Billy Runner Up: Spongey Well done all! 🙂

See you all in just over an hour 🙂

We're not sure yet Justyn - we are looking at the options but may need to wait nearer the time to make a decision in which case, it might be a more casual get together rather than full on star party with a view to having a full, public star party early 2022 as the situation allows. I'm itching to get back to a star party as soon as possible so this is definitely something on my mind!

We are trying something a little different this week 🙂 Instead of a speaker, we are going to host a show & tell / Q&A chit-chat session where hopefully you might want to share any recent images you have taken, any tips / tricks you've discovered in software or just share with us what projects DIY / Imaging / Observing you might be working on. This is also a good opportunity to ask any questions you may have and hopefully somebody in the group can answer 🙂 Me and Daz will host and keep things flowing and will have some updates of our own on the forum software, some new functionality coming soon. I will also give an update on the Ikarus Observatory project and announce the winner of the recent imaging competition and launch our next data release with a sneak peak at the current work in progress. If weather allows we may even be able to do some live viewing from Spain 🙂 @MartinB will also hopefully let us know what the March imaging challenge is going to be. Let's see how this goes and if it works well, we will do more regular sessions like this which will hopefully be more of a social than the speaker talks we have (which will also continue, you will be pleased to know we already have a great one booked for next week). If anybody has any specific they want to share or ask feel free to let me know in advance otherwise we will play it loose on Sunday. Look forwards to seeing you all there. Meeting details below: Topic: EP38 - Sunday, 28th February 2021 7:30pm GMT - Show & Tell / Q&A Session Time: Feb 28, 2021 07:30 PM London Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/97926652574?pwd=dXFTbUhSUzdUUGdvQlNiallNcEY4Zz09 Meeting ID: 979 2665 2574 Passcode: 392501

Sorry for the slight delay but we are going to announce the winners on this weeks 'StarGaZine' on Sunday at 7:30pm GMT - we will also then post it up on the forum shortly thereafter.

Sub lengths are above, this data was collected in the latter half of August 2020.

We are going to take a week off this week and will return on the 28th for a social / show & tell / q&a night instead of a speaker with hopefully some live viewing from Spain if the weather permits and anything else people might want to share with us all. We will post more details early next week. Take care all 🙂

See you in an hour folks :-)

It is a great pleasure to welcome back (again!) to SGL Dave Eagle of https://www.star-gazing.co.uk/ to set us some more observing challenges for Late Winter / Early Spring and a look forward to Comet Leonard. 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 upcoming observing targets and challenges Meeting details below: Topic: EP37 - Sunday, 14th February 2021 7:30pm GMT - Late Winter / Early Spring Observing Challenges by Dave Eagle Time: Feb 14, 2021 07:30 PM London Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/96563848128?pwd=QjhYYS9ZZk90eGwyYWJOYkQxTFE2UT09 Meeting ID: 965 6384 8128 Passcode: 871804

See you all in just over half an hour 🙂

Loving the entries so far - so much variation which always amazes me! Great efforts all 🙂

We've just released the latest set of data from the Ikarus Observatory project here. Following the wonderful entries from the first and second processing competitions 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: 22nd February 2021 @ 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 26th February 2021 via SGL Thanks all and look forward to seeing your entries!

Our latest released of data from the Ikarus Observatory project 🙂 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!

Funny you should ask I updated the progress list the other day, I have another set of data to release hopefully this week. December was a bit of a wash out in terms of weather so things slowed down a fair bit plus, we've been extremely busy in the run up to Christmas and the SGL software upgrade etc.. We have some other developments to share about this project very soon as well!

Thanks again to Dirk - we really enjoyed this one 🙂

Our guest speaker this week is Keith Townsend from http://www.astronomymatters.co.uk/ to give us his talk Charles Messier - Marathon Man by Keith Townsend. Keith's childhood interest in astronomy developed into telescope ownership some 25 years ago and imaging became a large part of this around the turn of the century. Hee never made it off the slippery slope and continue to suffer the consequences to this day! Keith was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2016 and have been delivering talks to a wide range of groups for almost 10 years. One of his passions is to try to unlock the fascination many people have for the night sky, but don’t realise it. This weeks talk is 'Charles Messier - Marathon Man by Keith Townsend'. Messier is a name that must be known to pretty much every northern hemisphere astronomer, if not the world over, but how much do we know about the man himself? Part one of this talk looks at the historical aspects of his life and achievements; what influenced and drove him to seek out and catalogue the celestial objects he did. Working with relatively crude equipment by todays standard, he set about establishing a list that has obsessed many visual astronomers for decades. Part two considers the 'Messier Marathon’ itself, with regard to the best time in 2021 to attempt it - the schedule for the night in question and the pitfalls that await us. I'm very much looking forward to this talk - it sounds very interesting 🙂 See you all Sunday! Meeting details below: Topic: EP36 - Sunday, 7th February 2021 7:30pm GMT - Charles Messier - Marathon Man by Keith Townsend Time: Feb 7, 2021 07:30 PM London Join Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/92006758598?pwd=VWt2a3FrNHFrVnNnOWhtZ01KaXZnQT09 Meeting ID: 920 0675 8598 Passcode: 012211

I don't know, that looks like a fair reflection of what I do with my telescopes most of the time - gaze at them adoringly inside my house!

See you all in an hour 🙂