On Thursday I head to IISAC2009 – the IceInSpace AstroCamp for 2009. I’ve been busy with the final stages of organising the event, and I’ll be glad when it’s over for another year.

IISAC2009

I’ve bought the soft drinks, water, ice blocks and other consumables and cleaning stuff (and 120 rolls of toilet paper). All the shirts have the name tags on them, calendars have name tags on them, the trailer is starting to get packed. The marquee is ready, the AV gear is ready, the Gresford RFB are ready, the lucky door prizes are organised.

The weather is not organised. The forecasts for Thu/Fri/Sat look mixed – unfortunately it looks like we may be in for a cloudy night or two. I just hope we get at least one clear night. After 3 cloudy nights last year, it will be a real letdown if it’s cloudy again this year. It’s just the hobby we choose – we’re reliant on the weather for our entertainment and there’s just nothing we can do about it. It doesn’t matter what time of year you hold it in – it could be cloudy at any time of the year.

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IISAC2009

The IISAC2009 star party is now accepting registrations. The event starts on Thursday, 15th October and goes for 3 nights. It’s a great opportunity to meet up and observe with like-minded amateur astronomers and make a lot of new friends.

Whether you’re an experienced amateur astronomer, or someone with a new interest in looking at the sky, the IISAC2009 star party caters for all levels – and you don’t need to own a telescope to come along. Night sky tours will be run each night by representatives of 3RF using small, medium and large telescopes.

It’s less than 3 months to go now, so put in your annual leave forms, talk to your family and make your booking by following the links on the IISAC2009 Info Page.

Book early to receive the early bird discount! I hope to see you there.

Hi all

In a new idea for my site, once a week i’ll feature an old image and bring it back to life here and give some background and information on capturing and processing the image(s). I’ll mainly concentrate on images taken over the past few years, before my site was created so they won’t have been featured here before.

First cab off the rank is Comet McNaught (C/2006 P1). It’s a perfect subject to be featured this week because it’s exactly 2 years ago that it first made an appearance in our southern skies. It brightened rapidly to become one of the “great” comets, the best in 40 years and visible even during daylight. At its peak on the 20th January 2007, it had a tail that spread across over 40° of sky.

Comet McNaught, captured at IISAC2007 in the Hunter Valley of NSW

Continue reading to see more images of Comet McNaught and details about their capture and processing.

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Well now i’ve got a bit of time to organise my thoughts a bit more after winding down from IISAC2008..

Where to start!? It was a lot of fun.. In my opinion, star parties should be first and foremost about fun – about meeting likeminded people, about socialising, about making new friends, and reacquanting with old friends that you might only see once or twice a year at a star party.

For me, IISAC2008 achieved that. 

Yes, clear skies would’ve been nice. We were certainly blessed with clear skies (and a fantastic comet) in 2007 and 2006. But I don’t think it put a downer on the event – at least not too much :) After all, it’s the hobby we choose – we’re always at the mercy of the weather, and when you run an event like this you have to set the date and then hope for clear skies!

Being an online community, IceInSpace has members spread far and wide across the country and across the world. There are local groups that get together for observing nights, or that get together at their local astronomical society meets – but once a year it’s fantastic to get a large group from the IceInSpace community together with a single purpose, a common goal and a love for all things astronomy.

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In the 2 hours of clear skies on Thursday night at IISAC2008 while my main scope and camera was capturing the Horsehead and Flame Nebula, I setup my 350D with the Sigma 17-70mm lens on a tripod to capture some star trails.

I used the Aputure Timer Remote to program exposures of 5 minutes with a 3-sec delay in-between. The battery was running flat and I could see the clouds coming. When I went over to stop the exposures and take some dark frames, I found that the lens was completely fogged over. Unfortunately both of my dew heater straps were occupied on the imaging telescope and guide scope, and I neglected to think about the camera lens, otherwise I would’ve used the hairdryer to clear it up.

So 7 of the 9 exposures were pretty much wasted, though it gave an interesting effect when I stacked all the images together using startrails.de. It gave the star trails an interesting look, so I kept them and gave the title Raining Stars at IISAC2008.

Here’s the image. Click the image in the gallery to see the 1200px wide version.

Raining Stars at IISAC2008

The only processing is stacking followed by minor levels adjustment and noise reduction in Photoshop CS2.

The last of the clear skies presented itself right before dawn on Sunday morning, the last morning of the star party. It had been cloudy and raining on and off all Saturday during the day and night, so when I went to bed, the last thing I expected was for it to clear. But luckily I was woken at about 4:30am by Vincent scrummaging around with his scope which was setup near my tent. I thought he was packing up to go home early and was just about to pull the extra blanket over me and roll over to go back to sleep, when I heard Ian Maclean walking by talking to Vincent about the clear skies. I stuck my head out of the tent to find beautiful, clear dark skies so I jumped out of bed, put the freezer suit on and headed to my trailer.

I’d already packed the scope away, so I just got out the tripod and Canon 350D to take some star trails as the morning light approached – way too quickly! It was becoming light after only 15 minutes and by 5am I had to stop the exposures as the sky was practically bright blue now. My battery ran flat after the first exposure so there’s a gap between the first and the next exposures while I changed the battery. I should’ve recharged it after Thursday night!

Enough rambling, here’s the image – Dawn Star Trails at IISAC2008. Click the image in the gallery for the 1200px wide version.

Dawn Star Trails at IISAC2008

Thanks for looking. More IISAC2008 reports coming soon..

Well I’m back from IISAC2008, a little tired, a little sunburnt, a little disappointed (with the weather) but a lot relieved. Another year down, but planning for IISAC2009 has begun already!

We had pretty ordinary weather.. it couldn’t have been much worse, though if it was raining during the day that would be classified as worse. We had mostly hot days but mostly cloudy nights. On Thursday night, we had reasonably clear skies just after sunset – enough to get drift alignment completed, and then it clouded over for a few hours. It cleared again at midnight for a total of 2 hours – enough time for me to grab some data on the Horsehead and Flame Nebula in the Orion Constellation – just next to the bright star Alnitak (Zeta Orionis), which is one of the stars in Orion’s belt.

I was lucky enough to borrow Chris Wakeman’s modded 350D, which captures much more data in the h-alpha wavelengths than my standard Canon 350D – perfect for a target like the horsehead region which has abundant h-alpha emission. 

I captured 42 minutes worth of data – 5 minutes and 7 minutes at ISO800, and 3 x 10 minutes at ISO400, all with ICNR on to subtract the darks. The modded 350D was at prime focus of the ED80 (with Williams Optics 0.8x reducer/flattener) on the EQ6, which was guided using PHD software, an 80mm guide scope and the DMK21AU04.

I wanted to capture much more data, but the clouds came back at 2am so I pulled the tarp over all the gear and went to bed in the tent. I took the flats when I woke up at 6:30am, and started processing later that day.

Anyway too much rambling, here’s the image:

The Horsehead and the Flame Nebula

Click on the image in the gallery to see the less-compressed 1200px wide version.

I’m very happy with the image – the dark skies and the modded camera made a real difference and this image is a huge improvement to my previous attempt of this object from about 10-11 months ago.

Thanks for looking.

This is another image taken during the Saturday night site reconnaissance for IISAC2008 on the 27th September 2008.

It’s 11 x 6 min exposures, ISO800 with the Canon 350D + Sigma 17-70mm @ 17mm. Piggybacked on the EQ6/ED80 combo, guided with a DMK21AU04. Dark subtracted, no flats.

Conditions were nice and dark with good transparency, but it was very windy with horrible seeing, causing guiding to have a few problems. Luckily with the short focal length it didn’t ruin any frames.

Unfortunately as the Milky Way set, a tree started creeping into frame on the bottom right corner, causing the very dark patch seen in the image. 

The Milky Way at Lostock

Thanks for looking and let’s hope for similar clear, dark skies at IISAC2008!

Hi again.

My family and I went for a trip up to Lostock on Saturday, 27th September 2008, for some site reconnaissance a month out from IISAC2008. 

The sky was lovely and dark as I remembered, however there was a strong stiff wind blowing and the seeing was terrible, but it didn’t stop me doing some widefield/piggyback shots.

Here’s one of the images from the night – a startrail shot looking south over the bottom farmhouse. My widefield imaging setup is in the foreground and the camera is on a tripod about 2 metres back.

I’m happy with how it turned out but it’s not exactly as I’d hoped in my minds eye. Need a wider angle lens to be able to fit more foreground interest while still getting enough sky. The SMC and LMC were very prominent in the individual frames but of course have been smeared beyond recognition in this combined image

The image is a combination of 46x 6 min exposures (4.6 hours) at ISO200, with a Canon 350D and Sigma 17-70mm lens @ 17mm. Dark subtracted and processed using startrails.de followed by Photoshop.

Southern Star Trails at Lostock

I’ll try for something similar, but hopefully with a better result, at IISAC2008!