wingeing Pom

O.K. so as I am retired and have a bit of time on my hands – I am thinking of running an Astronomy Image of the Day from the New Forest Observatory web site. And yes the idea is to not only be direct competition with that other lot – but to also show a better spread of great images from amateurs across the planet. This is to be amateur (or obsessed individuals) only – so not interested in processed professional data, and photoshop fantasy creations. So long as it is your work and it has ANYTHING to do with the night sky – then it’s good. If anyone out there has any interest in sending in an image to this, let me know so I can gauge whether it’s worth the effort of setting up (or not). Send your image (1024 pixels on the long side) to gregjparker@live.co.uk And unlike that other lot I will need details of how the image was captured, kit subs, cameras scopes, etc. This Image of the Day will be informative as well showing your pretty pictures. Greg

Got today's EPOD (https://epod.usra.edu/) with the BIG California nebula image. Note the link will not work if not viewed today. Greg This link WILL work https://epod.usra.edu/blog/2023/04/california-nebula-in-perseus.html

29-hours on IC410/IC405 with stars removed. Greg

Not androids Ray - just a computer generated voice at the other end of your speakers. And as for "ain't happening" - this has already been done Greg

I got 8 x 20-minute subs on the 200mm Canon lenses last night before the fog rolled in. These went with the 10 x 20-minute subs I managed to get a while back. Here's the result

This is a 5-frame focus-stacked mosaic of Spirogyra in conjugation at a mag of 100x. Each of the 5-frames is a stack of 12 images. Helicon Focus used for the stacking and original image is 10498 x 6871 pixels. Greg

Sorry for the heavy topic - BUT - I think you should at least be made aware of this. Skim through, if nothing else, just so you know what COULD be done. http://www.scientificartist.com/2023/02/the-real-dangers-of-ai/ Greg

Greg

Just realised why this isn't exactly the visual equivalent of White Noise. If I was to make a visual equivalent - then the dots should also be moving randomly around the screen, they should not be stationary - that's why the effect isn't so good. Back to the drawing board Greg

If you play white noise through a pair of headphones, then after a little while, with a bit of practice - you can pull out any tune you want in full detail. I wondered if it was possible to do the same thing with vision. So here is a random 2-D plot of points. Can you make out any shapes/pictures by staring at this? Greg

And yes - I know it is spelled PLEIADES

Without the acquisition data this is all a bit mute. So here it is. This is 30-hours of 40-minute subs taken with the Sky90 array (3 x Sky90 refractors) and 3 x M26C OSC CCDs. Processing was in Photoshop 2023 using Russ Croman's Star XTerminator for the star reduction.

I first tried out Russ Croman's Star XTerminator on the JWST image of the Pillars of Creation. So I have no idea why it has taken me several months to think about doing the same on the original Hubble image. Yer 'tiz

Apologies if I've posted this one before, but I've had a quick look below and couldn't see it anywhere. Greg

I reprocessed the Rosette data and came up with this. Greg