Newbury Astronomical Society
What's Up?
The April "What's Up" with the latest update on what to see in the skies this month is now available at the link below.....
Forthcoming Meetings
Because of Easter, the recent Total Solar Eclipse in North America and then the April BAA Winchester weekend, there is a bit of a gap before the next speaker meeting of the 2023-2024 session, which will be held on Friday 3rd May 2024 starting at 7.30pm. The speaker will be Dr Steve Fossey of UCL whose talk will be Exoplanetary Ramblings: Detection and Characterisation of Extrasolar Planets..
The talk will be at the usual location of The Fair Close Centre, Newtown Road, Newbury: RG14 7BH. (click here for a map and further details of the session's meetings).
The last beginners meeting of the 2023-2024 session is the May meeting, to be held on Wednesday the 15th of May 2024 starting at 7:00pm. With the summer solstice approaching, it seems appropriate that the the topics to be covered will include The Summer Solstice as well as a primer on Our Tilted View of the Sky. As usual, weather permitting we'll try to do some observing in the second half of the evening.
The meeting is at the usual location of Stockcross Village Hall (Sutton Hall): RG20 8LN. (click here for a map and further details of the session's meetings).
If you wish to be a member of the society for this season and haven't completed your membership form yet, please complete a copy and bring it with you to the meeting.
We also offer an ICS Calendar file of all the meetings (main & beginners) of the session to add to your phone or email client:
Recent meetings:
For slides and other details from recent meetings, head to the Meeting Presentations page. Latest additions are details from Dr Tim Haymes about forthcoming occultations including one scheduled to pass over western Newbury, and the slide deck from Stephen Mullaly's recent second-half talk on Radio Astronomy.
Headlines.....
15 minute Seestar image of M51, taken by Steve Knight
Nice one, SiriL
(UPDATE! Due to the high levels of interest in the first session, a second session is now planned for Tuesday 30th April. All slots are now full, but if you are interested and have not yet booked, please contact George at outreach@newburyastro.org.uk in case there is a last minute space)
On the evening of Tuesday 2nd April, NAS Outreach Lead and expert astro-imager George Sallit will be conducting an image processing ‘teach-in’ using the SiriL software package. This software is powerful and can process images from the Seestar S50 telescope to help you get the best possible results. It can also process images taken with other astro CMOS cameras. With so many software packages around it is difficult to choose a good one but a lot are for terrestrial imaging as well as astro imaging. SiriL is designed for astro image processing and best of all it is free!
The plan is to process a simple image from the Seestar S50, process a high-resolution image from the Seestar S50 and then process an image taken with a larger dedicated astro-telescope. What attendees will learn will then allow them to process images from a wide range of telescopes. There will be a ‘cheat sheet’ so you do not have to remember the steps to get great images.
We have already had plenty of interest in the event, and may even end up holding a second session as a result, so if you are a NAS member, are interested, but have not yet signed up, please let the Communications Lead know at communications@newburyastro.org.uk
NAS trip to the Herschel Museum, Bath
Val Russell is kindly organising a society trip to the Herschel Museum of Astronomy in Bath, scheduled for Saturday 22nd June (please note revised date from the original May proposed). Members will make their own way to Bath, rendezvousing at the Museum at 11am. Friends and family of members are welcome too! Those who have already been to the Museum confirm it's a great place to visit, so if members are interested, please get in touch with the Communications Lead for more details at communications@newburyastro.org.uk