Just received confirmation from Springer that a consignment of Star Vistas has arrived safely in the U.K.  So it’s all systems go for Saturday’s book signing session.  As I write this Noel is in the air making his way towards the U.K. with an ETA of 11:00 a.m. tomorrow.  See you all at South Kensington this Saturday.

The printer delivered the first run of Star Vistas to Springer on Monday 2nd February, so provided they don’t get lost in the snow were having here in the U.K. at the moment – we should have stock waiting for us at AstroFest this Saturday.  Then it’s just a matter of Noel and I getting up to London on the Saturday – this might not be an easy task if this unusual weather continues all week (as the forecasters’ claim it will!).

Noel has just sent me his flight details – he will arrive in the U.K. on Friday 6th February, and we’ll both be up at AstroFest on Saturday 7th February for the book-signing of Star Vistas!!  Remember this is likely to be a unique event as we have no plans to get together again to sign copies of Star Vistas, so if you want a unique First Edition copy of what is due to rapidly become a best-seller, come to AstroFest this coming weekend and say hello to us

Noel has just finished processing data from Auriga around the open cluster M36.  We weren’t expecting to capture another interesting object – NGC1931 – a nice little emission nebula in the same field of view.  Looking up this region on a planetarium program I saw a much bigger region of emission nebulosity – IC417 – lies close by.  I have spent the last couple of nights imaging this one and it should be the next one we publish.

Not long to go now – February 6th & 7th – for the International Year of Astronomy AstroFest conference at South Kensington.  Springer are pulling out all the stops to get copies of Star Vistas to AstroFest 2009 for a book signing, keep watching this site for the latest news.  I intend to be there on both days – look me up and say hello if you attend

Hey!  Looks like we got today’s EPOD with the deeeeeeeeeeep Coathanger Cluster image   Thank you Jim for publishing our work on your site!

A Happy 2009 to you all, and let’s have a great International Year of Astronomy

Springer are still planning to bring a load of copies of Star Vistas to the AstroFest conference in London this February 6th & 7th for a book signing session.  If the books are there, I will be there, I am currently checking to see if we can get Noel to come over all the way from Florida as well for the event.  Will keep you posted!!

Noel has just finished working his magic on creating this Star Vista of the Ruchbah region in Cassiopeia.  Apart from millions of stars, the area is also very rich in open clusters.  The accompanying picture unfortunately does the original 20 Megapixel image no justice.

This image is part of an on-going giga-project to image the whole of Cassiopeia at high resolution.  Last night I managed to get a 4-framer completed of the Gamma Cassiopeia region, and tonight I hope to make a start on the Schedir region.  It is likely that this will end up being a 7 x 7 or even an 8 x 8 mosaic of images using the ultra-fast Hyperstar III system.  The size of the final image is likely to be around 320 Megapixels!

Noel & I managed to get the Belt region and Horsehead nebula image published on the Earth Science Picture of the Day website on 26th December 2008.  We seem to be on a roll as 2008 draws to an end.  Let’s hope this run continues into the New Year unabated

Greg Parker and Noel Carboni got their second APOD published in 5-days!!!  This time our Coathanger cluster image made it onto the Astronomy Picture of the Day web site.  Although the rest of 2008 has been very quiet APOD-wise, we seem to be leaving the year with a BANG!!!!!