I have just ordered a broadband (45 nm) hydrogen alpha filter from Ian King Imaging.  The Hyperstar III lens assembly works at f#2 which means a steep cone angle for the incoming rays of light.  Unfortunately, the makers of narrowband filters design their multilayer dielectric stacks on the basis that light enters the filter at normal incidence – problem!!  The Hyperstar III therefore “sees” a narrowband filter operating at a pass wavelength outside the natural linewidth of H-alpha radiation – in other words it doesn’t work!!  I will see if a broader passband on the filter allows the Hyperstar III to see good transmission at the H-alpha emission wavelength – and my first target will be CTB1 – the supernova remnant in Cassiopeia which up until now has been a dismal failure for me (but not for Steve Cannistra who has a beautiful image of this one on his web site).

Noel Carboni has developed a new Photoshop plugin which gives great control over software added “star spikes”.  This image of Regulus (the cloud like object to the left of Regulus is the dwarf galaxy Leo 1) benefits enormously from the new plugin.  Star Vistas 2 will also benefit from this software improvement which was not available when Star Vistas 1 was published.

I have just returned from the summer astronomy fair at the Norman Lockyer observatory (Sidmouth, Devon) where I gave a lecture on deep-sky imaging at the New Forest Observatory.  The fair, and the talk, were very well attended helped along by a day of exceptionally good weather (Saturday August 8th 2009).  Starlight Xpress, the CCD suppliers whose cameras I use, were there showing the latest goodies.  The next generation SXVR-M25C looks absolutely perfect for my mini-WASP setup, so I’ll need to get a couple of these in the very near future.

If you haven’t gone down to Sidmouth in the summer to see the Norman Lockyer observatory and attend the astronomy fair – I can highly recommend it to you.

Fred Clarke (Arthur C Clarke’s brother who lives in the S.W. of England) has two copies of Star Vistas destined to go into a new museum Fred is creating to house Sir Arthur C Clarke’s work.  When Sir Arthur kindly wrote the Foreword to Star Vistas I gently bribed him with two copies of the book when published.  Sadly Sir Arthur died just a few months before publication.  I then contacted his brother Fred who said he would gladly take charge of the copies and that in due course they would be placed in a new museum dedicated to Sir Arthur’s work.  I wish Fred good fortune in managing this mammoth task!

Within the last week there has been two large surges in sales of Star Vistas in the U.K. and one large surge in sales in the States.  We are not sure what caused these sudden increases in sales (a review somewhere perhaps?) – but whatever it is due to – thank you for continuing to purchase our first portfolio of  high-quality deep-sky images!!

Another one for Star Vistas II.  We had a slightly smaller version (smaller FOV) in SVI, so I got some more data and took a 2-framer of the region using the Sky 90 and SXVF-M25C.  Data was in RGB, H-alpha and H-beta, and totals around 40-hours exposure time.  A similar amount of image processing time was spent on this one by Noel.  So with no further ado, the Parker/Carboni double team bring you a stunning Orion panorama

We have recently seen a big kick in sales of Star Vistas in America that seems to have been prompted by a mini-review in Sky and Telescope magazine written by Sean Walker.  Thank you Sean   All publicity is welcome!

A few weeks back Greg captured galaxy M106 at the New Forest Observatory.  Noel has just processed this image and we present it to you now – hot off the press.  The beautiful Mother-of-Pearl galaxy M106 lies in Canes Venatici just below the handle of the Plough (Big Dipper).

There was a big surge in sales of Star Vistas in America just over a week ago, and over this weekend in Canada.  This corresponds to the release of the Star Vistas review in the American publication Sky & Telescope.  This also shows the power of advertising!!

We received our first less-than-stellar review today on one of the online bookstore sites…  It’s proven to be a bit of a growing experience as we watch our beloved book, which we worked so hard to create, make its way throughout the world.

While we realize we can’t please all the people all the time, we’re also taking this bit of feedback as a personal challenge to make the sequel to Star Vistas even more spectacular!