Hi David,

Taken by Alex Jung using a Nikon Z6 with 20mm F1.8 lens. 3 x 15sec images.

Welcome to the June NSAS Update for 2024. I’ve just been up at Coonabarabran with a NSAS team of about 35 people and I had planned to share with you some early images of what we have managed to see but due to the weather this has been a little limiting. However, Alex, one of our youngest members, managed to capture this Milky Way beauty in a break from the clouds. Well done Alex!

Alex then went on to produce this shot of NGC6744 which is a lovely spiral galaxy about 30Mly’s away.

I, alas, had equipment failure and produced some horrible out of focus smears which I’ll happily re-classify as intentional star-trail photos!!

The weather was interesting to say the least with the cloud very heavy on the tour and the drive home, however the tour of the AAO telescope was, as always, impressive.

Along the way we also stopped by the Pillaga Pottery farm for pottery lessons and lunch.

Here is a pictue of Julie, Jacinta and Phil getting their hands dirty!

So it was great time and I think we all enjoyed the event. Probably best summed up by Ani, one of our newest members, who said “Definitely an experience not to forget!”

WHAT’S NEW !!!

This month the JWST produced several new astronomy insights relating to detection of carbon molecules in planet-forming discs amongst others. Of note, though was the one below which I found interesting on several fronts.

* Sourced from JWST NASA sources. James Webb Space Telescope - NASA Science

Webb has discovered what appears to be a new record-holder for the most distant known galaxy — shattering its own previous record. This galaxy existed only 290 million years after the big bang which is interesting as I had thought there was a natural limit of 380,000 of light passing through plasma prior to that. Clearly, I have more to learn!!

“The galaxy, JADES-GS-z14-0, is unusually bright given its distance. That luminosity seems to mostly come from young stars. The amount of starlight implies the galaxy is several hundreds of millions of times the mass of the Sun. Data from Webb’s mid-infrared instrument also reveals the surprising presence of oxygen. Detected this early in the life of the galaxy, the oxygen suggests that multiple generations of very massive stars already lived and died before Webb’s observations.

For all of these reasons, this galaxy is very different from those predicted to exist in the early universe by models and simulations. Though this is science in progress, Webb’s discovery may have profound implications for what we know of our cosmic history: “

For a full-scale image – follow this link.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Finds Most Distant Known… | Flickr.

If you want to blow your mind a little – download the full-size image and zoom in.  Amazing. See if you can guess how many galaxies are in this image.

WHAT’S ON?

The following 10 NSAS events are on in the next 6 weeks so make sure you put aside the time if you wish to attend. As members, you have free access to these, so make sure you take advantage of them!

ATTN Beginners – It is highly recommended you attend the Welcome Night, the BOQ and a BNF!

EVENT

Help at the CALYX 18-Jun-2024 6:00 pm 

Special Event - Tour of St Ignatius Observatory 18-Jun-2024 7:30 pm (Booked Out)

Beginners Open Question Night (BOQ)     26-Jun-2024 7:30 pm         

Beginners Night in the Field (BNF)            29-Jun-2024 4:20 pm

Observing night - Visitors Welcome          29-Jun-2024 4:20 pm         

Observing Night - Members Only              06-Jul-2024 4:20 pm  

Welcome to New Members (zoom)            08-Jul-2024 7:30 pm

General Meeting: Speaker: July                16-Jul-2024 7:30 pm

Observing night - Visitors Welcome          27-Ju7-2024 4:20 pm         

Observing Night - Members Only              03-Aug-2024 5:00 pm  

To access these – go to Events (nsas.org.au)

WHAT’S UP?

June is a great month to get out there and explore the heavens. With the longer nights, I am now able to get outside from 6pm to see a number of objects start to appear in the night sky. Make sure you come along to the member nights with your scope at PFA, where it is a bit darker, and give yourself the opportunity to see for yourself. If you are astromaging, then now is an important time to plan your imaging time to get maximum data from the colder season.

WHAT’S NEW?

Solar!! Well – not exactly new – the sun has been around for a while but I’ve never really seen any articles on how to capture and process images of our closest star. In the July edition of the American Sky and Telescope is a 6-page article on how to do this and create some images that really do bring out some of the interesting aspects of the solar surface. They use PixInsight in a number of steps to create bring out the detail.

So if you are interested in some Solar imaging then this article you should find interesting.

TOUR OF ST IGNATIUS SCHOOL OBSERVATORY – RESCHEDULED TO THE 18^TH JUNE

As many of you would be aware, we had to unfortunately reschedule the Tour of the St Ignatius Observatory due to the large rainfalls we had in February. I’m pleased confirm that this has been rescheduled and will be rostered on this month. We have already filled all bookings and am attempting to get more. We might have to schedule another event later in the year as well.

Hopefully you are all keeping well.

Clear Skies

David Stevenson

President 

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