Webb Deep-Sky Society News
Welcome to the latest news about the Webb Society, our website and the deep-sky community in general. Please follow the link for details and news about our Annual Meetings.
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Issue 189 of the DSO is out now
2 May 2022
The digital version of the Deep Sky Observer issue 189 is available for those that have registered to download using the same login details as last time.
If you're a Webb Deep-Sky Society member that isn't currently registered for the download version, but would like to be, please contact our membership secretary.
For those that are perfectly happy with their paper hardcopies, I understand that they're in the post already.
Everyone else can take a look at what's in this issue and read Owen Brazell's editorial whilst considering whether to join us.
James Whinfrey - Website Administrator
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Deep-Sky News
2 May 2022
The authors of Stellarium have released rather quickly version 0.22.1 which is available from Stellarium.org for all supported platforms, i.e. pretty much everything.
Harold Corwin has released the second version of his list of globular clusters aimed at visual users.
Deep-Sky News by Owen Brazell - Editor of The Deep-Sky Observer
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Practical Astronomy Show 2022
Our stand loaded with books, as usual, and our team on the day: (left to right) Jon, Owen and Steve. Well, this year's Practical Astronomy Show in Kettering has been and gone. It seems that it was well attended, so I'd like to thank our three volunteers for their hard work on the Society's behalf.
James Whinfrey - Website Administrator
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Deep-Sky News
28 February 2022
Knightware announce a new release of Deep-Sky Planner Mobile edition for both iOS and Android. This version now supports the exports of plans and other configuration files from Deep-Sky Planner 8. The iOS version can be downloaded form the Apple Store. The Android version is available from the Knightware web site and has to be side loaded.
Deep-Sky News by Owen Brazell - Editor of The Deep-Sky Observer
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Practical Astronomy Show 2022
If you'd like to come a say hello, we'll be at this year's Practical Astronomy Show in Kettering on Saturday 19 March 2022. We intend to be there with our usual stand full our publications.
James Whinfrey - Website Administrator
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Deep-Sky News
15 January 2022
The team behind the program CCD Guide have released the 2022 version of the software and image database. This seems to have some major changes to the look and feel of the software as well as more images and an improved PN database. Although primarily directed to imagers the large database of often off the beaten track objects provides some interest for visual observers as well.
Deep-Sky News by Owen Brazell - Editor of The Deep-Sky Observer
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Community News
3 January 2022
Lunatico Astro Image Processing Competition
Andy Chessum, one of our members, works for Lunatico Astro in Spain who are hosting an image processing competition to mark the New Year which he thought might be of interest to other Webb Deep-Sky Society members.
The competition is open to everyone and runs until January 31. For details follow this link below to Lunatico Astro's website.
I should point out that the Webb Deep-Sky Society has no affiliation with Lunatico Astro, and this news should not be taken as an endorsement, it is supplied for your information only. That said, if you enjoy image processing then this might be for you.
James Whinfrey - Website Administrator
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Deep-Sky News
31 December 2021
To celebrate another year of exciting images and discoveries from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, ESA/Hubble has released a new calendar for 2022 which is free to download.
Deep-Sky News by Owen Brazell - Editor of The Deep-Sky Observer
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Deep-Sky News
30 December 2021
New Stellarium point release
The authors of the popular freeware planetarium Stellarium have released version 0.21.3 which includes a number of bug fixes. It can be obtained from www.stellarium.org for all platforms. Fixes and additions can be found at Stellarium v0.21.3 released.
Willmann-Bell at Sky Publishing
Sky Publishing and the American Astronomical Society (AAS) have increased the number of Willmann-Bell titles available through Shop at Sky. More will become available as they sort out all the pallets for their new distribution agents. It is not yet clear whether the vendors who used to handle this internationally under the days of Willmann-Bell will be able to do so again.
Deep-Sky News by Owen Brazell - Editor of The Deep-Sky Observer
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Deep-Sky News
7 November 2021
SkySafari 7 has been released for iOS.
The release seems mainly aimed at social media users although there are a lot of weird and wonderful telescope connection options for INDID, ALPACA etc. which will undoubtedly cause entertainment. There are no improvements to the databases, although the previously paid for addons for GAIA and the PGC are now free. Allegedly there will be database improvements in 7.1. The UI seems more complicated and everything is buried deeper than it used to be. Given everything now seems to be on remote controlling of telescopes with SkySafari I suspect the astronomy portion will go down and the technology side go up.
Wolfgang's book on William Herschel
Wolfgang’s book on William Herschel’s discoveries is now out and can be obtained via Amazon at William Herschel: Discoverer of the Deep Sky (ISBN: 9783754397374). Note that this seems to be a print on demand publication so there are delays in getting it. See also Wolfgang's astronomy website. This is a mighty tome so something for long winter evenings.
Deep-Sky News by Owen Brazell - Editor of The Deep-Sky Observer
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Issue 188 of the DSO is out now
17 October 2021
The digital version of the Deep Sky Observer issue 188 is available for those that have registered to download using the same login details as last time.
If you're a Webb Deep-Sky Society member that isn't currently registered for the download version, but would like to be, please contact our membership secretary.
For those that are perfectly happy with their paper hardcopies, I understand that they're in the post already.
Everyone else can take a look at what's in this issue and read Owen Brazell's editorial whilst considering whether to join us.
James Whinfrey - Website Administrator
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Deep-Sky News
28 September 2021
New Stellarium point release
The developers of Stellarium have released a new update to Stellarium with version 0.21.2. This also includes a new updated extended DSO database with some positional fixes in 3.13 which needs to be downloaded separately.
The Sky X Professional now supports the GAIA DR2 catalogue
The latest version of the Sky X Professional will support the GAIAI DR2 dataset. This however needs to be downloaded separately and currently requires 1.2TB or storage – so not for the faint hearted. They do however offer smaller subsets of this data for those who don’t need everything.
Deep-Sky News by Owen Brazell - Editor of The Deep-Sky Observer
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Deep-Sky News
30 August 2021
Double star observing remains popular, both for scientific purposes and recreationally. With the increase in light pollution more and more types of deep-sky objects are becoming invisible to the observer.
Agnes Clarke has produced a guide to observing double stars from light polluted skies available as both a free PDF download and a printed book. Information is available here Discovering Double Stars (transtextuals.web.app). The book covers 179 doubles as seen from northern skies. I will note that the standard of English although good does have some idiosyncrasies as the author is Dutch.
Deep-Sky News by Owen Brazell - Editor of The Deep-Sky Observer
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Willmann-Bell
17 August 2021
It appears that the American Astronomical Society (AAS) has purchased the stock from Willmann-Bell (WB) and will be merging it with their other purchase of Sky and Telescope Magazine – see press release.
Note that due to moving to a new fulfilment agent nothing will be shipping before the end of October. Whether this means that the Society will still be selling WB books after this is unknown as I guess they will have to work out how to deal with international sales and vendors. Certainly buying form Sky Publishing has never been easy.
Deep-Sky News by Owen Brazell - Editor of The Deep-Sky Observer
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Deep-Sky News
14 August 2021
A couple of new French publications that may be of interest for Deep Sky Observers are DeepSky Atlas Ciel Profond, NGC, IC & Messier catalog, with 370 photos and DeepSky Atlas Ciel Profond, NGC, IC & Messier catalog, with 660 photos, both on eBay.
They come with a free PDF English translation if you contact the vendor. They are both spiral bound and appear to have water resistant pages. We may have a review of these in a future Deep-Sky Observer (DSO).
Deep-Sky News by Owen Brazell - Editor of The Deep-Sky Observer
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Deep-Sky News
29 July 2021
Our Galaxy
Bill Tschumy, one of the former authors of SkySafari and the author of Where is M13, has released a new free App for all main platforms, including Windows, iOS and Android, called Our Galaxy. This is an educational app that shows the locations of deep-sky objects in 3D within the galaxy. The App is available from the Microsoft Windows Store, Apple App Store and the Google Play store. Although not an observational App per-se it does give you information on what you are looking at and is useful from the educational point of view. More information can be found on Bill's web page at (https://www.otherwise.com/). It can be quite useful in showing the location of objects you are reading or writing about. The program has pre-canned displays for certain types of objects or you can make your own.
CCD Guide 2021
The Austrian Imaging group has released the latest version of their CCD-Guide. This is a planning and display program for CCD imagers. The latest version comes with over 5000 images and the C-Guide software to access and display it. There are also a number of videos on how to use the software, as always on YouTube. The current version is distributed now via a USB disk rather than a physical DVD as is becoming more common with newer systems no longer having built in DVD drives. Prices vary depending on whether you have an earlier version or if this is the first version you are purchasing. Information on the CCD-Guide website (http://ccdguide.com/)
Star Hop Maker
A new program for designing star hops has been released by a Greek team, I think. The program has a pretty comprehensive database and allows you to create star hops. These can be selected from either database searches or selected form charts.
The program also comes with a simple Android addition to display the star hops on a tablet or a phone running Android 8.1 or greater. I believe you also need a Google Drive account to use the Android version to pick up the plans you make. There is no iOS version.
My feeling is that the program would work best on a multiple monitor display. There are several videos on how to use the software available on the website and a restricted version (in terms of the database) is available for trial. Information can be found on the Star-Hop Maker website (https://starhopmaker.com/)
CSOG 2.4
Victor van Wulfen has released his latest version of the Clear Sky Observing Guides with version 2.4. There appears to be only two new guides from version 2.3 with isolated Triplets of galaxies for both Northern and Southern skies from the Karachentseva surveys. There is also the Astronomical League (AL) list of Carbon stars. The note says accompanying objects have been updated in the other guides, although whether this is worth the download time may be debatable if you already have them.
Victor has also made available sets for the Webb Society Objects of the Month, at least the galaxy and cluster/nebula ones. There are also guides for the Deep Sky Forum Object of the Week.
The main difference between 2.3 and 2.4 is that you have to subscribe to download the main guides. Currently the suggested rate is 25 Euros. The site for this is Clear Skies | Clear Skies Observing Guides - CSOG be aware that many of the guides are extremely large, multi gigabyte, and come in various parts.
The other changes can be found in the release Notes. As always this is an enormous volume of work. The software also comes with plans for AstroPlanner as well as catalogues for the Argo Navis units and Meade tours. There are no lists for SkySafari, or by extension, the Nexus DSC because of the lack of ability of those programs to support objects that are not in their databases.
Megastar 5.
With the demise of Willmann-Bell there are plans afoot to make Megastar 5 freely available. When/if this happens, a further note will be put out.
Note this will just be the older software. There will be no extra features and apart from the fix for the DSS download no other bug fixes. Feel free to post and share. Anyone else can share it as well.
Update
The Megastar download is now hosted on Bob and Cathy Bunge's website. The original direct Dropbox link we posted on our mailing list overloaded Emil's bandwidth allowance. Please note that the Webb Deep-Sky Society has no direct link with the Bunge's, but the link seems genuine.
Deep-Sky News by Owen Brazell - Editor of The Deep-Sky Observer
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Double Star Section Circular 29
21 July 2021
For those with an interest in double stars, there's a new issue of the Double Star Section Circular (DSSC) available for download.
To see whats in DSSC 29 and to download a PDF copy (free) please visit the double star circular section of the website.
James Whinfrey - Website Administrator
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Issue 187 of the DSO is out now
30 April 2021
The digital version of the Deep Sky Observer issue 187 is available for those that have registered to download using the same login details as last time.
If you're a Webb Deep-Sky Society member that isn't currently registered for the download version, but would like to be, please contact our membership secretary.
For those that are perfectly happy with their paper hardcopies, I understand that they're in the post already.
Everyone else can take a look at what's in this issue and read Owen Brazell's editorial whilst considering whether to join us.
James Whinfrey - Website Administrator
