2026 Astro-imaging Exhibition

Covering Astronomy from the early 15 th Century right up to the modern day use of Artificial Intelligence in image processing, a large audience comprising members and guests enjoyed a high quality and varied display of astro-imaging endeavour produced by our members over the last year.

The astonishingly accurate measurements of Ulug Beg in the 1420’s were described in images of his observatory in Samarkand in Uzbekistan. Beautiful sunsets followed from the UK, and then we enjoyed dramatic aurora images from Finland and Norway accompanied by a musical soundtrack.

Moving away from Earth, several members submitted highly detailed images of the Moon in its various phases, many members using either their own. or the Society’s Seestar Smart Telescope. Indeed the use of this instrument and also mobile phone cameras over the last twelve months has not only encouraged more members to get involved with astro-imaging, but also significantly raised the bar in terms of image

quality and composition. Images of the Sun and some star clusters, then galaxies and nebulae completed the exhibition – almost one hundred images were shown during the evening.

Perhaps the most interesting discussions during the one and half hour show focused on the use of

Artificial Intelligence to process the images. Pictures taken by a Seestar were submitted to Google

Gemini for processing and the results were so good that it almost begged the question whether we ever

need to learn image processing skills anymore! Direct comparison of the same data being processed by

PixInsight and by AI often yielded similar results. (There was some suspicion, however, that what AI

came up with was more than just the processing of the data, but the incorporation of material from

elsewhere – an image of Comet Lemmon was shown after the exhibition derived from a large number of

images which did not show the comet easily. The comet in the AI-produced image was beautiful – just

not in the right place!

The Exhibition concluded with a musically accompanied reprise of some of the images followed by a big

round of thanks to all those who contributed to this very successful meeting. Click here to see the photos of the exhibit.

Sandy Giles