Hi all

It's been a while between updates, I hope everyone had a great xmas and new year.

We've got a busy week ahead, with a couple of noteworthy events:

• 2nd February: Venus and Jupiter conjunction. Look East between 4:30am and dawn, and you'll see the two brightest planets, Venus and Jupiter, in a very close conjunction - reaching 0.6deg separation. This is close enough to fit in the same FOV of a widefield eyepiece in most telescopes!
• 5th February: Venus, Jupiter and crescent Moon conjunction. Again, look to the East before dawn and you'll see a beautiful conjunction between these three celestial bodies. It will make a spectacular widefield landscope photography, so get out there and capture it!
• 7th February: Partial Solar Eclipse. Visible for south-east Australia and New Zealanders. Read the Observing/Imaging Guide for more details and how to observe it safely!

We'd love to see your images and read your observing reports! So please register on the IceInSpace forums and post your results!

I've added 3 new articles and 2 new reviews to IceInSpace with this update - thanks to the authors who contribute content to IceInSpace!

• Polar Alignment using a Wedge in the Southern Hemisphere
• Go South!
• Sharpening Images Using Deconvolution
• Review - Modified 10" GSO Dob
• Review - Refractor and Focal Reducer Trials

In other news, 4 Australians (Anthony Wesley, Zac Pujic, Maurice Valimberti and myself) along with a few other amateur astronomers from around the world, have collaborated with a team led by Augstin Sánchez-Lavega in a paper that was published in the latest Nature Journal. It's been very exciting and quite a thrill. You You can read the PDF version of the article here.

I hope the weather is clear for you this week (it's not looking good for me!), so please get out and observe these fairly rare events, and post them on IceInSpace so I can see what I missed! :)

Thanks for reading.