Monthly Newsletter. Public Star Party Saturday, April 20, 2013 at 7:00pm HCAS Observatory

Transcription

1 Monthly Newsletter Volume 40 Issue 4 April 2013 Public Star Party Saturday, April 20, 2013 at 7:00pm HCAS Observatory General Meeting Thursday, April 25, 2013 at 7:00pm HCAS Classroom Please check our website for possible schedule updates and changes: and our Facebook page at:

2 In This Issue: HCAS General Notes...p.2 Outreach...p.4 Astrophotography...p.5 Observing Notes...p.8 Miscellaneous...p.10 HCAS General Notes General Meeting - March 21, 2013 The meeting was called to order at 7:02pm by Gary George. There were no minutes from the February meeting to approve. Treasurer's Report: Tim reports we have $ in the main checking, there will be a full report in the newsletter. Newsletter Issues: Please submit your articles and photos to Roy via by the 13th of the month so he has a few days to get the issue ready for publication. Website Issues: Please contact Larry to add calendar events or display photographs. There is discussion of a "Members Only" section on the HCAS website, possible items would be regarding equipment loans. We have 207 followers on Facebook. Observatory Reports: The hand controller is back from Astro-Physics, and is safe in the locked room in the Observatory. Astro-Physics suggests we keep it out of the cold air. It is already 13 years old, and it needs to be taken care of. Lucy will call Bruce Wrinkles regarding some preventative maintenance on the 14" SCT. Observing Reports: There haven't been many trips to Broad Creek, but look for reports in this newsletter. March 9 was a Members Only night, and there were 6-8 people who showed up. A feature on the Hand Controller "Constellation Hop" was used. This is a neat feature, a user can pick stars or objects in a constellation and take a full tour. Old Business: Inventory list - where do we stand? Driveway repair - Sal and the maintenance department have completed this task. Internet Access is next to be repaired. Gary will remind Sal to get this done. There are passwords needed for the computers in both classrooms, Gary to contact Sal about this as well.

3 New Business: Call For Nominations - the Executive Committee is making a call for nominations to the general membership. We have 4 Officer positions and 3 Board of Director positions available. Nominations will occur between the March and April meetings, ballots will go out just after the April meeting, and ballots counted at the May meeting. New Officers and BoD will take their positions at the June Meeting. Nominations will be taken via and in person. Patterson Mill High School star party is scheduled for April 15/16 (22/23-rain). Gary sends out a thank you to both Lucy and Tom for doing slide presentations at the last Open House. Next month's meeting will feature speaker Frank Somers from the Space Telescope Science Institute, an Audio/Visual expert. We will have a brief meeting starting at 7, then he will speak. Lucy also mentioned Shore Leave 35 Convention will be in Hunt Valley the first weekend of August. Welcome to new members Austin and Frank at tonight's meeting. The meeting was adjourned at 7:50pm. Karen Carey Secretary One People - One Planet - One Sky New Members April 13, 2013 Please welcome the following new members: Daniel Popowych Welcome aboard Tim Kamel

4 Outreach Open House March 16, 2013 Here we go again, another lousy night. Completely overcast. I have lost track of how many that is in a row. We did have 15 guests. Karen, Lucy and Tom each gave a presentation. Larry did a tour of the dome. Colleen compiled the attendance data. Attending for the club were 12 members Me, Gary, Larry and Ricky, Karen, Mark, Jim and Colleen, Tom, Bob, Rick and Lucy. It ended early. Tim Kamel Please join us as we offer a program of timely presentations at our general meetings. These programs will last about minutes in addition to our regular discussions. We hope to have a speaker at each meeting. Anyone who would like to present a topic of interest to the HCAS membership is welcome. Please contact Lucy Albert at or ljalbert608@gmail.com to make arrangements to present. Outreach Web Sites: Astronomers Without Borders Astronomers Without Borders is a global astronomy community. Astronomy enthusiasts, educators, and others around the world participate in programs that create interaction and cooperation through common interests in all aspects of astronomy including observing, outreach, the arts in astronomy and more Cosmo Quest This association is for amateur astronomers around the world, working as a community. Galaxy Zoo The Zooniverse is a collection of web-based Citizen Science projects that use the efforts and abilities of volunteers to help reseachers deal with the flood of data that confronts them.

5 Astrophotography Astrophotography Report Sunday, March 10, 2013 This is a short astrophotography report. Larry decided to sell his QHY5 Planetary Imager and I decided to buy it. I had always been impressed by the controls that it had and also its ability to shoot in.avi format instead of.ser. Larry and I met and made the purchase. Larry did the install of the software on my lap top and I was good to go. We, including Gary, decided to take some video to test out the camera. I took about 9 quick videos and processed the best to produce this shot. It was an early night for all involved. Tim

6 The Horsehead Nebula (B33) with The Flame (NGC2024) and IC424 emission nebulae. Jim Gerlach /Larry Hubble Copyright 2013 Jim Gerlach and I have been planning to get together all winter and photograph The Horse Head Nebula. It has either been terrible weather or just too cold. This past Saturday, we were planning to go to the observatory for members night. After speaking on the phone we opted to do some astrophotography. We had talked about M46, but then we realized it may not be too late to shoot the Horse Head after all. We first set up Jim s TMB 92mm f/5.5 Apochromatic Refractor using a focal reducer to give us the widest field possible. The effective focal length was about 3.0. We used my Canon 50D along with the Astronomik CLS Light Pollution Filter. Framing the HH we took 2 minute exposures to see traces of the nearby Flame Nebula. We used images of the HH off the internet to properly align, frame our shot in the viewfinder. This took about one half hour. We used the Main telescope, Jim s Astro-Tech 8" f/8 Ritchey-Chrétien astrograph as our guide scope. (and for M46) The guider is by Starlight Xpress, and we used PHD guiding software. We ended up taking 10 minute sub frames, and a couple of 15 minute, along with darks. s went back and forth with Jim ending up with the best stacks, using PixInSight. I then used PhotoShop, MaxIm DL, Images Plus, Neat Image. Oh, I almost forgot, I used Deep Sky Stacker to restack the color corrected images before final processing to bring the total exposure time to (guessing) about two hours. This was truly a team effort and we are very proud of our final results. For those who aren t into AP, sometimes, not all the time, this is what it takes. It takes a different breed to spend this much time taking one image, but as they say film is forever! Film-- what the hell is that?

7 We also shot open cluster M46/NGC 2438 pair; the image attached was fast and dirty. Jim is taking on final processing of this one. (Coming soon) Thank you so much if you have read this! I do this so I don t forget. Larry Hubble The Pleiades (M45) This image is not that good. I did bring out the nebula, but not the background. In digital Astrophotography today, you want the background to have color. A dark blue is preferred. Actually the true color of the night sky is blue to even purple. So to help you with this, in PhotoShop hit F8 to bring up the Info Tool. Run it around your background to see the R_G_B _values. The blue value should be around 30 to 40. If you do this with the image of M46 that Jim processed (see below), you will see has a B value of 30. This is perfect. The main thing I really want to point out here is with the right filters in place, we can do some outstanding photography from the college. Remember my Orion wide field image. One would think I did it in a dark sky location. ( I got a little lucky on that one) - Larry Hubble

8 Open Cluster M46, with planetary nebula NGC 2438 AstroTech 8" f/8 Ritchey-Cretien astrograph Autoguider: Starlignt Express Lodestar PHD Guiding Canera: Canon 50D; 4X600 sec. exposures Astronomik CLS-LP filter PixInsight, PhotoShop Copyright 2013 by Jim Gelach & Larry Hubble Observing Notes Broad Creek April 13, :00pm to 11:00pm I arrived at the BC gate around 7:45pm and began setting up my 18" Obsession. Bill Gelston had already arrived. The night was very clear, with the temperature in the 50s and almost no humidity. We were joined by Cathy Tingler a few hours later. The 3-day crescent moon was low in the west, along with Orion and Taurus. On the eastern horizon was Virgo, with its multitude of galaxies. The Big Dipper was high in the sky, along with Leo. We periodically looked for the predicted Northern Light display, but it could not be seen. M49 - Bright elliptical galaxy in the Virgo Cluster NGC Elliptical galaxy in Ursa Major NGC Spiral galaxy in Ursa Major, seen almost edge-on. M51 - The haze was beginnig to develop, so this galaxy and its smaller companion NGC5195 looked like two fried eggs, because their spiral structures couldn't be seen. In Canes Venatici. M3 - Beautiful globular cluster in Canes Venatici. M101 - "Whirlpool" galaxy in Ursa Major. This appeared dimly, with none of the spiral arms visible, due to developing mist. M84 and 3 other galaxies in Markarian's Chain (in Virgo). See in the same field of view of the 35mm Panoptic eyepiece. I spent a good deal of time sweeping through the area known as the

9 "Realm of the Galaxies". There are literally dozens of galaxies in the region of Ursa Major, Coma Berenices and Virgo. I used the 35-mm Panoptic eyepiece for about ten minutes, just going back and forth and around this region. Try it some time! M100 and M99 - These two spiral galaxies are close together in Coma Berenices. NGC Bright blue planetary nebula in Draco M88 - Bright spiral galaxy in Coma Berenices, resembling M31 (Andromeda galaxy). Saturn was low in the south, in Libra, where it will remain throughout the summer. However, the rings are wide open, providing an excellent view. Clouds began moving across the sky around 10:45, so we began packing at that time. It had been a nice night under the stars. - Roy Troxel Markarian's Chain of galaxies in Virgo The best times to observe at Broad Creek are between the last quarter and first quarter of the lunar cycle. The current period is: April 28 through May 12, 2013 Try to keep some of these nights open on your schedule! Because of the unpredictable weather conditions, we cannot set a specific date and time to observe. Sometimes the decision to go to BC is made within a few hours before sunset. In any case, all club members will be notified by .

10 Miscellaneous Light Pollution, you say? The East Coast at Night, viewed from the International Space Station Easy to recognize cities along I-95 include New York City and Long Island at the right. From there, track toward the left for Philadelphia, Baltimore, and then Washington DC near picture center. Upcoming Star Parties Cherry Springs Star Party June 6th - 9th, 2013 Presented by the Astronomical Society of Harrisburg The Cherry Springs Star Party or CSSP will be held at Cherry Springs State Park near Coudersport, PA. Cherry Springs State Park is well known for nice dark skies and we hope you'll enjoy them with us at the Cherry Springs Star Party! The Registration Desk will open at approximately 12 PM on Thursday and will be open at various times throughout the weekend. We hope to see YOU at the Star Party! The Cherry Springs Star Party features speakers and vendors from around the country, on-site food vendor with 24/7 food services, and door prize raffles. Availability for the star party is limited. The earlier you register, the better. Towards the star party, registration fills up quickly. Please complete registration if you plan to attend. Registration forms can be found on our website, or the Facebook page. You can also pay PayPal if you wish. Registration will open sometime in late February or early March. Cherry Springs State Park is located on PA 44 in Potter County. If you are using a GPS, the GPS coordinates for the Cherry Springs Observing Field are as follows (Coordinate and elevation information retrieved from the United States Geological Survey): N, W ( N, W)

11 Elevation is 2300 feet or 701 meters For more information regarding registration, food vendors, door prizes and weather, please visit Cherry Springs Star Party also has a Facebook page for up-to-date material regarding the star party. You do not need a facebook account to access all the information on the CSSP Facebook page. This page will be updated faster for weather and any news regarding the star party. Dates: Thursday, 6/6/ Sunday, 6/9/2013 Time: 12:00 PM - 12:00 PM Location: Cherry Springs State Park, 4639 Cherry Springs Road, Coudersport, PA Green Bank Star Quest X July 10th - 13th, 2013 Green Bank, West Virginia This event is held on the campus of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, and is partly sponsored by the National Science Foundation

12 Black Forest Star Party September 6-8, Cherry Springs State Park, Pennsylvania The Black Forest Star Party is an annual dark-sky amateur astronomy observing event hosted by the Central Pennsylvania Observers (CPO). HCAS Mission Statement What is HCAS? HCAS is a group of people from varied backgrounds, of all ages, men and women, with a common bond a love for astronomy. CAS is associated with the Harford County Community College and has use of the HCC observatory and meeting rooms. Our members are friendly, and welcome anyone with an interest in astronomy a beginner or an advanced observer and/or astro-photographer. HCAS is committed to the people of Harford County, to assist and augment learning and interest in Astronomy as well as providing strong, all-volunteer outreach programs to schools, clubs and other interested organizations. GOALS: Promote the interest and love of astronomy for the people of Harford County, Maryland. Advocate for dark skies and fight light pollution and light trespass. Engage with schools, churches, scouts and other groups to expand knowledge and interest in Astronomy. Establish and maintain an atmosphere at the observatory where everyone in included and invited to join and share astronomy by visual observing as well as astro-photography regardless of skill level or education.

13 This newsletter is the official publication of Harford County Astronomical Society P.O. Box 906, Bel Air, MD Items for the newsletter are due to the editor by the 13 th of the month of publication. Please send all contributions (electronic format is strongly encouraged) to: Roy Troxel at: Permission is not necessary for non-profit use of this material, although proper acknowledgment is required. Address changes should be brought to the attention of the editor at the address given above. And be sure to visit our Web Site: Webmaster: Larry Hubble our Facebook page at: