HCAS is an affilliated member of both the Astronomical League and the Night Sky Network

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2 Harford County Astronomical Society 2015 Monthly Newsletter Vol. 42 Issue 9--- September

3 Table of Contents September 2015 Issue September Upcoming Events Pg 5 Upcoming Lunar Eclipse Pg. 6 Solar System this month Pg 10 Traveling Maryland with Pg 11 Astrophotography Pg 13 Peter Nerbun, Joe Girardi HCAS is an affilliated member of both the Astronomical League and the Night Sky Network This is an offical publication of the Harford County Astronomical Society Please go to our website for the latest updates for viewing schedule changes, and Public Outreach Events Visit us online at / Harfordastro submit articles to the newsletter at : hcasnewsletter@gmail.com

4 Harford County Astronomical Society Executive Committee and Board Members Please feel free to contact these members at anytime with your concerns. Executive Committee: Robert (Bob) Kesler President Jim Gerlach Vice President Tim Kamel Treasurer Rick Fensch Secretary Sitting Members of the Board: Tom Rusek Larry Hubble Mike Talbard Dave Jayroe Tim Phelan Technical Advisor to the Board: (Lifetime Standing) Mark Kregel Astronomical League, Night Sky Network coordinator: Colleen Gerlach

5 HCAS MISSION STATEMENT HCAS IS A GROUP OF PEOPLE FROM VARIED BACKGROUNDS OF ALL AGES BOTH MEN AND WOMEN WITH A COMMON BOND, THE LOVE OF ASTRONOMY. HCAS IS ASSOCIATED WITH THE HARFORD COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE ( HCC ) AND HAS THE EXCLUSIVE USE OF THE OBSERVATORY AND ASSOCIATED MEETING ROOMS. HCAS MEMBERS ARE FRIENDLY, AND WE WELCOME ANYONE WITH AN INTEREST OF ASTRONOMY TO JOIN OUR RANKS. A BEGINNER OR ADVANCED OBSERVER AND OR AN 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 for HCAS 1.- PROMOTE THE INTEREST AND LOVE OF ASTRONOMY FOR THE PEOPLE OF HARFORD COUNTY, MARYLAND. 2.- ADVOCATE FOR DARK SKIES AND FIGHT LIGHT POLLUTION AND LIGHT TRESPASS. 3.- ENGAGE WITH SCHOOLS, CHURCHES, SCOUTS AND OTHER GROUPS TO EXPAND KNOWLEDGE AND INTEREST IN ASTRONOMY. 4.- ESTABLISH AND MAINTAIN AN ATMOSPHERE AT THE OBSERVATORY WHERE EVERYONE IS INCLUDED AND INVITED TO JOIN AND SHARE ASTRONOMY BY VISUAL OBSERVING AS WELL AS ASTRO PHOTOGRAPHY, REGARDLESS OF SKILL LEVEL OR EDUCATION.

6 This newsletter is an official publication of : Harford County Astronomical Society P.O. Box 906 Bel Air, Maryland For any articles and or pictures you would like to submit to the newsletter for consideration for publication Please read the following : It is strongly suggested that all articles be submitted in a Word document and sent to the newsletter address at: hcasnewsletter@gmail.com Articles and pictures will need to be submitted by the deadline. The deadline for each monthly issue is NO LATER THAN the third week of each month. All pictures in each newsletter are copyrighted by the photographer, any duplication of the pictures need permission from the photographer, for permission please forward all inquiries to the newsletter and your request will be forwarded to the photographer, and permission will be granted by the photographer and only the photographer. Any address changes should be brought to the attention of the editor given above. Any complaints concerning any content of this newsletter should be brought to the attention of the editor promptly. Please visit our website at : Visit us online at / Harfordastro

7 Upcoming Club Events this Month HCAS Open House: Saturday, Sept. 19 7:00 pm here at the Observatory, Youth Benefit Elementary School 30 Students, volunteers contact Bob HCAS Board of Directors Meeting : Thursday September 24th@ 6:30 pm in the classroom HCAS General Meeting: Thursday Sept. 24 7:00 pm in the classroom OCTOBER WILL BE EXTREMELY BUSY WITH GUESTS CONTACT BOB IF YOU CAN HELP SAT.10-3 / SAT / THURS

8 Upcoming Lunar Eclipse WHEN: Sunday September 27 th starting at 2011 hrs WHERE: COMPLETELY VISIBLE OVER MARYLAND Here s another chance for us to not only view a Lunar eclipse but its early enough to capture some really nice pictures that s providing Mother Nature will cooperate with us, here lately she has not be nice to HCAS, and we keep asking ourselves What have we done wrong to get this? And to make it even a little more interesting is on the same night we have what is known as a SUPER FULL MOON so as the Moon rises it will be at perigee (it s really closest point) just a mere 223,694 miles away, now that close. So here are some interesting facts about the eclipse, you can Google this or you can go to this website and get some info and follow the tabs to the eclipse page. Penumbral begins: (UNOBSERVABLE) Sept. 27 th at 2011 hrs Partial Eclipse begins: FULL ECLIPSE Maximum eclipse Full eclipse ends 2107 hrs 2211 hrs 2247 hrs 2323 hrs Partial eclipse ends Sept. 28 th 0027 hrs Penumbral eclipse ends 0122 hrs

9 CRATER COUNTING : To those who wish to take the time to log the times the shadow does it Entrance across the disc of the Moon, there are certain craters that are always used to calculate exact times, to do this you will need a good telescope and a timing device that counts hours, minutes and seconds. Here is the list of Entrance and Exit times.note: ALL times are East Coast Times.

10 ENTRANCE SUNDAY NIGHT TIMES EST EXIT SUNDAY NIGHT TIMES EST Grimaldi 10:11 pm Grimaldi 11:30 pm Aristarchus 10:15 pm Billy 11:37 pm Billy 10:18 pm Campanus 11:37 pm Kepler 10:18 pm Tyco 11:38 pm Pytheas 10:2 5pm Kepler 11:43 pm Copernicus 10:26 pm Aristarchus 11:45 pm Timochairs 10:28 pm Copernicus 11:51 pm Plato 10:30 pm Pytheus 11:53 pm Campanus 10:31 pm Timochairs 11:58pm Aristoteles 10:38 pm Plato 00:04 am Eudoxus 10:39 pm Manilius 00:05 am Manilius 10:39 pm Dionysius 00:06 am Menelaus 10:42 pm Menelaus 00:08 am Tyco 10:43 pm Censorinus 00:11 am Dionysius 10:45 pm Plinius 00:11 am Plinius 10:46 pm Eudoxus 00:011am Censorius 10:53 pm Aristoteles 00:012 am Proclus 10:55 pm Goclenius 00:012 am Taruntius 10:57 pm Langrenus 00:16 am Goclenius 11:00 pm Taruntius 00:18 am Langrenus 11:05 pm Proclus 00:20 am

11 The following information is for viewing the Solar System this Month Any and all feedback on this, or if you would like to add to it for next month Then your input will be appreciated. Just send your info over to the Editor at the newsletter. Planets this month September : Mercury Very low in the W after sunset / very hard to observe Venus Very low in the ENE, in morning twilight Mars Low in the ENE in the morning twilight Jupiter -- Low in the ENE in the morning twilight Saturn Very low in the SW after sunset, sets after dusk Moon Phases this month: Last Qtr New Moon ---- First Qtr. --- FULL MOON Saturday Sept 5 5:54 pm Sunday Sept 13 2:41 pm Monday Sept 21 4:59 pm Sunday Sept 27 22:51 pm TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE VISIBLE IN ALL NORTH AMERICA WEATHER PERMITTING Other notable events for the month: Monday Sept 21st The Straight Wall is visible tonight

12 Traveling Maryland with. Tim Phelan On Friday night, August 14th I went down to my dark sky site on the eastern shore. I took my 10" Dobsonian scope and hung out in Sagittarius most of the night. I arrived around9:30 PM and set up right away with the Milky Way bright all the way from the southern horizon to Cassiopeia in the northeast. It's amazing to see the Sagittarius-Scorpius down there because the southern sky looks across the lower Chesapeake so there's literally no light pollution. I started with the favorites in Sagittarius such as Messiers 8, 20, 22, 28, 17, and 18. Observing the Lagoon and Trifid Nebulae with an O-III filter was astonishing! That night might have been the best views I've ever had of either of them. Messier 22, the large globular in Sag., looked amazing and bright with a myriad of stars resolved into dim pinpoints. Going through my Night Sky Observer's Guide I found a treat in NGC 6818, a magnitude +9.3 planetary nebula that is quite large at 46 arcseconds in angular diameter. 6818's nickname is the "Little Gem Nebula" and looks quite like that at low power (50x). With high power (200x) it was a very large and still fairly bright oval. Another jaw-dropping observation I made was with Barnard 92 and 93, two dark nebulae around M24. Messier 24 is the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud with is a large opening in the galactic disk where there is no dust and gas blocking our view into the center spiral arm of our galaxy. The stars in M24 are some probably the most distant stars we can see with a visible light telescope. Through my 10" at 50x power M24 looked like thousands of diamonds against a black velvet cloth. The cluster was larger than the field of view so panning around was stunning. Barnard 92 and 93 are dark nebulae located on either side of M24 on the east and west sides. The contrast between star strewn M24 and the starless voids of Barn. 92 and 93 was incredible. Other than that I observed all the globular clusters on Messier's list in Sagittarius along with some faint open clusters. I packed up the scope around 1:30 AM and climbed onto the roof of my car and watched the Perseid meteor shower for about an hour. I counted 20 Perseids in an hour with several meteors leaving smoking tails. Around 2:30 I drove back to my hotel room and slept for 6 hours before driving home. The next observing session will hopefully be under the even darker skies at Cherry Springs with some of our fellow club members! Regarding the image: I went up to Fawn Grove, PA after last night's open house and used my D3100 Nikon and the lens to image the Cygnus portion of the Milky Way. I set up the ioptron Sky Tracker and shot second subs at ISO 1600 at 35mm. Total exposure time was 1 hour with five dark frames and 30 bias frames. Stacked the image in Deep Sky Stacker and used Photoshop CS2 to stretch the image with levels and curves adjustments. In the image are Deneb, NGC7000 (North America Nebula), and open cluster NGC 6940.

13 Cygnus portion of the Milky Way.

14 Eastern Veil Nebula NGC 6992 Peter Nerbun This image shows a reprocessed version of my Eastern Veil Nebula capture on the nights of Dec and Jan In my original processing of the data the area surrounding the nebula contained uneven gradients; also the balance between the red Hydrogen-alpha channel and the blue-green Oxygen-III channel was inaccurate; I corrected both of these processing deficiencies in this reprocessed version of the image. The total integration time for this data capture was 4 hours and 15 minutes using a 92 mm refractor, 3nm H-a and O-III narrowband filters and an ATIK 460EX monochrome CCD camera.

15 Cherry Springs Joe Girardi M27 The Dumbbell Nebula. Taken on July 20,15 at Cherry Springs. I shot 30 - forty second exposures with no focal reducer at F10. Larry processed this for me

16 Here's a photo of the Blue Moon taken on 7/31/15 with my Canon camera. ISO 100, 300mm, f/11 & shutter speed at 1/100. (No filters) Enjoy Joe

17 Visit our website at: Visit us on Facebook at: Harford County Astronomical Society (HCAS).

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