Lorain County, Ohio October 2015 Website: blackriverastro.org Newsletter submissions: Editor Wednesday, October 7, 7 p.m.: Regular monthly meeting, Carlisle Visitors Center. Program: Annual Meeting of the Members, election of board members, and astronomy video Friday, October 9 (backup 10/10), 8-10 p.m.: Public observing, Nielsen Observatory Thursday, October 15, 7 p.m.: Board Meeting, Blue Sky Restaurant, Amherst, Ohio Friday, October 16 (backup 10/17), 8-10 p.m.: Public observing, Nielsen Observatory
BOARD SUMMARY September 10, 2015 The Board of Directors Meeting for September was called to order at 6:58 p.m. with nine of the twelve Directors present. Board minutes from August were read and approved (with one minor date correction), as was the Treasurers Report. Committee reports followed with both the Guidescope editor, Bill Ruth, and the Website cocoordinator, Lee Lumpkin, reporting that all is well. Instrumentation was tabled until New Business. There was some discussion under OTAA about planning for our convention. Necessary duties were divided up among the directors with Dan Walker tasked with bringing the cash box, change and tickets for the door prize raffle. Other Directors volunteered to bring hot dog buns, condiments, bottled water, charcoal and the club's projector for presentations. Other plans were made including who will pick up the key (Schauer), who will help open (Cunningham), and who will arrive early to prepare for solar viewing (Harkey and O'Neal). Under Metro Parks Liaison, there had been a discussion at the July meeting about having a key to the restrooms at the Equestrian Center so they could be used when we have public events. Schauer contacted the Metro Parks, who agreed to put a restroom key in the locked key box for our use. It was decided that the restrooms will be unlocked by the key holder who opens the observatory at the start of a session, and that the same key holder will lock the restrooms when locking the observatory at the end of observing. The procedure for handling emergencies at the observatory was also clarified. For a medical issue, we should call 911. For any other emergency, the Lorain County Sheriff should be called and numbers will be posted at the observatory. Once called, the Sheriff's office will respond and will also call out the LCMP Rangers to respond. Programming is scheduled as follows: October Elections and a short video provided by Greg Zmina November Jim Walker will discuss solar cells December is our annual Christmas party and pot luck at the Amherst Beaver Creek Reservation January open February open March John O'Neal on a solar topic TBA April John Reising on observing Mars (in preparation for the Mars opposition)
May Rich Thompson on the history, use, and future of the Iridium satellites. June-Nov. Open Under Old Business, the first item of discussion was a provision in our By-Laws. Last month when quickly searching the By-Laws for a clarification, the section on a quorum at the Annual Meeting of the Members, when we elect Board Members, was misread. We originally thought that it stated that 25 members in good standing were needed for a quorum. That was a concern because we often don't get 25 people at a meeting. In reality, Article III, Section 2 Quorum states that 25% of the voting members in good standing shall constitute a quorum. Since 25 PERCENT of the members in good standing (i.e., members over 16 who have paid their dues) would normally be 12 or 13 people, we decided no change in the By-Laws was needed. A decision was next made about the club archives currently stored by John O'Neal. Since John will be moving out of state within the next year or so, these items must be moved. It was decided that Greg Cox will take the books and magazines (a complete set of Sky and Telescope ) and that Dan Walker and Jeff Walsh will divide the rest of the material. A complete inventory will be made of what is in the archives and with whom items are stored. The next item of discussion was the upcoming election of Board of Directors members. Four Directors have terms that will expire: Greg Zmina, who is also Vice President; Bill Ruth, who is also Secretary; Greg Cox; and John O'Neal. All four have indicated a willingness to stand for election again and we will solicit any other members interested in running. Lee Lumpkin has agreed to run the election. The next item of Old Business was planning for the lunar eclipse that will occur on Sept. 27 th. We have planned a public program at the Nielsen Observatory, starting at 8:30 p.m. and continuing until the event is over at approx. 12:30 a.m. The event is in the Arrowhead and we will have it listed on our website and our Facebook page. Walsh, Walker, Zmina, Lumpkin and Schauer pledged to help. There was also discussion about a request from Len Jezior to purchase the club's video eyepiece since we have not been using it. The reasons for the lack of use have been our issues getting a proper finder for the black C-14 that will stay aligned, and the malfunctioning digital setting circles. We still want to use the video eyepiece to put the content of the telescope on a high definition monitor which we have purchased, so the public can see what is in the telescope on the monitor. Thus, we will not sell the VEP at this time as we think we can solve the issues with the telescope to allow its use. Finally, the Board decided to come to the observatory on Saturday, October 24 th to clean and winterize the building and to work on the black C-14.
Under New Business, we first discussed our participation in International Observe the Moon Night which is a program by the Night Sky Network and NASA/JPL. The actual night is Saturday, September 19th, but since we have Public Observing scheduled for the 18th with the 19th as our backup date, we will observe it whichever night the weather allows. The NSN provides Moon maps with close- up inserts of interesting areas of the moon to highlight in a telescope, as well as a PowerPoint program about the Moon we can use. There was a discussion about getting several people familiar with the Losmandy mount on the black C-14 out to the observatory on a night when the public is not there, to finish balancing the tube and to troubleshoot the digital setting circles which are currently not working properly. The encoders may need to be reversed. The next item was the need to replace the power supply for the CG5 mount which we use with the club's Lunt hydrogen alpha scope. It was decided to purchase a unit from Orion for $31.00. Next, there was discussion about a solar observing session that was scheduled for Thursday, 9/24 at Burr Oak. We are unsure how this got scheduled on a Thursday (although it was the Fall Equinox) as many of our solar observers will be at work. We discovered only Mike Harkey and Jeff Walsh were available to run the session, but we would go ahead with it as it had been advertised in the Arrowhead. Schauer briefly mentioned that the Metro Parks had mailed out the room request forms that organizations use to request meeting space at the various LCMP reservations. Schauer received the room request form, and filled it out and returned it the next day, so that the Parks received our requested meeting dates as quickly as possible. We are asking to meet in the same meeting room at Carlisle as usual. We also quickly discussed the request by Rich Thompson to borrow one of the club's loaner scopes. It was decided to have Rich look at the available scopes at the next Public Observing session. The final item of business was a suggestion by Dave Lengyel that the club purchase a cell phone holder that attaches to a telescope to allow the public to use their phones to take photos through our telescopes. The Board likes the idea but is going to table it for now as our observing season is drawing to a close. Lastly, dates were set for the month and the meeting was adjourned at 8:47 p.m. ~Steve Schauer
Happy Trails I took this image on Christmas Day 2014 from my back door stoop. Orion is crossing to the south. I took a time-lapse with the GoPro 4 Silver with individual images which I then strung together as a video. I finally got around to combining the images into a single star trail image using the free imagemagick program with a command line script, and then adjusted levels, color balance, and resized with darktable (similar to LightRoom), another free program. The original frames and time lapse are 4000 x 3000 pixels. All of the software is free. Imagemagick is available for Windows, OS X, and linux. Darktable runs on linux or OS X. There is no Windows version of darktable.
This second image was taken on Sept 17, 2015 with a Sony NEX-5T camera and kit lens at 16mm, using the camera's time lapse program in night sky mode. I live on the western edge of Oberlin and in the image north is up, east is left, and west is to the right. Some bands of clouds blew through during the time lapse, and you can see the clouds repeating from west to east during the short exposures, which were spaced a few seconds apart. The clouds also blocked the stars at some points, leaving the gaps you see in the trails, and you can see the definite increase in Oberlin's light pollution as the clouds in the west are over farm fields and at the left they are over the town. This image was processed in the same way as the other image. ~Lee Lumpkin
Three Things You May Not Have Known About the Andromeda Galaxy The fall sky, while considered by many astronomers to be the dullest of any season, does have some very interesting sights to behold. One of them is a giant galaxy in the constellation of Andromeda. Dubbed the Great Galaxy in Andromeda (there are other galaxies in the constellation), it is a very interesting object not only for its beauty, but for a trio of obscure, yet interesting facts. First up: the Great Galaxy is the most distant (2.7 million light years) object capable of being seen under all but the darkest skies (eagle-eyed observers may be able to see more distant galaxies under the darkest of skies, of which none exist East of the Mississippi). To put that in perspective, when the photons of light that you see radiating from Andromeda tonight left the galaxy, there were no humans, although our distant ancestors were starting their long journey from ape to human. Not only do astronomers see across space, they see through time. Another big thought: if the galaxy were to fall into the monster of all black holes (no black hole is that big) tonight, we wouldn't know about it for another 2.7 million years. Second: we are looking at a crash of cosmic proportions in progress. Our own Milky Way Galaxy and Andromeda are gravitationally bound together, being by far the largest members in our galactic neighborhood, known as the Local Group of galaxies. Unfortunately, these two titans are on a collision course. In about 4 billion years, the Milky Way and Andromeda will 'crash' into each other at a combined speed of around 250,000 mph (or about 70 miles per second). Why the quotes? While the galaxies will run into each other, the chance of two stars actually hitting each other are virtually non-existent thanks to the immense distances that separate the stars. What will happen according to current models is this: the collective gravitational interaction of the two galaxies moving through each other will fling stars in all directions and the stars not flung out into space will eventually slow down and form a combined galaxy.
Third, the Great Andromeda Galaxy was the subject of one of the first deep-sky astrophotos. Photography as we know it was invented in 1827 and shortly thereafter astronomers started pointing cameraequipped telescopes at the Moon, with impressive results. Below is the first known photograph of the Moon, taken by J.W. Draper in March, 1840 with a daguerreotype camera. However, while quick lunar snaps were easy to master, long exposures required to gather enough photons to produce an image of a dim deep sky object required both advances in camera (more sensitive media) and observatory (more precise tracking) technology. Result: the first photos of a deep sky object (M42
and the Pleiades) were not taken until 1886 by Isaac Roberts, who would go on to photograph Andromeda in the following year: ~Denny Bodzash Dues are Due October is when the yearly club membership dues are due. Dues for active membership are $25.00 per year, payable in October. We also offer a reduced dues rate of $7.00 per year for students, junior members and retirees. You can either find Dan Walker at the next meeting and pay him there, or send a check to him at 416 Stonehedge Drive, Elyria, Ohio 44035. If your email address or other contact information has changed please let him know. Click here to download a.pdf membership form. Membership forms may be brought to monthly meetings or observing events and given to a club board member, or you can mail the completed form to the address on the form.