PAS-Times The newsletter of the Pontchartrain Astronomy Society June 2018 visit us online www.astronola.org Volume 59, Issue 6 Next PAS General Meeting Friday, June 29th,2018 at 7:30pm UNO Science Bldg. Room 1001 Andromeda Galaxy PAS Photo of the Month by Barry Simon
PAS Times Volume 59, Issue 6 Page 2 PAS Officers for 2018 President: Bill Johnson paspres@astronola.org 1st Vice-President: David Williams Program Chairman pas1vp@astronola.org 2nd Vice-President: Kent Birkle PAS-Times Editor pas2vp@astronola.org Treasurer: John Scholl pastreas@astronola.org Secretary: Nanette Johnson Archivist passec@astronola.org SPMOS: Ron Marella passpmos@astronola.org Community Outreach: Jerry LaBauve pasoutreach@astronola.org President s Message By: Bill Johnson It s summer, and it s hot! But we have been very busy the last few months. We did an outreach at Bogue Chitto that brought out quite a few members, and we just completed our visit to LIGO in Livingston, where we had quite a crowd of members and guests. (In between these events, Nanette and I became grandparents!) We look toward July when Mars will be at its closest point to Earth since 2003. It will also get very bright in the sky, doubling in brightness from June 26 to July 30th. It should be a very impressive view through most telescopes. We are working to plan a Mars event for the end of July. I hope you can devote some time to viewing our closest planetary neighbor. It won t be this close to us again until 2035. Stay tuned for further info! While we await the Mars showstopper, Jupiter has moved to the evening sky and dominates the heavens. Saturn has returned to the night sky and is spectacular as always. In October 2017, the rings were widest, displaying a maximum inclination of 27 degrees. After that, they started to tilt inward again, a process that takes 27 years. In 2025, we will not be able to view the rings at all, as they will be edge-on to the Earth. We will then be looking at the bottom side of the rings, which will next hit their widest point in 2032. We have our Annual picnic scheduled for early October, Officer elections in November, and the December Christmas party is right around the corner. In between all of this, we still find time to do a bit of personal stargazing out at SPMOS, and we have the pictures to prove it! I hope you are checking out the fabulous images being submitted on the Photo Contest page of AstroNola.org, the PAS website. Please vote each time you visit the web page. They are awesome! Our June meeting will be held Friday June 29th, at 7:30PM at UNO. Our own PAS member Gabe Dickens will be handling the presentation on Astronomy Economics. Barry Simon will also have an update on the changes to the Deep South Star Gaze in November. I hope to see all of you at the meeting. Bring a guest! Bill Johnson PAS President 2018 ALCOR (Astronomy League): Jerry LaBauve pasalcor@astronola.org Bogue Chitto PAS Outreach Photo by Nanette Johnson
Page 3 Secretary s Report May 5th 2018 General Meeting By: Nanette Johnson President Bill Johnson called the meeting to order at 7:30. In attendance 14, 1 new member, 2 guests Bill welcomed PAS new member Greg Cornes. Greg is from Hamm ond and learned of the PAS on the internet. OLD BUSINESS The Spring Scrimmage was held at Feliciana Retreat Center. Members attending reported great viewing on Wednesday and Thursday, with less than great viewing on Friday and rain on Saturday. The Fall Scrimmage is planned for November 7-10, 2018. Astronomy Day was held this year at the Infinity Space Cent er. John Martinez gave presentation on Exo planets inside the Space Center while Gabe Dickens, Bill and Nanette Johnson, Laurie Caniglio and Ed Matthews manned the telescopes and information table outside. OFFICER REPORTS David Williams, First Vice President: David announced the p resentation for the June meeting will be given by Gabe Dickens on Astronomy Economics. Kent Birkle, Second Vice President: Kent was not present at this meeting. Bill asked for contributions in the way of articles and pictures for the PAS Times on Kent s behalf. John Scholl, Treasurer: John was not present at this meetin g. Nanette Johnson, Secretary: Nanette encouraged everyone to come out for the upcoming outreach to be held at Bouge Chitto State Park on May 19. There is usually a large crowd and we could us the help. Nanette then announced the winner of the PAS photo contest for April. Congratulations to Jack Hercamp for his winning entry entitled North American Nebula. NEW BUSINESS A casual member s night at SPMOS was suggested by Bill to see how many members would be interested in attending such an event. Suggested date is Saturday, June 9th, start time 5:00pm opening with burgers done on the grill, then observing the night sky. More to come on this suggestion by website forum notice or email. A field trip to LIGO is scheduled for Saturday, June 16, 20 18. This is a free event and details can be found on the PAS website, as well as directions to LIGO site in Livingston, LA. The next PAS gene ral meeting will be held on Friday, June 29th due to the phases of the moon. Bill then asked for suggestions from members as to star par ties or events that they would like to have. It was suggested that we hold a Mars star party at UNO in the fall of this year when Mars will be most visible. Another suggestion was to have a public star party with suggested sites being the New Orleans Mardi Gras fountain on the lake front, Laketown in Kenner, the grassy area in front of Audubon Park, and Scout Island in City Pak. More to come on this at a later date. The club picnic will be held at Walter Sarrat s place again this year and we are hoping to schedule a date with Walter for September or October. 8:07 Break 8:20 Raffle Ask the members question posed by Laurie Caniglio: where is the best place to see telescopes before buying one? Answers were online, or at star parties. Houston and Dallas have telescope shops but there are currently none in New Orleans. 8:30 Presentation by David Williams How Telescopes Changed our Understanding of the Universe. Presentation ended 9:07 Motion to adjourn, second, meeting adjourned at 9:11 Bogue Chitto State Park PAS Outreach Photo by Nanette Johnson
Page 4 Photo by Nanette Johnson Photos by John Scholl Photos by John Scholl Photo by John Scholl Waiting for Dark at Bogue Chitto State Park Photo by Nanette Johnson Photo by John Scholl Photo by John Scholl Bouge Chitto Outreach: May 19, 2018 Photo by John Scholl The recent outreach at Bogue Chitto State Park near Franklinton, LA was a huge success! We had a wonderful turn out of both, club members, and the public. Viewers were able to see the moon, Venus, Jupiter and star clusters. Children and their parents all seemed to enjoy a new feature to our star gazes-a fabric panel of the Universe, which makes a great back drop for pictures. A big thank you to the club members who were able to participate and help PAS give the visitors a great showing of our night sky! Report by Nanette Johnson
Page 5 The Deep South Star Gaze is Moving! Yes, you did read that correctly. The 36th Annual Deep Sout h Star Gaze will move to a new home this fall (Tuesday, November 6th to Sunday November 11th). Moving is not a decision that was made easily and in a nut shell we feel this move is a positive decision. After you read about the reasons why we are moving and find out more about our new home hopefully many of you will agree with the decision and will be very happy about the advantages that our new home will give us. Reasons for the move - basically lack of confidence in the direction that we see the Feliciana Retreat Center headed, some specific things that happened at our recent Deep South Spring Scrimmage, and the opportunity to get under better skies with lower horizons elsewhere. As I said before, this was not a decision that we entered into without a lot of thought about what if anything we could do to improve the situation at the Feliciana Retreat Center and what if anything could be done to prevent the problems we had from reoccurring in the future. So what was/is the problem? The Feliciana Retreat Center ha s financial issues. Their solution is to say they are doing more with less or at least maintain services with less. That is clearly not working. Since Ida left (on-site manager for the 2016 DSSG and for a few before that), things have gone downhill. The current on-site manager is never there, she tries to conduct all business from her home via telephone and the internet and that is not working out. I had called several times prior to the Spring Scrimmage to take care of business and to receive some assurances about things including internet availability and outdoor street light status. I was assured on all of these calls that the internet was up and running and that the lights would be taken care of and on a later call that they had been taken care of. As it turned out we never had internet during the Spring Scrimmage and as what needed to be done about the lights was not completely understood and probably communicated poorly to DEMCO by telephone, the street light outside of Barton Hall was on for our first night (one of only two good nights that we had) while Barton Hall itself had no lights as power to that building had been disconnected. The current manager apparently did not really understand what we wanted done even though she said she did. This did impact our first night. Beyond the lights and the internet we have generally found that for the 2017 Spring Scrimmage, the 2017 DSSG and now the 2018 Spring Scrimmage that the rooms in the lodge are not maintained to the same degree as they were when Ida was in charge. Not too bad really, mostly gritty floors, but not to the same level. Another issue has to do with what went on with the food service. Typically we pay for the meals we order. I understand that and I know all of you do to; but when no one shows up to prepare and serve the food, that is a different matter. Granted that a lot of people did leave on Friday and even more left on Saturday morning, and the weather was bad on Saturday morning, however, the road never flooded to prevent entry and the rain did stop by mid-day and it even cleared late on Saturday night for some observing to be done. On Saturday morning a bowl with Pop Tarts and Instant Oatmeal was left out for us. In addition Dominic the maintenance man, did show up. Since the weather was rainy on Saturday morning we can let that slide. However there was no reason why someone did not show up on Saturday afternoon and again on Sunday morning. While we only had 5 or 6 people left, they did pay for meals. In fact, many had paid in advance for meals. As the food service people did not show up at all, those that remained had to go down to Clinton to find food. In settling up our final bill I outlined some of the issues (lights, internet) all promises made that were not kept. I also said that I was deducting the calculation for Saturday supper and Sunday breakfast from the amount owed. I sent this email out on April 18th and as of today, I have still not had an answer to that email. I waiting a week and then sent out the check to FRC to the proper address. The payment has not shown up on the FRC checking account. At the end of May the letter with check came back to me as "Return to Sender, not deliverable as addressed, unable to forward". The address as written was absolutely correct and has been double and triple checked. I also emailed the "big boss" at the end of May asking him to check on the payment and outlining some of the issues. No reply from him either and it has now been about one month since that email was sent. So not much confidence in FRC with all of these unknowns. More recently I have learned from another source that FRC i s contemplating selling some of their timber to make ends meet. That at best is a short term solution to a continuing problem. I also learned that they have had discussions where they say that the solution to their economic problems is to "Attract more star gazer groups". They clearly do not understand what is needed to make one group of star gazers happy much less multiple groups. In addition, looking at the calendar really shows one how little of the annual calendar would be good for events like ours. Only a few months out of the year have reasonable conditions and even then we take gambles. So, in summary, for the reasons spelled out above, I and ot hers have lost confidence in the Feliciana Retreat Center and that is a shame. We like the location, we like the scenery and when everything is run correctly we have no complaints, but that, unfortunately, is no longer the case. The Solution - The White Horse Christian Retreat Center So over the past week we went back to Square One to see wha all our options were, and they were: t 1) Stick with the Feliciana Retreat Center in spite of rece nt problems with the hope that things would improve. 2) Revisit the thought of going relatively near by to the J udson Baptist Retreat Center 3) Abandon the idea of an annual star party, giving people some additional time to do their own astronomy thing somewhere else 4) Finding other locations that could meet our needs Regarding #4 - I know we have found that in the White Horse Christian Retreat Center. After discovering and evaluating this site on line includin g study of the light pollution maps and Google Earth views, I called Carol Nicaud, the owner of the White Horse Christian Retreat Center.
Page 6 Ron Marcella and I visited on Tuesday, 6/5. From my home th e White Horse Christian Retreat Center is exactly 91 miles from my driveway to parking the car in front of their main building. The route I took was the Causeway to Hwy 21 all the way to the state line (passing Bogalusa). In Mississippi Hwy 21 becomes Hwy 35. You go 7.25 miles just past a small pond on your left with a green arched bridge, then left on Hurricane Creek Road, then 3.25 miles to 315 Hurricane Creek Rd. (at least to the mail box on the left side of the road) There is a large White Horse sign (white sign with red lettering). Go down the dirt road to the right for 1 mile. At this point you are there, turn right. Going back home we started out the same way but we stayed south where Hwy 21 turns toward Covington and instead went back home via Hwy 41 to Pearl River and Slidell. Going that way the distance is a bit further - 99 miles. So for me taking the shorter route, White Horse is 24 miles closer to home than is the Feliciana Retreat Center. The place is more lush than I would have thought from the G oggle Earth photos. According to the light pollution maps the SQM of this site is 21.62 which equates to a sky with a limiting magnitude of 6.45. The same source indicates 21.52 for the Feliciana Retreat Center and 21.53 for the Judson Baptist Retreat, this equates to a magnitude 6.4 sky. So White Horse is slightly better. Big difference is the lower tree horizon at White Horse. In many directions we have sky above 10 degrees, at FRC it is more like 20 to 25 degrees and at Judson it is 25 to 35 degrees in many places. We see more sky at White Horse. At White Horse the town of Columbia is 12 miles to the north, Tylertown is 15 miles to the west, Bogalusa is 21 miles to the south and Hattiesburg is 35 miles to the northeast. With the lower horizons we needed to go back and check out light domes but due to the distance (to Hattiesburg) and the relatively small size of the other places, I am encouraged. Note - our dates - November 6th to November 11th are availa ble. In addition wi-fi is up and running at White Horse and some premium television channels are available to us. Also, while I did not ask, I suspect that I can encourage them to do an evening snack bar. Burgers and fries at 9 pm anyone? The observing field - plenty of areas to set up, no need to mark fields. One field is behind the bunk houses and we can use that for white light video astronomy. In the photos I am linking the road runs to the main building and looking back from that building we have a very long run back to the entry on the property. Scopes and canopies can be set up here. Plenty, plenty room for scopes. In addition there is a closed field, the size of a football field that we can also use. No problem with meals, they can handle it and the meals wou ld be in the multi-use main bldg. At present all the sleeping arrangements are in bunk houses. There are 120 bunks in several buildings, and if we use just bottom bunks, that still gives us 40 bunks. (Note, at FRC we had 23 lodge rooms but approx. 10 of them were single occupancy so we had 13 x2 +10 so that was 36 people, and another 10 in the cottages, so even with using just the bottom bunks we are close. Some may have to take middle level bunks, but I think that would be ok in some cases. I will get more specifics on the bunks. Also no problem with rv's, campers and tents. They also have a game room with two pool tables and air hockey. They will have 4 private rooms in another year or two that would be of benefit for couples. Due to the limited supply (when they become available) they will be dedicated first to couples staying the duration of the DSSG, then to two people wishing to share a room for the duration. If demand outstrips supply we will have to award these rooms by lottery. On June 6th I returned to what I will now call White Horse for the sake of brevity. As the sky was looking good I wanted to check it out and I called Carol and that was ok. As I said they can turn off all of their lights which they did. Gabe Dickens came with me. We met in Slidell. For the sake of brevity I will summarize with just one word - WOW! These skies rock! Seeing a darker sky and more of the sky at one time really really adds to the experience. To the north we could see a light dome from Columbia which is about 12 miles away, but we had a lower tree line, better dark adaptation and the light dome was much, much less compared to the straight line light dome we see from FRC (Clinton>Zachary>Baker>Baton Rouge). The light domes from Hattiesburg and Bogalusa were very minimal, but hinted at, and a Tylertown light dome was not seen at all. Carol mentioned that a lot of churches have things going on Wednesdays, so some of the light could have been from area churches to our north. Looking south the great Omega Centaurus globular cluster wa s easily seen even thru thin cirrus clouds low on the horizon and very impressive. I could observe it for quite some time. The low horizons here clearly are a major benefit. The skies are noticeably darker, maybe equivalent to what we had at the Kisatchie Star Party in western Louisiana back between about 2001 and 2005. My sky quality meter gave me an SQM reading of 21.76 which equates to a 6.5 magnitude sky. This is fully 1/10 magnitude better than FRC but easily seen and appreciated. (In west Texas I would get readings indicating a 6.7 magnitude sky. I think all will be very happy with the sky at this location. The darker sky and the lower horizons added together will impress you. There will likely be more opportunities to visit before our next DSSG. We will likely be invited to show some campers the sky. I will keep everyone posted. Additional Information: Cell phone signal - I had reception and was able to make calls. Even sent out a few photos via my phone. Costs - not finalized, but will be less than at FRC. If you get the full meal plan (10 meals) and a bunk for 5 nights, your cost will be approximately $225.00 (subject to some negotiation). Note - as with the cottages at the Feliciana Retreat Center, with a bunk you will have to bring your own bedding, towels, etc. A small negative compared to a lodge room at FRC considering how much we will gain here with the sky. There are no private rooms or bunk houses. We can set aside one bunkhouse for women if we have that demand. In the area - the "Little Grand Canyon of Mississippi" - an amazing natural wonder. Also called "Red Bluff". For those who have not seen it - it is not to be missed. Also from what we have seen there are plenty of flea markets/antique shops from what we have seen. More information on area attractions will follow. T here is a motel in Columbia that actually looks pretty nice, the Magnolia Inn. See the website -https://magnoliainn.com/ It is about 15 miles away. As the lodging at White Horse is limited we would make allowances for someone to leave the site at specific times to return to their motel. There is no locked gate. Photos to be shown and questions answered at the June PAS m eeting. Article By Barry Simon, Director Deep South Star Gaze
Page 7 Upcoming Events PAS General Meeting - Friday, June 29th, 2018 at 7:30pm UNO Science Bldg. Rm.1001 Presentation - "Astronomy Economics" By: Long-time PAS Member, Gabe Dickens Northshore Observers Group Meeting - Third Wednesday of every month, see website PAS Picinic - Early October Go To www.astronola.org for more information Deep South Star Gaze - 36th Annual - Nov. 6th to 11th at White Horse Retreat Center Go To www.astronola.org On the Cover Andromeda Galaxy M31 by Barry Simon On the Back Cover A star chart of Scorpio from Urania's Mirror - A View of the Heaven 2018 PAS Meeting Dates June 29 July 27 August 24 September 21 Picnic - early Oct. October 19 November 16 December 14 Holiday Party Barry Simon, the Director of the Deep South Star Gaze, will speak at the June 29th PAS general meeting about The White Horse Christian Retreat Center. Pictured here are some of the available rooms. July 2018 PAS-Times Deadline Sunday, July 15th Please submit all things astronomical to be included in the next edition of PAS-Times to the editor at the following address: pas2vp@astronola.or
Pontchartrain Astronomy Society, Inc Kent Birkle, PAS-Times Editor 21067 Lowe Davis Rd. Covington, La. 70435 The Pontchartrain Astronomy Society, Inc. is an organization of amateur astronomers representing the greater New Orleans area, southeastern Louisiana and adjacent parts of Mississippi. Our members come from many walks of life, and have a common interest in astronomy and observing the sky. The PAS aims to enhance the study and enjoyment of astronomy among our members, and to promote an understanding of astronomy in our local community. Antares, or the star known as the 'rival of Mars' by the ancient Greeks, is the brightest in the constellation Scorpio. This red supergiant resembles Mars in color and has a sixth magnitude blue companion only 3 arc seconds away.