April meeting roundup

• Greg Emery talked about the sky for the month of April.
• Glenn Muller announced an HAA trip to the Cherry Springs Star Party in Pennsylvania at the end of May.
• Mike Jefferson talked about recent observations of the LOFAR radio telescope, including the detection of an M-Class Solar Flare on March 25, 2008. Click on the picture below to view full graph of this period. The flare is the spike indicated by the red arrow on the right hand side.
• John Gauvreau, the night's main speaker, talked about ten astronomical items we seldom think about, from Greek geometric calculation of the distance of the Sun, to the minimal separation of neighbour galaxies.

Read more details of the April meeting here.

LOFAR II Radio Antenna Update for March

Click here or on the picture to see a new plot of readings from the LOFAR II radio antenna. This is a plot of night time residual effects of a ~ B class 4.5 flare detected by the LOFAR II antenna on March 11, 2007. This one hit the other side of the Earth and worked its way around to us on the night side. The GOES spike occurred at about 05:00 and LOFAR II responded about an hour or so later.

Data reported by Mike Jefferson.

Also, Click here to go to the 3-day GOES X-Ray Flux Monitor Website (dynamically updates every 5 minutes).

March meeting roundup

• Bob Christmas showed his pictures of Comet Holmes and gave some insight into its Fall 2007 outburst. He also showed his pictures of the February 20, 2008 lunar eclipse.
• Mike Jefferson updated us on the performance of the LOFAR II radio telescope. He also paid tribute to the late Dr. Norman Green
• Don Pullen talked about an upcoming grazing lunar occultation.
• Club Chair Mike Spicer talked about the upcoming Messier Marathon.

Read more details of the March meeting here.

February meeting roundup

• Greg Emery talked about the sky for February, and astronomy freeware available online [See Interactive Astronomical Tools under TOOLS].
• Club Chair Mike Spicer talked about observing Saturn, as well as the upcoming Total Lunar Eclipse on February 20 - 21.
• Nicole DeBond talked about the Geology of the Moon.

Read more details of the February meeting here.

HAA LOFAR II Radio Antenna Data Reports Now Automated [Updated]

On Wednesday, January 24/08, Chris Kubiak very kindly offered to come to my house and help us with some minor problems with the LOFAR II radio-x-ray telescope. His very capable expertise put the instrument on a router with my workstation and streamlined the data collection capacity to send daily observations directly to Stanford University as well as to my worstation for archival purposes. We are now finished with 'floppy-email-attachments' which have been the standard fare for the last 46 days of operation. These manual agendas had to be done at the end of each UTC day which is 7:00 PM EST. To date we have logged well over 800,000 observations for the 191-country, UN-NASA SIDMON Radio Telescope Network for International Heliophysical and International Polar Year. This makes us part of the world's largest telescope array.

THANK YOU CHRIS!

-- Mike Jefferson

Update - February 6, 2008: Click here to view recent LOFAR data now available on the Stanford Solar Center's SID Database site. This is actual data recorded by HAA member Mike Jefferson's homemade LOFAR radio antenna! Data is indicated by the legend to the right of graph as "LOFAR NAA S-0090-FB-0090".

January LOFAR II Radio Antenna Reports [Updated]

Click here for latest January reports on the LOFAR II antenna and project. Included is a graph of the January 6 readings. Update - January 21, 2008: New report for January 20, including new chart showing Jan. 20 readings, with Jan. 6 readings superimposed.

January Telescope Clinic a Huge Success!

• Click here or on the picture to view the Spectator video.
• Click here for more details, and members' comments, about this telescope clinic.

Comet Holmes Movie by Bob Christmas

Click here or on the picture to watch a movie of this past year's outburst of Comet 17P/Holmes. [611 KB]

This is an animation of six (6) still pictures taken by HAA member Bob Christmas from October 30, 2007 thru November 30, 2007, inclusive.

Article on Mars in The Hamilton Spectator

Click here to read the latest article on Mars in The Hamilton Spectator.

The LOFAR II Radio Antenna is Up and Running! [Updated]

The LOFAR II Radio Antenna, crafted and built by HAA member Mike Jefferson, is now operational and receiving signals!

Click here for more information on the LOFAR II antenna and project, as well as reports for November and December.

November meeting roundup

• Greg Emery talked about the sky for November.
• Don Pullen updated the Club about grazing lunar occultations, one of which is coming up on November 17.
• Mike Jefferson updated the Club on the LOFAR II radio antenna project.
• Club Chair Mike Spicer talked about Comet 17P/Holmes.
• Ray Khan talked about his astronomy experiences. He also gave a comparison of the Celestron and Meade hand-held sky locators.

Read more details of the November meeting here.

See pictures in the Meetings Gallery.

October meeting roundup

• This was the HAA's Annual General Meeting, in which a brand new club council was elected for the upcoming year.
• Mike Spicer presented the “Sky This Month” for October. pdf [1.2M]
• Glenn Muller gave his “Into The Mystic” talk.

Read more details of the October meeting here.