Old HAA News from Octember 2003 to November 2004

Fight the bright light

The International Dark-Sky Association fights to preserve and protect the nighttime environment and our heritage of dark skies through quality outdoor lighting.

Meeting summary

C.I.C.L.O.P.S.

Meeting summary

Last weeks meeting was quite a handful of excellent talks from the following club members; Steve Barnes showed his beautiful pictures of the aurora and lunar eclipse, Bob Christmas showed his detailed photos of various star formations and nebula, Mike Spicer gave a humourous and informative presentation on his trip to the Mid Atlantic Star Party as well as discussing the merits of CMOS video astrophotography, Tony Wallace gave a remarkable presentation of his homebuilt 10" scope and dewheater.

Bay Area Science and Engineering Fair - 2005

The 45th annual Bay-Area Science and Engineering Fair will be held March 30th to April 2nd, 2005 at the Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Oakville. Top projects will go on to the Canada-Wide Science Fair in Vancouver (May 15 - 22) and the International Science and Engineering Fair in Pheonix, Arizona (May 8 -14).

It's a bird, a meteor, an Aurora!

MOON MADNESS MARATHON

Would you like to see the terminator up close? Not the Hollywood franchise, but the line dividing night and day that gives the Moon its phases. Craters, crevices, mountains, and volcanoes stand in sharp relief when at the shadows edge. And, when seen through high-powered telescopes the views rival those seen by the Apollo astronauts.

As the Moon moves through its first quarter, November 15th to the 20th, members of the Hamilton Amateur Astronomers will congregate at Bayfront Park from 7-9pm to explore the features revealed each night. Naturally, the public is invited to this Moon Madness Marathon.

Halloween moon

For a few hours on Wednesday, October 27th, the Earth was be directly between the Sun and the Moon creating a total lunar eclipse.

Starting at 9:14pm, the shadow of our planet slowly crossed the lunar surface and gradually changed its colour from an off-white to a muted shade of red.

The Hamilton Amateur Astronomers invited everyone to catch this Halloween Moon at Bayfront Park. Members were on hand to share their equipment and expertise from 8:30 pm until Midnight.

Photos by Glenn Muller, Lou Darcie, and Bob Botts.

Orion's Sword and Nebula

Galileo trip

This summer I visited Florence, Italy, and had the opportunity to see some sites of astronomical interest.

Florence was Galileo's home and it was wonderful to see the telescope that discovered the moons of Jupiter, and walk the street in front of his house.

Click here to see more photos.

Gemini Contest

See the announcement here, here, and here.

Dot to Dot

Iridium flares

The McMaster All-sky camera caught this Iridium flare.

Iridium flares are reflections from the Iridium constellation of communication satellites. Read more about these fascinating man-made flashes of light from here and here.

Meeting summary

Brian Le, one of the BASEF science fair winners gave a presentation on his science fair project titled: "Astrophysics for All".
You can read more about Brian's project here.

Mike Spicer presented his photos of the Venus Transit expereince.

Stewart Attlesey gave presentation of interesting starts and globular clusters in the skies this season.

Charles Baetsen, Member of Peterborough Astronomical Association (and former HAA member ) described the construction of his own domed observatory. He also discussed the different types of observatories amateurs can construct as well as how you can make a choice that best suits your particular needs. Read more about Charles' observatory here.

Venus Transit Party shines

Many people showed to view the Venus transit at the Hamilton Beachfront this morning. See more pictures here.

Venus Transit Webcasts

Here are some websites that will broadcast live webcasts of the Venus transit.

Canadian connexion to the Venus Transit

Listen to Sounds Like Canada on CBC-Radio One this Monday June 7 at 10:00am for a mention of the Canadian connexion to the Venus Transit

Measuring the Venus Transit

It seems that observers in the Netherlands will have ringside seats for the June 8 Venus Transit. The weather forecast for Tuesday is excellent (stable atmosphere, 60% sunshine) so a lot of our high school students will try and measure contact timings in order to calculate the the Earth-Sun distance.

If you are also observing may I please ask you to submit your contact timings so that our students can perform their calculations by selecting a long baseline for measuring the solar parallax? Of course you are welcome to join in and use our online calculator as well! We also host live broadcasts from the Netherlands and Belgium and from the Dutch Open Telescope at La Palma (Canary Islands). Furthermore our website contains links to webcasts all over the world.

Catching a Meteor

This is one of the first images from the McMaster All-sky Camera. Its purpose is to help locate meteorite falls when there is an extremely bright meteor seen in the area. At present, the "network" of all-sky cameras in southern Ontario has only two other such cameras, both operated by UWO and sited near London, Ontario. The roughly 100 km distance between the sites it very nearly optimum for meteorite-fall and orbit work.

A low-light Sony video camera with a 1/2-inch CCD and fish-eye lens feeds a special digital-signal-processing box designed and produced at Sandia Labs in the US. It differences frames in real-time and when something passes its test for "meteorness", it starts saving a 6-second patch of video which is saved in RAM and then (slightly later) transfered to the disk of a 500 MHz (!) computer using its parallel port (!!).

Apparently it is also good at detecting lightning and flares from Iridium satellites!

Comet NEAT And The Beehive

Comet C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) appears above the open cluster M44. (The Beehive Cluster) in the same binocular field of view in Cancer on the evening of Sunday, May 16, 2004. Location: Barry's Bay, Ontario. Focal Length: 200mm @ f/3.5. Exposure: 6 minutes. Film: Fuji NPZ 800

Clear Sky/Cloud Detector

Exploring Eyepieces: Part 1

Leaving The Fire - The Quest For Our Place In Space

A party of planets!

Over a hundred visitors came to Bayfront Park, Sunday evening, to view the 5 major planets through HAA's scopes. Though Mercury hid behind a retreating cloud bank, the 1st Quarter Moon more than made up for it. It was a good night, made more so by the efforts of members who brought equipment and shared their knowledge. Many thanks to all who came out.

March is Messier Month

The Messier Catalogue is a list of 110 deep sky objects (galaxies, nebulae, star clusters, etc.) that are visible in backyard telescopes. Each year, during early spring, it is possible for an observer to see all 110 objects in a single night. This is a challenge that few have mastered!

Check off how many you can see from this Messier List that is organized by appearance from West to East.

Read more about the Messier list of objects here.

Sending a Spider to the Moon

Randy Attwood gave an excellent presentation on the detailed look at what was involved in the design and construction of the Apollo Lunar Module. Conceived in 1962, the original Lunar Module did not look much like the "Eagle" which made the first lunar landing. Over a period of seven years, as many engineering problems were solved, the design of the LM evolved. Angular in shape, flimsy in construction and bug-like in appearance, the LM was the first true manned spacecraft not meant to fly in the Earth's atmosphere.

His talk was illustrated with many pictures depicting the evolution and construction of the Apollo Lunar Module. A description of how the LM was guided to the lunar surface was presented as well as analysis of the first lunar landing.

C.I.C.L.O.P.S.

A new way of looking at the Pleiades - click here for a unique view.

Book review

Mapping The Sky: The Essential Guide to Astronomy by Leïla Haddad and Alain Cirou.

WANTED!

First Mars, now Saturn

HAA club members and a couple dozen guests braved the cold winter conditions to view Saturn, the Moon, Mars, and Venus through telescopes at the Hamilton Bayfront Park last night.

Saturn, the awe-inspiring gas giant whith its rings near maximum tilt will not be this spectactular for another 15 years, but don't wait that long -- it still looks great at any angle.

See the writeup in The Hamilton Spectator - Monday January 26, 2004 Page A8.

Astro-photos (updated)

Clyde Miller gave a presentation on the refracting telescope -- complete camera mount -- that he built in his workshop.

Specs: Konusky 200 motor, 8"(200mm) 1000mmfl parabolic Newtonian, EQ5 mount/tripod, Dual drive - Questar 3.5" OTA - Leitz Telyt 1:5.6 / 560mm APO Lens cell, my own built housing with a skywatcher 2" refractor focuser. - Lenses: 32mm, 17mm, scopetronics 14mm wa, 10mm, 5mm LER, Questar 24mm and 16mm brandon - Tele Vu 2x APO barlow, Skywatcher 2x and 3x barlow - Laser collimator - 2 Alt Azimuth fluid head tripods - GEM-200K HD EQ mount on 3" pedestal - Lumicon Deep Sky Filter - Nikon Coolpix 4500 Digital camera c/w 256m and 64m cf cards - Minolta XG9 35mm Camera - Logitech Quikcam - Winstar Planetarium software - 6 image editing software's - Registax2 - and many more software packages and computers

Here are some photos that he took.

3-D Star Maps of Nearby Stars

Book by Kurt Forge