Hamilton Amateur Astronomers Ap Ev ril 2002 ent Horizon Volume 9 Issue 6 Hunting for Globular Cluster G1 by Marcel VanDalfsen Last month at the HAA meeting, we saw an image M31 and G1. This image was patched together using G1 during Steve Bickerton's presentation. It was sug- the Digitized Sky Survey (DSS), and covers a region 4 gested to me by Anne Tekatch to write a short article on a side. G1 is located in the small 15 circle in the with some charts on how to find this globular cluster. lower-right (SW). On the image you can also see M32 G1 (also known as Mayall II) is the largest globular just South of M31, and M110 North-West of M31. cluster which is part of the Andromeda Galaxy. G1 is located about 3 South-West of M31, and appears as a magnitude 13.7 object. It appears as the point of a triangle beside two other stars (magnitude 13.6 and 14.3). Its coordinates (for those with GO telescopes, etc) are RA = 00h32m46.8s, and Dec = +39 34 43 One method to locate this object would be to start at M31, head South about 2 to the claw/paw asterism around 32 And (a magnitude 5.3 star), and then head west about 2 to center on G1. The second Figure is a chart showing the brighter stars down to about 10/11th magnitude, in relation to M31 and G1. This chart has been adapted from Ura- nometria 2000.0, with extra stars added in by hand. The two circles encircling G1 are 15 and 45 in diam- eter. The bright star on the left edge (East) is And (magnitude 4.5), and the bright star on the bottom edge (South) is 32 And (magnitude 5.3). The first figure is an image of the area surrounding Cont'd on Page 4 ... Chair's report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .page 2 WordFind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .page 6 Axess Communications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .page 2 Planet Watch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 6 Ask The Experts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .page 3 Web Watch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 6 First Light . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 5 Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .page 8 Page 2 Chair's Report Thanks to the generosity of Rick own terms, it is possible for us to MacDougall, in both time and engage in a wider range of activities Event Horizon is a publica- money, the HAA now has its own than might be considered appropri- tion of the Hamilton Amateur domain name and hosting! By the ate for a university-hosted site. For Astronomers (HAA). time you read this, it is likely that instance, we can have book reviews The HAA is an amateur astron- you can change any HAA book- which link to booksellers - one of omy club dedicated to the promo- marks to point to our new domain the most common questions I get is tion and enjoyment of astronomy name: "What books should I buy to begin for people of all ages and experi- to appreciate the night sky?" ence levels. www.amateurastronomy.org Speaking of thanks, we owe a huge The cost of the subscription is in- amount of it to Anthony Tekatch cluded in the $25 individual or This monicker was chosen to who has turned our website into a $30 family membership fee for the reflect what the HAA is all continually- updated astronomy re- year. Event Horizon is published about. We figured that even source. There has been no "link a minimum of 10 times a year. given its length, it was better rot" since Anthony took over as than www.thenewcityofhamilton- both webmaster (and editor)! He HAA Council amateurastronomers.ca! (There is has been responsible for making Hon. Chair . . . . . . . . . . Jim Winger a good story about our attempt to the switchover between the old Chair. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Doug Welch get our first choice in the .ca top- website and the new one and has Second Chair . . . . . . . Grant Dixon level domain - but it is probably been the one interacting with Rick Secretary . . . . . . . Margaret Walton best that it not appear in print!) MacDougall to get all the details Treasurer . . . . . . . . . Barbara Wight We are, of course, grateful to the settled. Observing Dir. . . Stewart Attlesey Faculty of Science at McMaster It is due to the initiative and hard Publicity . . . . . . . . . . Sheila Overall which hosted the website for many work of folks like Rick and An- Editor/Web . . . . Anthony Tekatch years, partly to recognize the role thony that our club just keeps get- Membership Dir.. . . .Ann Tekatch the HAA has played in public out- ting better and better. Let's see Councillor. . . . . . . . .Ray Badgerow reach through the William J. Mc- what else we can do to make it even Callion Planetarium. more interesting! Web: amateurastronomy.org Now that we are hosting on our by Doug Welch Mailing Address: Doug Welch is the current chair of the HAA and also a PO Box 65578 founding member. You can find out more about Doug at: Dundas, ON http://www.physics.mcmaster.ca/people/faculty/ L9H 6Y6 Welch_DL_h.html Domain Name and Web hosting for the Hamilton Amatuer Astronomy club supplied by Axess Communications Corporate and Residential DSL and Web Hosting http://www.axess.com support@axess.com Event Horizon - Hamilton Amateur Astronomers amateurastronomy.org Page 3 From the Editor lar physics and variables, astropho- even more galaxies. What does this tography using emulsion/print film, mean? Well, the star system we live This is the second newsletter in a polar-aligning an equatorial mount, in is flat, and has a concentration of row using LATEX. It's turned out to scanning photos and image process- stars in one direction (which means be a huge learning curve for the first ing. we're not near the centre) with a month but this months has been Send in your questions to central bulge. If you keep work- much easier to compile. LATEX really editor@amateurastronomy.org ing at this, you'll soon realize that is a programmer's dream, once ev- we must be living in the plane of erything is running smoothly I just Q. How do astronomers know something pancake-shaped that has type "make" and the newsletter is what our Milky Way galaxy looks a central bulge. If you look "up" created :) like and how did they determine or "down" out of the plane of the I'm very interested in anything where we are located in it? by Brian pancake you see great distances into that you send my way for the Chire the universe - everywhere else you're newsletter or the web page. looking through the plan of the pan- Please send your articles in the A. First let's talk about the cake and your line of sight will be any of the following formats: shape of the Milky Way. There are blocked by it. However, the exact a few ways that have been pursued o text file details are hard to make out be- to answer this problem - I'll describe o Tex file cause of all the obscuring dust (e.g., two: one using evidence from opti- o Word document the thin dark band which splits the cal measurements and the other us- fuzzy one in half) and gas. Com- o handwritten ing radio. paring this to other galaxies we can The web page contains a new If you go out at night over the see might lead you to the conclu- section on book recommendations course of the year (and especially if sion that we live in a spiral galaxy (not Oprah's). If you have any you live nearer the equator or even of some sort. Measuring the dis- books that you'd like to recommend in the southern hemisphere) you'll tances to stars, gaseous nebulae, etc. to other HAA members then please notice that the stars are not dis- would reinforce this conclusion. send that info along. 15% of the cost tributed evenly in the sky. During of the books featured here will be the northern summer you'll see a Using radio telescopes we can given to the Hamilton Amateur As- fuzzy band of light overhead, split observe electromagnetic radiation tronomy club (if they are ordered on more or less in half by smaller, dark from sources using frequencies the same "click through") band in the middle of it. (This band which aren't as obscured by dust Also, 5% from **anything** or- of light is visible at other times, but and gas. That is, you can probe dered from Amazon when you "click it's most pronounced during that much further into our galaxy. Re- through" to a purchase using the time.) If you were to plot these peating the above process at these banner at the bottom will be given things on a sky map, you would wavelengths gives us a sharper pic- to the club to help keep membership notice that the fuzzy band begins ture of our galaxy. It also turns out fees low. faintly at one end, gets a bit brighter that our galaxy also has a bit of Anthony Tekatch and bulges in the middle, and then a "bar" running through the cen- anthony@unihedron. tapers off again (more or less sym- tral bulge. Most spiral galaxies com metrically). Now repeat the process do not have an obvious bar run- again with a telescope. The fuzzy ning through them, but a significant band begins to resolve into individ- fraction do. Recent improvements ual stars, clusters, and gaseous re- in observational techniques shows gions. On the opposite side of the that more galaxies than previously Ask the Experts sky (i.e., in the winter) you don't thought actually sport this feature, find the effect to be nearly as pro- it's just not a particularly large or If you have any questions about nounced and, in fact, you might see bright feature in many cases. Radio astronomy we have experts in the a few galaxies too. And if you look observations also allow us to trace following fields that are ready above and below the plane of the the spiral arms in our galaxy by to answer your questions; galac- fuzzy band you also see, relative mapping where the gas and dust is tic astronomy, astrophysics, stel- to the band itself, fewer stars and (since usually you can't see stars Event Horizon - Hamilton Amateur Astronomers amateurastronomy.org Page 4 with radio telescopes - just weird different types of stars intrinsically you can start to build up a 3D model ones like supernova remenants). are. We can then use this to make of our star system in this manner Okay, so now we have the gen- reasonably accurate guesses about (along with a bunch of other tech- eral shape of the star system we're how far away stars are that we can't niques). If I recall correctly, it turns living in, but where exactly are we directly measure the distance for. out we're about 2/3 of the way out relative to the centre of it? Well we However, this is made somewhat un- from the centre of the visible por- can deduce from the above we are certain because intervening gas and tion of our galaxy in one of the sev- neither at the centre or the edge. dust causes stars to appear fainter eral spiral arms that our Milky Way By determining the distances to the than they really are and it's really galaxy has. by Tom Steckner stars near us (a whole other story), hard to know just how much of this we can start to figure out how bright stuff is obscuring our view. Anyway, ... Hunting Globular cont'd from page 1 Finally, the fourth Figure is a 15 field-of-view around G1. Happy Hunting! by Marcel VanDalfsen Marcel VanDalfsen is currently an Astronomy Ph.D. student at McMaster University working on the topic The third Figure shows the objects in a 45 circle of globular cluster systems. He has been inter- around G1. This figure was created using the DSS im- ested in astronomy since early childhood. He has a ages, and may be difficult to see. The stars in this figure website at http://impatiens.physics.mcmaster.ca/ range from 9th magnitude to 15th magnitude. vandalfs/home.html Event Horizon - Hamilton Amateur Astronomers amateurastronomy.org Page 5 First Light By Greg Emery One day in November 2000, my wife came home with a $35 telescope for the kids. I started thinking how I have always been fascinated by the stars and astronomy ( I considered majoring in it, but thought who would want to work in a remote place with one of those huge telescopes?). After doing a little research I learned that I could build my own telescope. Now this is for me! I'm an engineer! I finished my basement by myself! I know how to use tools! I just read Richard Berry's book! Fast forward the calendar to August 2001, while hunting for sources for mirror blanks I come across a company in the Dundas yellow pages. I phone the num- ber ­ always a fax machine. Undaunted I go to the address, knock on the door and explain my plight. The person on the other side of the door looks at me quizzi- cally and then invites me in to talk. The next day, Saturday August 11, I go to the HAA dark site in Bin- brook to find out what real telescopes are like ( I have still NEVER looked through a real telescope in my life Fast forward again, past all of the building, read- to this point). ing, trip to the Hospital and cloudy, miserable nights to March 21, 2002. I've finally gotten a handle on what col- limation is and how to do it, my telescope is ready , it is At the Binbrook site I park and see two telescope cold, it is dark and I see First Light. The craters along being erected: Ann Tekatch's 12.5" and Stewart At- the terminator of the moon are fabulous. I practice tlesey's behemoth. Now the engineer in me says " A what I've learned and celebrate my telescope by finding telescope you need a ladder to use? ­ Awesome". The M13, M81 and M82 ( Which until recently I thought person from the other side of the door in Dundas was were highways in Britian!). When I found M13, I was there also ­ none other than Doug Welch. After this standing by myself at 12:30 and simply uttered "Now experience, building a telescope is no longer a question this is so cool". I am hooked, obsessed, enthralled and ­ it is a necessity. exhilarated ­ I have seen First Light. Event Horizon - Hamilton Amateur Astronomers amateurastronomy.org Page 6 WordFind Find The Following Words: ASTEROID BINOCULAR EARTH GALAXY JUPITER MARS MERCURY NEPTUNE SATURN STAR SUN TELESCOPE URANUS VENUS G E A R T H Y D R K A P G C M R I A E S L J A A U O L P R U A W R C R U O E S N Greg Emery is a new member of the HAA X S R E C C T U K A and has only been active as an amateur as- Y E T O S I N F I R tronomer for about 1 year. Greg's interests M S N E P E D J U U in astronomy lean more towards deep sky A I L U V S T A R E objects as opposed to planetary observing. B E J N R U T A S R In addition to observing, interests also in- T E N U T P E N O R clude optics design and amateur telescope making. Comet Watch Planet Watch On March 21st I found Ikeya-Zhang with my 7x50 This month is great for viewing Venus, Mars, Saturn binoculars. It was my first chance to see it. It sure and Jupiter. In fact the moon will mark the location is a cute little comet! Not terribly impressive from my of each planet. Look to the west just after sunset: light-polluted front yard, but certainly visible in the o April 14 Á Moon and à Venus binoculars. It seemed a bit brighter than Mesarthim in Aries, so I o April 15 Á Moon and Ä Mars estimated its magnitude at about 3.7. I couldn't begin o April 16 Á Moon and Æ Saturn to judge the length of its tail, though. The sky was too o April 18 Á Moon and Å Jupiter bright to see much of it. Binoculars will reveal the moons of Jupiter and a small Has anyone else had a look at it recently? telescope will reveal the rings of Saturn. by Ann Tekatch WebWatch Doug Welch's suggestions: http://www.pha.jhu.edu/kgb/cosspec// The Cosmic Spectrum and the Color of the Universe Marcel VanDalfsen's G1 info: http://impatiens.physics.mcmaster.ca/vandalfs/g1/ G1 globular cluster http://cadcwww.dao.nrc.ca/ DSS web site at the Canadian Astronomical Data xCenter Suggested links by Steve Willis and Marg Walton: http://www.inconstantmoon.com/sitemap.htm Moon Music http://www.ency-astro.com/ Encyclopedia of Astronomy and Astrophysics Event Horizon - Hamilton Amateur Astronomers amateurastronomy.org Page 7 Astro photography of Bob Botts: Bob Botts has contributed a large number of Astro photos to the web site, many have interesting notations as well. See them plus more at amateurastronomy.org/gallery.html Marcel VanDalfsen's M104 - The Sombrero Galaxy page: http://impatiens.physics.mcmaster.ca/ vandalfs/m104.html Send your interesting links into the editor at editor@amateurastronomy.org Event Horizon - Hamilton Amateur Astronomers amateurastronomy.org 1 8 15 22 29 7 14 21 28 6 13 20 27 10:44pm 11:33pm 5 12 19 26 NightNight NightNight Saturday June 2002 4 11 18 25 2:52am 3:41am 4:31am 3 10 17 24 GRS ObservingObserving GRS ObservingObserving GRS 2 9 16 23 30 6 13 20 27 5 12 19 26 4 11 18 25 MeetingMeeting 8:14pm 3 10 17 24 Friday NightNight NightNight NightNight 2 9 16 23 30 3 GeneralGeneral 12:22am ObservingObserving 10 ObservingObserving HAAHAA 17 24 31 April 2002 1 8 15 22 29 GRS ObservingObserving 7 14 21 28 9:04pm 9:54pm 10:43pm 11:32pm Thursday 2 1:13am 2:02am 2:51am 3:41am 4:30am GRS 9 GRS 16 GRS 23 GRS 30 GRS call Roy info, Rob Jupiter Attlesey Wednesday 1 8 15 near observing Stewart 827-9105, 692-3245 Moon 22 29 For Red May 2002 night. used. 8:15pm Great is 9:04pm 9:53pm 10:43pm at Venus time Tuesday 7 visible 12:23am 1:12am near 2:02am 2:51am Jupiter's Spot Eastern GRS 14 GRS Moon 21 GRS 28 GRS GRS: Monday 6 4:31amGRS 13 20 27 UT Pacific. eclipse, 8:14pm the 9:03pm 12:03 from lunar on and Sunday 12:22am 1:12am visible centered and Australia GRS GRS Penumbral