I am sure every sky-watcher can recognize CORONA BOREALIS, the beautiful constellation of the Northern Crown found in the spring sky, rising high in the East after dark.

After many years at minimum brightness (and I mean as faint as magnitude 15), the variable star R Coronae Borealis is slowly brightening again. If you have binoculars, you can watch it brighten slowly this spring until it reaches magnitude 6 again.

R CrB variables are normally bright, but can accumulate a cloud-like covering of carbon. Until that carbon shell is burned off, these stars can be dimmed up to 10 magnitudes. This star has a habit of dimming and then regaining its brightness within a few months.

Strangely, since 2007 R CrB has been only 1/10,000 its normal brightness. Moreover, whereas R CrB usually springs back to magnitude 6 quickly, this latest recovery is taking a long time. The AAVSO chart below graphs R CrB’s visual brightness for the last 10 years. You can see the star’s swift dip and recovery in 2003, contrasted with the several years at minimum and the most recent – very slow – recovery.

This is a star worth watching again!

Tuesday, June 5th started out overcast with rain threatening but the clouds started breaking up in the afternoon, just in time to set up equipment and prepare for the transit event that started about 6 pm local.

My setup was an 11″ SCT with binoviewer and a separate 4″ apo, both with appropriate solar filtering, of course! Passers-by saw the telescopes on the front lawn and stopped off for a view of the planet Venus in silhouette against the sun. Every few minutes a thick cloudwould hide the view in the 4″ apo, but the big telescope was largely undaunted, and a binoviewer gave a 3-D like view of Venus and several sunspot groups.

Therese took some handheld snapshots, one of which follows:

Therese – hand-held shot through 32mm Tele-Vue eyepiece on 11 inch Nexstar SCT

Here is an image of Jupiter taken by my pal Chris Go on 9 November, showing the absent SEB and the Great Red Spot as it appears now (N is up). Watch the SEB for developments:

Jupiter 9 Nov 2010 (our time)(N is up)

Three years ago during the Perseid meteor watch, observers were able to catch the long period variable star Chi Cygni overhead, shining at magnitude 3.5 – the brightest it had been in decades. This year, alas, Chi will be at minimum during the Perseid shower but observers can scan the western sky for R CrB, a variable star in the constellation of Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown.

R CrB fades and brightens suddenly! Most of the time it is between magnitude 5 amd 6, a naked eye object if you know where to look. It has been beyond the reach of 12″ telescopes for the last two years, but you never know when it may pop back into view!

Heather reports imaging Jupiter as it drifted slowly between the trees as seen from her backyard patio. She collected a short AVI on the laptop and set Registax to stack the images into a composite. Her image clearly shows that both equatorial belts are again prominent and the equatorial zome has brightened to its usual cream colour. The laptop laboured while she napped, turning out this stacked image of the shadow transit of Ganymede, way to go, Heather:

Of course, the image posted here is much reduced in size and format to permit posting. No doubt Heather will be giving a talk soon at a HAA monthly meeting, showing more of the images she is collecting with the new scope and imaging equipment. What a great club we have!

JULY 12TH – WIND, RAIN, WAVES OF CLOUD…

The thunderstorm threat kept me from driving to the Burloak Public Night (how did that go?). I took the wet shroud off the pier mount and attached a 6″ Mak while standing on a soggy carpet. As evening wore on the gibbous Moon emerged from waves of windswept cloud, enough for me to marvel at two craterlets in Plato and the terraced walls of Copernicus.

Once it was dark, I dodged cloud banks to capture a dozen 30 second images of M27 to compare with those taken with the 80mm apo a few nights ago. By 11:30 Jupiter had cleared the trees and I showed banding on the planet’s disk, 4 beautiful moons and the about-to-be-occulted star to some neighbours who dropped by.

All in all, not too bad for a thunderstorm evening.

From John Gauvreau

This is the moon from Bayfront, through the clouds and shot by pointing my point-and-shoot camera through the eyepiece of my 80mm scope. Despite the clouds the visitors seemed to really enjoy the views!

A fine assortment of HAA members and their scopes, ready to host the public.

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KerryLH Update:

Daytime solar and lunar observing at the Nature Centre (Hamilton beach). It was a perfect day with many curious people passing by.
Many still enjoyed the view of the sun even with no sunspots. The waxing cresent moon had some interesting features.

Evening session:
Excellent turnout of people looking at Mars, Saturn and the moon.

All scopes pointed at the moon

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A couple of shots from Don Pullen

New members and winners of telescope at May meeting

UPDATE from Don Pullen

Here’s the much anticipated path information. I had some difficulty in generating the dynamic Google map page, so I’m just posting snapshots of 2 view levels. The green line indicates the path center, while the grey lines indicate the 5km outer-limit range of being able to see the occultation. The closer to the path center, the better chance you have of seeing the greater effect from hills and valleys. For those not aware, Lake Niapenco is name of the lake in the conservation area.

Image 1 covers more area:

Image 2 provides more of a close-up view of path:

The path runs right through the middle of Binbrook Conservation Area. Therefore we could observe from either the main site or the alternate. The trees which line the eastern part of the alternate site may block our view. So it looks like the preferred viewing area will be our regular spot within the park.

The transit will begin at approx 19:06 local time on Oct 22. The moon’s altitude will be 24deg with an azimuth of 126deg (it will be in the SE). It will be about 85% illuminated.

Bring your camcorder, shortwave radio, GPS and of course some binoculars or a scope.

UPDATE: Monday morning
The CSC is predicting some cloud rolling in this evening ahead of the rain. At the moment, it indicates we may get a thinning or maybe even some clearing of the clouds right around the time of the occultation. However, Kerry and the weather satellite images are a little less optimistic. There may be gaps in the clouds, but it’s going to be a close timing game as to whether we’ll be able to see both the moon and a magnitude 6.2 star through whatever cloud cover there may be.

At the moment, I’m still anticipating to head out to the main viewing site at Binbrook between 6 and 6:30pm to set up. I expect the gate will still be open at this time. But if not, I will open it when I arrive and put on the combo lock. Keep in mind that if the ground is soft and wet, do not set up on the grass areas – either set up on the road or in one of the parking areas (pavillion, boat launch area, etc).

I’ll also post an update later this afternoon in case conditions change drastically.

UPDATE: 5pm Monday
The CSC has changed their predictions for the area and it looks like we will have fairly steady but light cloud cover for the event period. The Weather Network forecast and the satellite images are indicating that we may get some clearing breaks up until about 8pm. But at least the rain won’t hit us for a few hours.

So I think we will still head out and take our chances. See you at Binbrook any time after 6pm.

Don