General Meeting for June 9^th 2017.

With space exploration making it’s way back to public interest with the recent flyby of Pluto, new Chinese space stations, talk of manned missions to Mars, top-secret US Air Force space planes and private companies like SpaceX making leaps and bounds in rocket technology, we often overlook the men and women behind​ the shiny rockets and high tech space probes. Join Kevin as he counts down his list of the 10 Most Influential People in space history – the scientists, engineers, politicians, and of course the astronauts themselves, who’s efforts have resulted in the success of humanity’s journey from home to explore the cosmos.
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The May issue of the Hamilton Amateur Astronomers Event Horizon newsletter is now available for download!

In this issue you’ll find…

• The Sky This Month
• A Quebec Star: The Ball House
• April 2017 General Meeting Summary
• Upcoming Events
• Cartoon Corner

Download the latest issue or visit the newsletters section for past issues.

Photo credit: Orion by Everett Cairns

General Meeting for May 12^th 2017.

This Spring SkyShed is launching POD MAX, a “mid sized” observatory at 12.5′ in diameter, and the POD MAX funding program – The Starships Project. Wayne will be focusing on these endeavors and how they will further aid the astro community, and STEM education.
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The April issue of the Hamilton Amateur Astronomers Event Horizon newsletter is now available for download!

In this issue you’ll find…

• Easter and Astronomy
• Snippets from April Fools’ Day
• The Sky This Month
• March 2017 General Meeting Summary
• Upcoming Events & McCallion Planetarium Shows
• Cartoon Corner

Download the latest issue or visit the newsletters section for past issues.

Photo credit: Open Clusters M44 and M67, by Bob Christmas

General Meeting for April 7^th 2017.

This talk will focus on the past, present, and future of big data in astronomy. “Big data” is the hot new thing in finance, health care, advertising and more. But as one of the first observational sciences, astronomy has been dealing with big data for thousands of years. New and imminent facilities for capturing and storing astronomical observations will lead to what some call the “tsunami of data” in astronomy. Techniques like machine learning and citizen science are needed to get the most science out of these enormous datasets. I’ll tell you about how big our big data in astronomy really is, and about some of the discoveries that it has enabled.

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The March issue of the Hamilton Amateur Astronomers Event Horizon newsletter is now available for download!

In this issue you’ll find…

• The Penumbral Lunar Eclipse from Cancun
• The Sky This Month
• February 2017 General Meeting Summary
• Eye Candy
• Cartoon Corner

Download the latest issue or visit the newsletters section for past issues.

Photo credit: Orion Nebula by Jim Wamsley

General Meeting for March 10^th 2017.

Massive stars, young or old, are interesting celestial objects with fascinating mysteries. In this talk, we will explore some of the mysteries of the disks around massive stars and how their formation, dissipation and structure affect our understanding of not only the planet formation but also the star formation process.

Dr. Parshati Patel received her Hons. B.Sc. in Physics and Astronomy from University of Toronto, M.Sc. in Astronomy and Planetary Science from the Western University and her Ph.D. in Astronomy and Planetary Science & Exploration from the Western University. During her graduate studies, she studied protoplanetary disks around young, massive pre-main sequence (Herbig Ae/Be) stars as well as circumstellar disks around massive main sequence stars. She is currently the Public Education and Outreach Program Coordinator at the Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration at the Western University.

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There’s a fast-moving returning comet in the sky, and we can see it with binoculars!

Comet 45P Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova

Here’s a link to the finder charts. The time is in universal time, so you will need to add 5 hours to the EST to get the time to use. Right now the Comet is not far from Hercules and is in the morning sky.
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General Meeting for February 10^th 2017.

Barry Sherman will be discussing Chromatic Aberration and ways to mitigate this issue in your telescope optics. Barry will also include a few sample telescopes which suffer from heavy Chromatic Aberration and other issues so that you can stay away from these types of telescopes. Bernie Venasse will then open the floor in an open forum style chat to learn what you think of the club. We would like to hear your thoughts, comments and ways to improve your club.

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The February issue of the Hamilton Amateur Astronomers Event Horizon newsletter is now available for download!

In this issue you’ll find…

• Cleaning the Optics on a 1975 Celestron C8
• Our Universe in a Cup of Coffee
• Tracking Vesta
• The Sky This Month
• 2017 Calendar of Events

Download the latest issue or visit the newsletters section for past issues.

Photo credit: The Moon & Venus by Chris White