If you were in Northern California or Nevada, you would have an opportunity to see an Annular Solar Eclipse. This is an event when the Moon passes in front of the Sun. But the Moon is at or near Apogee, which is the furthest it gets in its elliptical orbit around the Earth so it appears a bit smaller and doesn’t quite completely cover the Sun leaving a thin ring of light (the Annulus).

If you’re not fortunate enough to be located there, you can still see a partial eclipse from most of the Western and Central regions of North America. However the visible duration of the eclipse is reduced more as you move further East. Sadly those along the East coast won’t see anything as the Sun will have set before the eclipse occurs.

For those of us in Southern Ontario, we do have a chance to see a small portion of this event. Sun will set during the eclipse so we might only see the beginning of it.

First a Warning: Never look directly at the Sun, even near sunset, without proper safety eye protection. This means using an approved solar filter or perhaps a #14 welders lens. Failure to heed these precautions could result in permanent eye damage. Another option is pin hole projection: one piece of paper with a pinhole held in front of another used as a screen. You can sometimes use the shadows of leaves in this fashion – though the shadows may be rather long due to the late time of day.

Since this event is going to occur near sunset and we won’t have much time, to maximum that little time, try to get as far West as you can and overlook water or a very low horizon. Also a mountain cliff could work. You want to minimize the obstructions on the horizon as much as possible. Look West (compass bearing 287 degrees from our area) and follow the Sun as it sets. It will begin approx 8:20pm from our latitude and end when the Sun sets at about 8:35pm.

The following is a chart showing the path of the eclipse and the areas which will see a partial eclipse. Click on image to see larger version.

NASA also has an interactive Google Map here which can give some information. It mostly shows the path of the total eclipse, not the partial areas. But it does provide start times for other areas – it just doesn’t indicate when sunset occurs and the end of your viewing. Note: this site is a bit slow due to volume.

Our Facebook page also has a link to the Sky&Tel’s website which has links to more information.

At the time of this posting, the forecast for area is expected to be clear on Sunday. Please enjoy safely.

Forecasts for very clear skies drew out more than a half dozen HAA members to our favourite observing location, Binbrook Conservation Area. The CSC was indicating, while cear and above average transparency, the seeing was expected to be poor. Fortunately that part of the model was incorrect and we had very steady and crisp conditions. It was a bit windy initially, but it eventually settled down.

HAA members Gord, Vince, Les, Matthew, Don, Tony and Mike all showed up eager to get some observing in. And the skies didn’t disappoint. A variety of equipment was set up with DOB’s refractors and SCT’s of various sizes which gave us opportunities to view objects through different scopes for comparison. There was lots of conversation and swapping of gear so we could better learn which is best of our respective needs.

A beautiful sunset greeted us as we were setting up, along with Venus waving good bye as it gets ready for its transit of the Sun and transition to a morning star.

More images can be seen in the album on our Facebook page.

Our public event in Grimsby last Saturday coincided with Earth Hour and the manager of Grimsby’s Welcome Centre turned the building’s lights off. This made it easier to show the night sky to the hundreds of people who showed up. Many HAA members also attended. (At least two dozen by my count!) So there were many telescopes and binoculars available to offer views of Jupiter, Venus, Mars, Saturn, the Moon, various double stars and Messier objects. I have included a few photos and hope that others add to this entry.

A view of the crowd

Kevin pointing out planets

Joe viewing Venus

From our Facebook page, the Hubble team with NASA and ESA are sponsoring a contest to find some of the hidden treasures in the vast stored archive of the Hubble images collected over the past 22 years. It actually consists of 2 parts. First is to find things that hasn’t been found by conventional processing or the original science team (they may have been looking for other things). The second part is to use some free tools that have been made available to process images and submit them. You can work on one or the other task.

What I found interesting is that a professional tool (FITS Liberator) produced by PhotoShop for the Hubble team has been made into open source (free) for participants to use. It’s already a powerful and useful package, but making it open-source, many programmers can contribute to make it even better. And the beauty is that you can use it without having to purchase PS. Now you can have a powerful tool designed specifically for astro-photography for processing your own images.

Prior to the contest, there were amateurs who scoured the archives looking for interesting things and making significant discoveries (like comets, supernova, galaxy collisions, etc) that hadn’t been seen or recognized by the original science team. But there are huge quantities of images which haven’t been looked at. This contest gives regular amateurs like you and me a better starting point for us to get into the “game” (more tools, info and help). Amateurs from all over the world are getting into this project – and you can too!

The main link with more info, images, software downloads and more can be found here.

Once again a number of the HAA members headed out to Binbrook to take advantage of the clear nights and collect more images of the Moon-Venus-Jupiter conjunction. On Monday night, the Moon had moved enough in its orbit that it was now near Venus rather than Jupiter as it had been the night before. Hopefully some of them will share their photos on this blog. I’m sure some will be appearing in the April edition of the EH newsletter.

My photo of the Moon and Jupiter setting below the Skyway was shown on CHCH news during the day on Monday so this inspired me to try again that night. I went to various locations around town trying to find interesting backdrops to go along with the wondrous view that the conjunction offered.

Below are links to some of the images I collected. It was fun running from location to location with nothing more than a camera. No telescopes, big tripods or other associated gear to haul around. Just the eyes and camera were all that was needed to enjoy this site (as is often the case for many night sky apparitions. All these images were taken under skies with lots of city lights, yet it was still something easy to see and enjoy.

Click on images to enlarge them.

Some of the HAA members ventured out to Binbrook Sunday night to enjoy the conjunction of the crescent Moon along with Jupiter and Venus. I wasn’t able to join them, needing to run out to Burlington and then get home quickly. But that didn’t stop me from taking my camera along and capturing some shots on my trip. It was very windy and quite cool, but with a camera tripod, I was able to set up quickly and take these images. You don’t need fancy gear to enjoy this beautiful viewing opportunity. Just your eyes are enough. But you can also use just about any camera to record this view so you can enjoy it over and over.

Tonight (Monday 26 March) is another opportunity to see this conjunction. The forecast is calling for clear skies. Tonight the Moon will be closer to Venus with Jupiter just below. Head out just after sunset and look West – you can miss these bright objects.

Upcoming transit of the Space Station across the disk of the Sun
About 1:20 PM on Monday afternoon.

If you have a PST or a solar filter, or even some welder’s glass, you
can use the same precautions as for an eclipse to see the silhouette of he Space Station against the disk of the sun.

Click for a map

The map shows the ground track of the event, for the center of the shadow path.
At a distance of 350 km, and about a quarter degree, you will see some of it
even if you are as much as 3 km off track.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the orbital predictions for the ISS are
not very accurate. Wish we could do more.
Crossing the disk of the moon, of course, is a naked-eye event you don’t need any
precautions for.

In honour of this month’s speaker’s topic (March Madness) and being related to the Messier Marathon which is attempted by many amateur astronomers, here’s an interesting link. March/April is considered to be the most favourable time to attempt to view all 110 Messier objects in a single evening. Considering the cool weather for our latitude and the poor viewing conditions we’ve had over these past many months, the odds appear to be against us to having a good night to attempt this.

However, you can “do” the marathon from the comfort of your own home on Sun April 1, 2012. The Virtual Telescope in conjunction with GAM(Global Astronomy Month) and Astronomers Without Borders, is holding a Messier Marathon Night. They will use various remote, robotic telescopes to attempt to view all 110 Messier objects in a single night.
Messier Marathon Online

A small team of HAA’rs visited a Cub pack near the north end of Oakville on Leap Day (Feb 29) to teach astronomy to about 25 enthusiastic kids. This is the second time in recent history that the HAA brought astronomy to a group of cubs (also did a camp in Jan) in the Oakville area.

A partial group shot of the cubs we taught astronomy to.

John, Jim, Joe and Don covered all aspects of the cub badge requirements including:
– Locating the North Star (for navigation).
– Learn about some of the constellations and some folklore.
– Planets (including the usual talk about why Pluto isn’t anymore).
– Meteors and comets.
– Moon phases and how the Moon affects the Earth.
– Basics of how telescopes work.
– And how to use a planisphere/starfinder.

John has the kids enraptured.

Jim passing around meteorites.

The kids were really good and we all enjoyed ourselves. They had lots of questions and it was clear they learned a lot. A bright and fun bunch.

Don covering the basics of constellations and planets.

Our thanks go to their leaders Latif and Jasmine for contacting us and asking for our participation.
Larger/higher resolution photos available on our Facebook page:
www.facebook.com/hamiltonamateurastronomers

The Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics and the Institute for History and Philosophy of Science and Technology are holding a full day symposium about the Transit of Venus which may be of interest to HAA members and those with some astronomy background. It appears to be a fairly comprehensive program, it doesn’t seem particularly well suited to someone completely new to astronomy. (However review the program at the link below and see if this will be a good fit for you.) This is a FREE event running on Saturday April 28, 2012 from 10am to 5pm (with breaks).

Doctors Mike Reid, Ralph Chou, James Graham and others will be discussing various aspects associated with the transit. It includes how to view safely, historical events, science learned from transits, how it affects current exo-planet searches and more. It will also include a tour of astronomical instruments on display at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology.

More information, including location and a full schedule of seminars and events can be found:
Transit of Venus Symposium