I just got home from an evening of observing at BCA. Don and I were there, as well as 2 guests who came with me in my …. 2001 …. van which now holds the Great White Scope and accessories.

I spent the afternoon designing and building a rack to put everything in neatly, as, not being a volkswagen,
things are otherwise not snug-fitting.

I watched the movie ‘The Lorax’ which was played on a huge inflatable screen with rear-projection. The sound system was remarkably good, as was the klondike i bought at intermission.

The evening had started out cloudy but then cleared to the north. Patchy clear skies in the south allowed me to see Saturn for a while (properly termed a sucker-hole) before i set up the GWS.

I did set up, and Don had a refractor. Alas, they played the credits of the movie before they announced the observing, and by then all had left except Don, Me and my 2 guests.

We still had a chance to discuss the night sky and the wonders of the human eye, while waiting for the southern sky to clear. We saw Arcturus and Alberio and many nearby stars, and discussed precession and stellar magnitudes and ways to find the north star, and planned to come again.

A little late in getting this posted. I tried to provide an update while still at Cherry Springs, but the wireless internet connection there is very sporadic and finicky. The few times it works, we’re often focusing on getting the latest weather reports.

Any way… we had another good contingent turn up at Cherry Springs. Matthew and his wife Janice, Les and his wife Terri, Ed, Jim, John and myself were all there representing the HAA. We also met a number of other Canadians from the Niagara and the Bolton areas at the event.

We were blessed with clear skies from Wed to Sat night. As the week wore on, the skies took a little longer each evening before becoming clear, but they did get good every night. It was one of our best visits with respect to clear skies and the ability to observe each night.

The usual schedule ran with presentations on Fri and Sat. The keynote speaker Sat afternoon was David Eicher from Astronomy Magazine – not surprising he was very good. They held a public observing night Sat evening in which many area residents, and those from much further away came to enjoy the skies. A good selection of vendors were on hand and it was probably one of the best years for door prize donations – so lots of prizes to be won, but sadly none by me.

I didn’t get a lot of imaging in for various reasons, but one evening I did a bit of an experiment. I set up my DSLR with a fish-eye lens and an electronic timer to take a shot every 10 minutes over the course of the night. I combined the shots into a time-lapsed video showing the Milky Way as it marched across the southern sky over 6 hours. The link below should open the video in another window with your default video player (at least I hope it does).
Milky Way video

I also had a second purpose in attending. This year I had been asked to do a presentation. Wanting to do something a bit different and new, I combined my astronomy with my other hobby of amateur radio, and talked about amateur radio astronomy. This was an introductory presentation, mostly talking about some simple ways to get started and some kits available to go a step further. I also briefly highlighted some of the more advanced methods one can pursue if time and money permit. It appears to have been well received and I had a lot of fun doing it. One of the perks is that they pay for your registration and provide a small honorarium which I donated to the Dark Sky Fund.

I think I can safely speak for everyone who attended and claim it was one of the best star parties at Cherry Springs in quite a few years. A lot of fun. Don’t forget we get a chance to repeat it in Sept with the Black Forest Star Party.

Update: I got a note from Larry McHenry which some of you will know from the Kiski Astronomy club near Pittsburg we often meet while at Cherry Springs. He posted a PDF report of the event. You might enjoy the read and additional photos he included links to.
Cherry Springs Report

Well, the transit was a great success! Several members of the club made their way to Kincardine while about 15 of us decided on the Binbrook Conservation Area. A large selection of scopes were set up both on the hill and down by the dock. Quite a few pictures were taken of first and second contact and nobody moved far from their scopes during that period. Once Venus was completely on the sun’s disk, everyone moved around and enjoyed views through some of the other scopes. For me, I think that the biggest moment came when Venus’ atmosphere became visible as a thin arc against the blackness of space. It made it more ‘real’ for want of a better word and as John pointed out, this was only recorded for the first time in 2004. I was also blown away by the views through the hydrogen alpha scopes that were there. In the double stacked scope you could see flares arcing up not only on the edge of the sun, but also on parts of the face. The 3d effect was amazing! All in all we have been treated with 2 great events in just a couple of weeks. The best lame solar eclipse I can remember seeing and the Venus transit both through my scope and many others.

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

This is just a personal note and FYI, it’s not an official club notification. I was asked to notify HAA members and others who may have been interested in attending.

Some of you are aware that the Hamilton Centre of the RASC had planned an event for the astronomy community called AstroCasm. This was to entail a daytime swap meet with vendors, plus a banquet in the evening.

Regrettably due to a major problem at the venue, the swap meet that had been planned, has been cancelled. The banquet is still scheduled to occur at a new location. Those with tickets should have been notified separately. Details can be found at the link provided.

On June 5, 2012, there will be a rare celestial event – the transit of Venus. A transit is when an object passes in front of another, in this case, the planet Venus will pass in front of the Sun. The last time this occurred was in 2004 and it won’t happen again until 2117. So this will likely be the last chance to see this event during your lifetime.

For our area (southern Ontario), we won’t see the entire event. It will begin around 6pm and will end while the transit is mid-way complete at sunset. But the 2-3 hours visible from our area will provide plenty to see. The most spectacular parts of the transit are mostly at the beginning (ingress) and at the end (egress). During ingress and egress (the latter egress will not be visible from our area since it will occur after sunset) provides an opportunity to see something called the black-drop effect where the black dot of Venus appears to pull the surface of the Sun (or the Sun pulling on the surface of Venus) drawing the sharp edge into a “drop” effect. Fortunately this is potentially quite visible from our area.

Special Note: Please do not look directly at the Sun either with your eyes or through any device such as a camera, binoculars or telescope without proper safety filters. The strong sunlight can cause permanent eye damage without adequate protection. There are properly approved solar observing glasses available or safe filters you can purchase to protect you. Alternatively you can also use a pinhole camera to project this transit safely onto a white sheet of paper. Plans for these can be found on the internet.

The HAA does not have any official plans to observe the Venus transit on June 5. Many of our members will be traveling to locations outside of our area to better view this rare event. However there are other groups in our general area which will be hosting special public viewing sessions. We encourage you to look up these activities and view this once in a lifetime event. They will all have safe equipment for viewing the event and most will have free solar glasses. Check out these websites for more details. There may be other events so check the internet and your local newspapers.

The closest to our area is McMaster University and McCallion Planetarium. They will be holding a large event on their campus:
http://www.physics.mcmaster.ca/planetarium/

The Dunlap Institute and the University of Toronto will be holding an event at Varsity Stadium:
http://universe.utoronto.ca/special/transit2012

The Ontario Science Centre will be hosting their own event:
http://www.ontariosciencecentre.ca/calendar/default.asp?eventid=1206

University of Guelph will be holding an event on their campus:
http://www.uoguelph.ca/events/2012/06/transit_of_venus_planetgazing.html

As will University of Waterloo:
http://waterlootransitofvenus.eventbrite.com/?ebtv=C

Several of the regional chapters of the RASC will be holding events in the area:
Mississauga (UofT Erindale campus) – http://mississauga.rasc.ca/
Niagara (Port Dalhousie) – http://astronomyniagara.com/

A number of the HAA members got out to enjoy the partial eclipse from our location. We knew there wasn’t going to be much of a show since we were only expected to get about 18% covered and the Sun would set before the eclipse completed. However that didn’t discourage us from trying.

Some members ended up at Binbrook Conservation Area to view the event from that location.

Ann Tekatch got some nice shots and posted them in her own Facebook album.
Ann’s album

Jim Wamsley also captured a nice sequence of images and has posted them on SkyDrive. If this link works, it should give you a slide show of his images.
Jim’s SkyDrive slideshow

And then I went down to Port Dalhousie (near St Catherines) to capture the event over Lake Ontario to try for a few extra seconds of visibility. It turned out to be a busy spot since the weather was so nice. So I ended up doing some sidewalk astronomy. I had several pairs of the solar glasses which we shared amongst the many people and I showed some of the images I had captured. A lot of fun.
Don’s Facebook album

Sample image

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