Yesterday (Mar 29) was the Full Moon – also known as the Worm Moon which marks the start of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, the thawing of the ground, and the movement of earthworms. The moon will still be quite full tonight and is very pretty just as it rises at sunset in the East-South-East (a nice orange-yellow on Mon night).

This week also has a nice conjunction of Venus and Mercury which are only 3 degrees apart in the West (approx the width of 2 or 3 fingers together held at arm’s length). Once the glare of the sun has gone behind the horizon, look for a bright “star” along the same path where the sun had set. Once you find it, then look to the right or below to find a fainter, but still quite visible Mercury. This pairing will be visible for the next few days with Mercury changing its relative position in respect to Venus each day. (Venus is also moving each day, but not as much.)

Go out just after the sun has set and enjoy wonderful views East or West. You won’t even need any equipment – these are excellent visual and regular photographic objects.

This is a reminder to HAA members that the Cosmology Discussion Group will be meeting tomorrow (Saturday) night. All HAA members are welcome, but as there is limited space available please contact me if you are interested in attending. This is very important as we were near our maximum capacity last time. If you attended previously, then there is no need to contact me, and I hope to see you there.
observing@amateurastronomy.org

The main speaker at the upcoming April meeting of the HAA, Alan Friedman, is being featured on today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day. NASA’s site is always informative, and Alan’s spectacular image is certainly worth lingering over. Be sure to check out the APOD site, and be sure to attend the April meeting to see Alan in person. It’s sure to be an excellent presentation!

Follow this link to Alan’s APOD:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100323.html

I arrived there about 6:50 PM and proceeded to set up the GWS for the inspection of the attendees. It was very cloudy and i was assured that they would not clear.

Ann set up a Dob as an additional scope. I also set up the Big Binoculars, and pointed them at a nearby Cell Tower.

Megan Fox (travelling incognito) arrived and posed with me for a photo-op, as my car transformed into a telescope:

Reporters from Rogers Cable and some local newspapers also conducted interviews with me and with our presenters. As usual, Don was also a great spokesman for the club.

The talks went well and I sniped some photos of the proceedings, while keeping one eye on the GWS and the other on the clouds.

At about 9:20 PM, the clouds started to clear. Alas, many of our number had already headed home.

I got this photo of the Moon afocally through the eyepiece:

ADDITION from John Gauvreau:

Well, I think it is also important to mention that besides Steve, there were at least 17 other members of the HAA that turned out to this event. Tim did a great presentation and represented the club well to his hometown, and many others brought scopes in case it cleared up. The efforts of so many members willing to travel out of town on a cloudy night demonstrates clearly that this is an active and dynamic club that works so well because everyone is willing to contribute towards a team effort. The club was so well represented, in fact, that we (sadly) outnumbered the public.

The club owes a big thank you to everyone who travelled all the way to Brantford to help out with this public event. Please forgive me if I don’t remember everyone, but here goes:
Alex, Ann, Bill, Bob, Don, Ed, Kevin, Ed, Jim, Joe, Les, Linda, Wayne, Mario, Marcel and Tim. I enjoyed seeing all of you there!

Hi Everyone,

I will bring the GWS (Great White Scope) and set it up at about 7 PM.

The skies might just be clear enough for some good views, so here’s hoping.

John Gauvreau and Tim Philp will be making presentations indoors,
regardless of the clouds, and there will be a sky tour after the presentations.

I hope to see you all there!

Steve

There’s a really nice picture of the sun by Alan Friedman on the SpaceWeather web site. Alan will be the main speaker at the April HAA meeting. Be sure to see his picture, and his talk!

http://www.spaceweather.com/swpod2010/18mar10/Alan-Friedman1.jpg?PHPSESSID=3h32ntrl26p11ot33mhukhnt04

http://www.spaceweather.com/

The weather forecast is looking good again for another night of observing. (Hard to believe we’ve had several nice nights in a row!!)

Several HAA members will be heading out to our alternate observing site on Tyneside Rd for some stargazing. (directions can be found on our “About Us” page.) We welcome others to bring their scopes and join us or just come and look through the equipment that will be there.

We’ll be setting up between 7 and 8pm and will stay until we get too chilled or the fog rolls in around midnight.

Tonight Jim and I were delighted to accept an invitation from Les to come visit his roll-off observatory. Overlooking the Grand River, the shed offers dark skies and a welcome shelter to observe from.

Setting up his very fine 4″ refractor, Les showed us the Orion Nebula through a variety of eyepieces, with some pleasing and surprising results. It’s amazing how well the inexpensive eyepieces compared to the premium oculars! We continued our tour of the sky with some winter highlights, like the Pleiades, the double cluster and M35, as well as views of Mars with its polar cap and Saturn and its moons Titan, Rhea, Dione and Tethys. Algieba in Leo and Polaris provided some fine double star targets. Algieba showed a bright yellow primary with a more rusty companion star. Through a no-name eyepiece the colours seemed more pronounced than through a Pentax. The ISS also went right overhead to make the evening complete.

Les and his wife fed us with a great assortment of meats and vegetables (and some deliscious strawberries) to keep our strength up. Both Jim and I were very impressed with the clever and ingenious way Les has put together and runs his backyard observatory, and we were delighted to take advantage of his hospitality and dark skies. Thanks, Les!

Jim and Les inside the observatory.

The stars rise over the observatory.

Got out last night while the going was good. Light pollution and moonlight made seeing a little challenging so I looked for a few new bright things. Cancer was completley invisible so I used binos to find it and look at M67 for the first time. Also looked at several other things for the first time. The Eskimo planetary (small but bright), The triple star B Monoceros (separation 7 and 5 arc seconds) and the double star Algieba in Leo. Back on Feb 7, I looked at a very beautiful double (Almach in Andromeda) that looks like the Albireo double but closer together (10″). The colours are orange and blue/green. Nothing exotic I know, but it’s still nice to find and see things for the first time. Also had a nice view of saturn even though it was low in the sky. the shadow of the ring across the face of the planet was easy to see and 3 moons.

Hey everyone, I just wanted to share with you my latest collaboration with Stef Cancelli. After a year of collecting frames in between spells of poor weather and getting over my slight fear of putting the pieces of this together. I’m finally able to share with you this HaRGB rendition of the nebula and cluster (aka Christmas tree cluster). With lots of help from Stef and a number of back and forths of the image file, checking on numerous monitors and making small tweaks here and there, I’m happy to say it’s finally complete 🙂

The details:

Stef contributed a 2 panel Hydrogen Alpha mosaic: 30 subs x 15 mins each with the ST10XME and Tak FS102 @ f6. I contributed a 2 panel RGB mosaic: 65 subs x 5min on the Cone and 57 subs x 5min on the Fox Fur with the QHY-8 and AT8RC @f6.4. A small RGB
contribution was made with frames taken from the c6 SCT last spring.
Total HaRGB exposure time was 17hrs 20min.

BTW All frames were acquired from the night lights of Toronto and Grimsby.

Hope you like it!

Take a peek at the large version to see the fox and cone:

http://www.weatherandsky.com/main.php?g2_view=core.ShowItem&g2_itemId=7578&g2_imageViewsIndex=3

KerryLH