Over the past week the reader might be wondering why there have been little or no Reports of HAA observing activity. The simple answer is that this past week has been, as one observer put it, ?the best stretch of clear sky during a no moon phase in his memory.?

That is not an exaggeration. The sky was surprisingly clear on Sunday 29 June, catching some observers off guard. They were certainly ready, willing and able by Thursday 3 July, which started a four-day observing marathon, ending the night of Sunday 6 July.

Each night of observing was glorious and somehow offered a different flavor of activity, making it special in its own way. There were those beautiful Binbrook sunsets. There was observing, sketching, AP and deep discussion. Jokes, space toys, kids, friends, family and best of all laughter filled the park. The park curious came to look before heading home, and each were welcomed with true HAA fanfare. Then around 2 am, sometimes later, when all was said and done, we packed up for the Horton’s and the traditional HAA nightcap.

The fortunate observers were off work during this marathon, while others found a way to make it through their day. And there were naps, those precious few hours to take the edge off, to get us through. These were days of strained eyes, bad food choices and stamina. Certainly this marathon was not planned. The clear skies just kept on coming. But the most remarkable thing was, that through it all, our excitement and enthusiasm for the night sky never waned.

It truly was an wonderful week of observing, the ones memories are made of, and it goes without saying we made quite a few.

Jackie

I arrived on Sunday evening at Binbrook before 8PM, hoping to be set up and able to scout out M68, the next item in my Sequential Messier Marathon. Here’s a picture of my team, in a huddle before the action began.

Ed had his ED80 on a tripod, and was watching for the first sign of polaris to get it aligned. I set up the GWS on the hill, after trying to estimate whether there was more horizon from there or from the newly made, excellent boardwalk beside the parking lot at the bottom of the hill.

I snapped some nice sunset pictures, as i waited for darkness. Ann arrived with Alex and Shaune, and proceeded to set up binoculars, and lent me a copy of Uranometria with all the stars i need to get there.

I had my excellent Flying toy saucer again, and it was again a big hit. It flies so high, it’s like scary to think the wind is blowing it out over the lake, so i turn off the power and watch it come falling out of the sky, only to land with a 50m of dry land to spare. It makes an excellent photograph to do a time exposure as it ascends, because of the LEDs on its sides, spinning around. Here’s a picture Kerry took on Friday evening.

A timed exposure of a luminous object can be impressive indeed

I had also used Cartes du Ciel to print out star charts with stars to 10th magnitude, to get from Corvus to M68. For reference, i also printed enough stars to navigate within Corvus, as practice.

As the sun got lower below the horizon, astronomical twilight started to end and more stars became visible. I strained to navigate the GWS along my designated star hopping path. It turned out that due to the residual sky-glow and extinction, my star chart had way more stars than the sky, and those in the sky were farther apart than the size of my finderscope, making star hopping a practical impossibility.

I guess an industrial approach would be to have a set of star charts printed with different limiting magnitudes. Use of a laptop computer to generate the charts onthe fly would be another option, at risk of losing night vision in the process. It turned out that the limiting magnitude through the GWS was about 8, and that meant that seeing M68 was going to be problematic. Atmospheric extinction at low altitudes of view really swamps the star field.

At about 10:22 M68 set, as viewed from ED’s goto… i mean the location in the sky where M68 is was below the tree line. At the last minute i decided to try an astrophoto of the area to see if i could stretch something out of it. It turned out that at the bottom of the hill, the horizon is slightly lower.

After M68 had safely set, i fished up the chart for the ‘Footprint Nebula’ and started to star hop from Alberio towards it. Now, instead of too few stars, i had too many. The GWS was showing about 2000 stars in a field where the chart had about 50. Jackie and i painstakingly made our way towards it, and got there in a few minutes. I am certain the star field was correct. I made a sketch of the stars i could see and all were on my map. Unfortunately, even with a nebula filter, no nebulosity was seen.

By then, it was approximately midnight. For an experiment, i slewed the GWS (actually rather quick since it’s a dob) down to the spot on the horizon where previously i had been looking for M68, to see if later at night, more stars are visible at low altitude. Even the mighty GWS could only see one star at the top edge of the trees, a far cry from the 2000 in cygnus. So my conclusion is that extinction is real and real nasty.

But not forever, in the case of M68. In early December, it will be a morning object, and i will be out looking for it then. In the meantime, i will be doing Astrophotography, sharpening my star hopping skills, studying some books and participating in the many public events the HAA has planned for the summer and fall.

Many sincere thanks to Jackie, who took my quest as seriously as i do, (or maybe even more so) Ann, and Ed, for being there with me as i tried for the impossible dream.

Steve
Aka Don Quixote searching up new windmills….

If you ask me, these past few nights of solid blue on the CSC is just what we deserve – and you just have to read the blogs to know that many HAA members wasted little time in taking advantage of it. Personally, I divided my time between our backyard observatory and the observing hill at Binbrook.

Starting with Thursday, Gail and I did a bit of comparison viewing with our 6″ dob and the 12″ dob; that is until Gail expressed her dislike of standing tiptoe to view the zenith through the 12″ – you see, I hate bending when I don’t have to, so, like I did with the 6″, I put some legs on the base of the 12″ to raise it up a bit – but it appears I’d miscalculated the height of my observing partner. Anyway, to bring harmony back into the (our) Universe, I cut the legs down by 3″ – call it “reverse-engineering”.

Friday night, we answered the call to join the other HAA “keeners” at the conservation area where we spent our time comparing the views through no less than nine scopes and eating fresh donuts (thanks, Steve). The night was capped off zapping the alien-looking, spaceship-type, weird-lights-in-the-sky, only $49.99 at your local mall, craft with our laser pointers.

On Saturday night, I was tempted to make a return trip to Binbrook, but I wasn’t happy with the collimation of the 12″ dob. Whereas the 6″ would easily show the companion to Polaris, the faster ratio of the larger scope was less forgiving to misalignment. So I took my screwdrivers and barlowed collimating laser and gave the big dob a thorough overhaul which, I’m pleased to say, did the trick. Not only did I have a fine view of the North Star and it’s little friend but the Double Double in Lyra was easily resolved, as well.

My other goal, in staying home was to see how good my local sky was on a good night when most had gone to bed. My laser pointer had a bright beam about 11pm suggesting that there was a lot of particulate in the air, though I’m unsure if it was dust, moisture, or a combination of both. Sometime after Midnight, the scope in the middle of the back yard starting collecting dew on the OTA but the one on the observatory pad, which is not under but near to our large walnut tree remained dry.

By 1am, I could make out the Milky Way. It was fairly distinct through Cygnus near the zenith but just barely visible above the “spout” of Sagittarius. Sunday wasn’t so great, and tonight there is some heat haze and a few clouds but I see the Moon beckoning me so I think I’ll take advantage…

I arrived at BCA in broad daylight and had a chance to set up the GWS and actually see what i was doing. Some interested stragglers at the park were given HAA brochures and expressed interest in astronomizing once their kids get a little older, to which we commented that there are kids in the club now.

8 of our HAA members were eventually present last night for a great evening under the stars. We toured the heavens in Jim’s Goto, Ed managed to calibrate and star-align his ED80 and Steve K set up his MAK. All got excellent results with their equipment. A red dot finder would be a good addition on some of the scopes. Jackie brought her excellent grab-n-go Dob and had it set up in a minute and a half, although it took a while to align the quickfinder on it. I think it’s set for next time.

M68, my next sequential messier marathon object, set before i noticed it was still up. It was behind the trees to the south at about 11 PM. I can get it next time. (or the time after that, or maybe the time after that). I set up the GWS and the binocular tripod for views of Saturn, Jupiter, and M13. Banding on Jupiter was visible even through the trees. The Great Red Spot was not visible (at least to us) from our vantage point during the time we were there.

I borrowed some longer EPs in an effort to see the North America nebula in Cygnus but alas, it’s too huge to see in the GWS in one gulp. I did manage to see the edges of it, though. We discussed some of the equipment purchases recently made, including a Coma Corrector which has some assembly required. The SQM was reporting 20.2 for zenith and directions away from Hamilton and 19.4 towards Hamilton. Jupiter through a LPR filter looks blue, but had nice banding on it.

The evening was punctuated by several flights of an excellent toy,
which spins like a flying saucer. The dark skies of Binbrook enhanced the effect of its flashing lights. Jackie was able to get a photo of it at one point but it was moving too fast to get a clear shot. At least 6 sporadic meteors were seen during the evening; Steve K racked up the most of them.

We decided to attempt some items from the David Levy list of sky gems, and duly looked a few of them up. We managed to cross correlate them with other sky charts in order to find the area of the sky they were in. The footprint nebula evaded me this time as it was of unknown size and brightness. The milky way star fields in Cygnus were excellent though.

We lingered into the wee hours and eventually went on a quest for a Tim Horton’s that actually had food. It turns out some of the muffins are not on display but still available. We continue our search for an adequate wrap-up location featuring a full selection of food as well as coffee. Friday and Saturday both look good too.

I had the great pleasure of joining Jackie and Ed at the Binbrook Conservation Area last night for a very special Canada Day under the stars.

Sunset over Binbrook, and the show begins…

We enjoyed the typically beautiful sunset over the lake and then took in a display of far off fireworks, that were no less enjoyable for their distance. Ready to follow up that display with the celestial one overhead, we were unfortunately forced to wait as the cloud cover increased to the point where the entire sky was lost. First Arcturus, then Vega, Deneb and finally Antares far to the south disappeared. Ed put the time to good use by working out some of the kinks in his lovely new setup. Frustration mixed with humour as the go-to on his mount repeated invited us to look straight down at the ground. Perhaps it really wanted to look at those southern hemisphere deep-sky objects! When the skies finally did clear his 80mm apo gave excellent views of Jupiter and its moons. Banding was clear and detailed. Ed has every reason to be a very happy scope owner, and ED80 has new meaning in Ed’s hands (should we call him ED80 Smith?).

Jupiter rising through the trees.

I put a recently aquired camera to use by trying a few tripod shots. 30 seconds on a tripod can yield wonderful constellation shots. My very first astrophotography attempts many, many years ago (can it really be 30 years?!) were similar efforts. Just a tripod, camera and 30 seconds of time is all you need. Back then I had to wait until the film was developed, but below (and above)you can see a digital shot from last night. Hooray for instant gratification!

Cygnus and Lyra show off their rich Milky Way starfields in this unguided, untracked and very unprofessional photo. This very small view shows only an equally small fraction of the stars visible in the original shot.

The final magic of the night’s fire works came not from combustable chemicals or from distant nuclear fusion, but from the gentle fairy-like luminesence of fireflys. As they flew around us Ed even caught one and we enjoyed a few moments up close with this tiny but brilliant visitor.

Thanks to Jackie and Ed for the great company, and hopefully we’ll see you out there at the next observing session of the HAA.

Brian Chire, the winner of the telescope as a door prize at the June monthly HAA meeting had these kind words for us:

“As the winner of the telescope door prize at the June meeting, I just want to thank the donor of this wonderful prize for his or her generosity. I am absolutely thrilled with my win and will be sure to put it to good use. I have some time off scheduled for this summer and I hope to be going to a dark sky location and trying it out.

Thank you again for having such wonderful door prizes and thanks to all of the members of the HAA for making this club so enjoyable and educational.”

Sincerely

Brian Chire

Brian — You’re very welcome! Enjoy your scope!

The HAA hard-core observers (Keeners) were out at Binbrook last night in full force in spite of the horrible seeing and the gibbous moon washing out all but the brightest of deep sky objects!

We had various kinds and sizes of telescopes trained on Saturn and the Moon. At one point, Jackie & John used Andrew?s 12? Lightbridge to project an image of the moon onto a sheet of white paper. I think that was the best view I had of the moon all night. Later, when Jupiter rose above the trees, everyone had a chance to view it through the 12? Lightbridge which was pointed at a very shallow angle to the ground and subject to many ?occultations? as Heather can attest to!

Jackie asked if anyone knew of any carbon stars and, by luck, I had a list I?d printed off a year ago. Kerry found Mu Cephei, Herschel?s Garnet Star, using the Muller?s 4? Starblast dob (borrowed for the night and a real fun scope to use). The star was a blazing orange beacon! Next, John located Y CVn, ?La Superba?, using his 80 mm refractor. This was followed by U Cyg which was very dim and not as colourful. The red star tour ended with T CrB. All of these stars are labelled with a (c) next to their names in the Pocket Sky Atlas which made it quite easy to locate them. I look forward to hunting down the remaining carbon stars from my list which I got from this website: http://www.bpccs.com/lcas/Articles/coolstar.htm

Jim Wamsley was tracking down double stars and shared zeta Lyrae with me. I had never viewed this star before and when I ?Googled? it on the web, I found this link which offers fascinating info on zeta Lyrae: http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~kaler/sow/zetalyr.html

Meanwhile, Andrew was splitting epsilon Lyrae, the ?double-double? star in Lyra with his 12? Lightbridge.

Don Pullen was giving his camera and new Photosharp focussing device a workout with promising results. I hope he?ll be able to post a photo or two here. To check focus before photographing M13, he was using Vega which is so bright it appears almost bluish to me.

Kerry had the best idea of the night: sitting in a lawnchair and sweeping the sky with a pair of binoculars!

We finally packed up and left the Binbrook Conservation Area about 1:30 a.m. . Thanks, everyone, for an entertaining night!

Cheers,

Ann Tekatch

Ann working so fast at drawing the moon…. she’s just a blur…

Ok… the moon wasn’t really in this shot – but it is the moon taken last night with a digitally added darkside.

Hi All
A small band of the keener group traveled down to Cherry Springs P.A. for their Star Party. 9 intrepid star hoppers in all Steve G. and Kerry H. led off leaving on Wednesday to save camping spots for the rest and get an extra night. Thursday AM. they were followed by Ann T. Jackie F. John G. Ed S.and Jim W.,later that day we were joined by Glenn & Gail M. Shortly after arriving we made ourselves a light dinner of hot dogs and set up camp. We then eagerly awaited sunset. As the stars came out and the skies got darker, we were all “blown away” by the sheer number of stars in this pristine Dark Sky Preserve. I’m not going to go into the full description of all that we saw, I will leave that to more eloquent writers. Suffice it to say it was Magnificent!!!!!! The weather on the following days was not so co-operative, but we still had a wonderful time as we always do when we are together. This is just a lead-off blog to get things started. Others will post their comments and pictures shortly.

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From John

I put my little 80mm scope to good use and saw some wide field views of the North American Nebula, the Veil Nebula (all 3 parts at once!), the startling bright star clouds of the Milky Way and the nebulae of Sagittarius. Other scopes provided me with stunning views of the spiral arms of M51 and a view through a 32″ scope belonging to a good fellow from Long Island, New York gave a picture-like view of M13. Breathtaking all! The remote location and altitude of 2400 feet provided a spectacularly dark sky and binocular views were equally stunning. I ended my one clear night by just lying on the ground and soaking in the vista of the night sky, one of the best views of all.

During the day good conversation was to be found with many other visitors from New York City, Boston and the many small towns of America. One, now know as Cookie Sue, walked from site to site providing cookies for all those in attendance and was happy to count herself as an honourary HAA member. She left the star party proudly wearing a Canadian flag pin. Although not so openly displayed, many of us left with an equal sense cameraderie with the new friends we made. In the end though, the best of times was thanks to the company of the great group of people from the HAA. Some of them will have astrophotos from the beautiful skies of Cherry Springs, but here are a few daytime images.

Welcome to the Cherry Springs Star Party!

HAA members Steve, Jackie, Jim, Ed, Ann, Glenn, Gail and Kerry. Visitor Roger has joined the best group at the star party, and John can be seen behind the camera. Oh, wait…

We were treated to a beautiful solar halo on Friday morning.

The beautiful Alleghany mountains of Pennsylvania, home of the Cherry Springs Star Party.

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Update By KerryLH

What a wonderful opportunity to observe at this very dark sky site with some fantastic members of the HAA. I arrived early because I wanted to take advantage of the clear weather during the mid-week. I brought along my entire AP office, the 12in LB (FFI) and all my camping gear. I attached a few picks below of targets that I have really longed to image under really dark skies. With the help of my Astronomik CLS clip filter on my unmodded DSLR, I was able to bring out some really faint red Hydrogen Alpha.

Elephant trunk Nebula (IC 1396), Garnet Star Nebula: A large faint emission nebula in Cepheus imaged with the 80mm scope (425mm fl @f5)

…with a crop showing the elephant trunk

Rho Ophuchus: a large region of very colourful nebulosity around Antares and M4 in Scorpio. I imaged this on the second night with my 100mm lens.

Trifid Nebula (M20): only 4x5min taken with the c6 SCT.

Iris Nebula (NGC7023) : This one is very very faint. I will probably add more stacks to it over time so that I can show the very large and interesting dust cloud surrounding this star.

Link to higher resolution versions are in my latest image gallery
http://www.weatherandsky.com/main.php?g2_view=core.ShowItem&g2_itemId=101&g2_enterAlbum=1

Remember the big Grimsby Mars Event of 2005? HAA members returned to Murray Street Park Saturday night May 24th from as far away as Waterloo to share the celestial sights of Spring with residents of Grimsby.

As usual, the Club was well-represented with nearly 20 members and as many telescopes of all sorts and sizes on hand to entertain and educate visitors to the park. Attendance was not equal to Don’s publicity efforts – mostly due to lack of cooperation from the hometown papers but folks turned up from the local area as well as from out of town. The event began before dusk and lasted almost ’till midnight.

With a magnificent clear sky and calm, warm atmosphere, there was no lack of targets. Many observers kicked off the evening with wide-field views of Mars near the Beehive Cluster.

From Grimsby – Mars in the Beehive, 24 May

Then it was off to Saturn under high magnification with four moons easily visible. Titan 3′ E and Iapetus 7′ W of the planets disk; larger apertures showed tiny diamond chip-like Tethys, Dione and Rhea clustered just W of the rings.

Going “deep (sky)” gave marvelous views of globular clusters M3, M13, M92, colourful double stars and galaxies M51, M65-66, M81-82 and M104 in particular. Nebulae were also captured and presented. Refractors, reflectors, SCTs and binoculars all got a workout. The very bright ISS made a fly-by on schedule and there was even a meteor or two to round out the “astro-buffet”.

All in all, another fun great-weather get-together for the HAA and guests. Thanks to everyone who made it such a good night! HAA is dedicated to spreading the word about this wonderful hobby!

The Binbrook “alternate site” offered excellent views of Mars & M44 to me, Jackie, Steve and Brett tonight. We were joined by our good friend, Martin, too. While I took photos with my 80mm refractor, Brett shared the view through his new Televue85 (gorgeous scope, Brett!!!) while Steve had a pair of binoculars on a nice bino-mount and Jackie had her fine scope set up as well. Everyone agreed that low power gave the best views of Mars riding through M44.

As we were packing up, an OPP officer stopped by to make sure we weren’t up to no good. Jackie soon set him straight with an explanation of the evening’s main attraction: Mars in the beehive cluster! The good natured officer was not astronomically inclined but left us with his best wishes for a good night.

We all adjourned to Tim Horton’s. Here is a much better photo than the one I took last night! (Not in the same league as Kerry’s though!)If you compare this photo to the one Kerry took the night before, you can see how far Mars moved through the cluster in that span of time.

Mars in M44, The Beehive Cluster.