A reminder to all members that this is the new moon weekend coming up and a great opportunity to observe. This is also the busiest weekend of the year for star parties, and many of our members will be away. At times like this, when a keyholder is unavalable to open the park, there is an alternative observing location for you to use.

The alternative site is located at the west end of the park on Tyneside Road. Directions can be found here:
http://amateurastronomy.org/sites/binbrookCA/BinbrookTyneside1.jpg

There is parking just off the road and a small field to set up scopes. The sky is as dark as at the main site in the park, and no key is needed to access this site. This location is open to the public, so remember to be safe, take care of yourself out there and take care of the park.

Enjoy the dark sky and feel free to post any observing you do on this blog to share your experiences with your fellow members!

The Milky Way over Binbrook

Comet Garradd is well placed for evening viewing between the constellations of Delphinus and Sagitta.The comet is currently at magnitude 8.3 and should be visible in binoculars. I haven’t observed it yet, but I expect you will need dark skies to see it. Here is a link to an excellent, printable, finder chart: http://cometchasing.skyhound.com/comets/2009_P1.pdf .

After sending out a notice about opening Binbrook, I went out around 8:30 to open up. David and Tanya had just arrived, and another family showed up a bit later. The skies took a while to clear the day-time heating clouds that had been making some observers nervous, but they finally did cooperate.

The seeing and transparency never did get particularly good, though it was reasonably stable. It didn’t look like it was going to be a suitable night for imaging, but good enough for visual. That suited me just fine. I had brought out my replacement 180mm Mak and had wanted to give it a first light test. I’ve had it for a few months after the insurance replaced it, but I wasn’t sure how good it came from the factory. Surprisingly it performed quite well with good star test patterns, sharp resolution of stars in M13, and challenging to split the double-double at 96x but was clean at 120x. It wasn’t what I would consider perfect, but better than I could probably collimate it.

An interesting part of the night was that Discovery Channel was there filming an episode of MayDay over by the Wind-Surfing area. Lights and fires were visible a few times. Didn’t affect visual work too much, but it would have made the poor imaging conditions worse. Dan from the park staff (who had helped us on the Perseids night) was there all night and he stopped by our area for while to look through the scopes and chat.

Shortly after the others left, Greg Emery showed up so we continued to observe for a while until the conditions started to deteriorate. Around 1am we finally packed it in and took off for a coffee. Not a great seeing night, but fun just the same. I had set some modest goals for the evening and was able to achieve them. So in my books, it was a success (helps to not set goals that are too ambitious LOL).

cheers,
Don

This is the best time to look for Vesta, over the next 3 weeks or so.
It’s at magnitude 5.8 which means that you can almost see it without binoculars.
Even at 10 PM it’s 13 degrees above the horizon.

With binoculars you will be rewarded handsomely.

Vesta is near the south east corner of capricorn now, and it can also be found by drawing a line from Antares in Scorpio, through the center of the teapot, saggitarius, and extending it 1.5 times as far.
You will find that Vesta is steady, and you should be able to discern a disk, and a yellowish tint.

What else can you see?

Magnitude 4 stars of Capricorn surround it. You need a good southern view with no lights below it.

Binbrook Conservation area, or anywhere on the north shore of a lake will do.

Jupiter is rising around midnight. In another month it will be prominent again.
Saturn is setting at 10. Catch it while you can, it will be almost 3 months before we see it in the morning again.

Waiting for the meteors

Last night’s public Perseid meteor watch at Binbrook Conservation Area was our best ever. Thanks to Mario’s efforts, we had comprehensive media coverage and a record attendance estimated at up to 800. In spite of the intermittent cloud cover, great views of the moon and favourite deep sky objects were available through the many telescopes set up around the field.
The Perseids put in an appearance, too, with many “ooohs” and “aaaaahs” heard from the crowd throughout the night.

Lunar observing

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Added August 16 by John Gauvreau

I have received several comments from the public that attended the Perseid Event. All have been very favourable. Here are a few samples:

“3 may not be much, but being my first ever meteor show viewing, the experience was indeed amazing.”

“I wish to thank you for the excellent opportunity provided to us by you to observe the Perseid Meteor Shower last night at the Binbrook Conservation Area. We thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and although we could spot only 3 meteors, it did give us a rare insight into outer space.”

“We went and had a lovely evening. Thank you for organizing this event for the public. Wishing you a wonderful day!”

Clearly there were many happy people that night, thanks to the HAA volunteers who put in a lot of work to make that event happen. Thanks everyone!!!!!!

While camping in Algonquin Park the strongest aurora in years lit up the northern sky. Although conditions were partly cloudy the green glow can be seen under long exposure photography. This aurora was created by sunspot 1261 which erupted into an M9-class solar flare reaching Earth one day later on August 5th.

The notice was rather late in heading out to the members since I only became aware that I would be available, and the skies favourable for observing quite late in the day. However 3 other intrepid members joined me at Binbrook for observing under clear, crisp summer skies.

Tony and Vince were waiting at the gate when I arrived, and Gary joined us at our observing location on the hill a little later. A setting crescent moon was nicely accented with Earth-shine and a red-orange sunset which was a positive omen for the good seeing we were going to enjoy.

Between us, we enjoyed many views, particularly some of the summer nebulas such as Lagoon, Swan and Eagle. While they were faint in our scopes, we also spent some time with the classic galaxies such as M51, M101, M66, M65, and the Leo Triplet – though these latter galaxies were particularly hard to see since they were already setting in the west by the time we observed. And being the friendly and helpful group that we are, Vince was able to give some useful pointers to Gary in regards to helping him set up his scope – thanks Vince!

A nice night, lots of interesting views and good conversation – yes, even when we were bemoaning our PC’s or cursing the mosquitoes.

Hope to see you under the summer skies soon.

Check the comments on this post for links mentioned in my talk.

Heres the link to bob’s M10 and M12 in sky&tel

Sky & Tel community gallery.

A comparison of The Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) photographed on two separate dates. The supernova can be seen in the top photograph taken at the Binbrook observing site on June 5th. An earlier photograph positioned at bottom shows the Whirlpool galaxy pre-supernova taken on May 8th in Burlington.

If you have a dob, or a camera on your scope, you can snag a photo of a 14th magnitude supernova just discovered a couple of days ago.

Here’s a link to an article about it
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/highlights/123110228.html