New Horizons; Space Exploration Today

There was a time when young men and women stood on a shore and looked out to the horizon, imaging what new lives a ship might transport them to. They imagined new sights, new wonders and in their minds they imagined new worlds.

This summer, after travelling a decade through the dark and quiet of space, a small craft that bears a name that recalls these brave people, will truly see a new world. The New Horizons spacecraft will give us our first look at Pluto as just one of the many amazing sights that are in store for us in this golden age of space exploration.

This richly illustrated talk is suitable for all ages and takes us from Earth to Mars, the asteroids, Pluto and beyond as we look through the mechanical eyes of these far flung probes and are witness to these new sights, new wonders and new worlds.
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Please note that John Gauvreau’s talk originally scheduled for March 13th has been postponed until April 10th. Don Pullen will instead be talking about unmanned space missions.

Space Science – The Journey Continues

Manned space missions have been confined to low-Earth orbit (LEO) for more than 40 years, a big disappointment to many. However, our exploration of space beyond LEO continues to grow with many exciting robotic missions. From the Great Observatories (Hubble, Compton, Chandra, Spitzer) to contributions by Europe, India and other countries, we continue to find new ways to explore the unknown and find answers to some of the most important questions to mankind. In this talk, Don will review a few of the amazing current and upcoming missions and explore some of the science that has been revealed (and several of the questions that remain).
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Last night’s full moon was the smallest full moon of the year. We’ve heard it called the micro-moon ormini-moon. This March 5, 2015 full moon lies about 50,000 kilometers (30,000 miles) farther away from Earth than will the year’s closest full moon – the full supermoon and Northern Hemisphere’s Harvest Moon – on September 28. The March 5 moon is the year’s farthest full moon because full moon and lunar apogee – the moon’s farthest point in its monthly orbit – both fall on the same date.
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The March issue of the Hamilton Amateur Astronomers Event Horizon newsletter is now available.

In this issue you’ll find…

• The Sky This Month
• First Experience At Seeing the L.M.C.
• Lights on the Moon: Moon Express
• Quirks of Stellarium
• Book Review of The Martian
• Plus Much More!

Download your copy from the newsletters section.

Photo credit: Triple-play Conjunction by Lise Bennett

A 22° halo is a halo, one type of optical phenomenon, forming a circle with a radius of approximately 22° around the Sun, or occasionally the Moon (also called a moon ring or winter halo).  It forms as sunlight is refracted in millions of randomly oriented hexagonal ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere.  The halo is large; the radius is roughly the size of an outstretched hand at arms length.  As light passes through the 60° apex angle of the hexagonal ice prisms it is deflected twice resulting in deviation angles ranging from 22° to 50°.  The angle of minimum deviation is almost 22° (or more specifically 21.84° on average; 21.54° for red light and 22.37° for blue light).  This wavelength-dependent variation in refraction causes the inner edge of the circle to be reddish while the outer edge is bluish.  As no light is refracted at angles smaller than 22° the sky is darker inside the halo.  A 22° halo may be visible on as many as 100 days per year—much more frequently than rainbows.

My entire neighbourhood is surrounded by 80+ foot trees, so Tonight’s Spectacular Triple-play Conjunction is partially hidden by trees, however, I love the effect that I was able to achieve!

The Moon, Venus and Mars formed a beautiful grouping in the western sky above Hamilton tonight. It was well worth the risk of frostbite to view. I snapped this photo with a point & shoot camera from our driveway.

I turned to face north just before 7:00 pm to catch a very bright pass overhead by the International Space Station. I snapped a photo of the ISS (it’s the streak in the image below) as it passed Jupiter in the ESE.

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The latest issue of our club’s Event Horizon newsletter is now available.

In this issue you’ll find…

• The Sky This Month
• Comet Lovejoy Gallery
• Astronomy Crossword
• Upcoming Events
• Plus Much More!

Download your copy from the newsletters section.

Photo credit: C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) by David T.

Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) on January 13, 2015, approx. 7:30pm to 8:30pm from Caledonia ON.

I used my Canon 40D, Astronomik CLS light pollution clip-filter and my Tamron 300mm f/2.8 telephoto lens on my Super-Polaris EQ mount.

Settings: ISO 1600, f/2.8.

Post-processing included curves adjustments, colour balancing, and multiple iterations of layering, masking & blending to smooth out the head of the comet a little better.

Note the comet’s tail pointing downward as per the images’ orientation; eastward away from the sun’s direction.

The image on the left is a composite of 5 1-minute exposures and is stacked on the background stars.  The image on the right is a composite of 8 1-minute exposures stacked on the head of the comet, hence the star trailing, indicating the comet’s direction.  North is to the left in both images.

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With -15° degree weather astrophotography in January is not for the faint of heart! However, with so few clear nights these past few months it’s worth braving the elements for a personal encounter with comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy). Lovejoy is now naked eye visible but its very faint and hard to spot unless you know exactly where to look. From my somewhat light polluted skies in Dundas the comet can be seen as a tiny, dim dot right of Orion. With a telescope the view improves and using my 8″ scope Lovejoy can be seen as a fuzzy patch but unmistakable comet. With the wonders of auto-guiding, digital photography, and stacking software more detail can be explored through the photons captured by CCD sensor.
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