Sir William Herschel, A Model for Amateur Astronomy

Everyone knows Sir William Herschel is an 18th century astronomer famous for discovering the planet Uranus.  Looking a little deeper finds him an avid amateur observer and recorder who kept in contact with other amateur astronomers and never ceased wondering about the heavens.  Although we are separated from him by two centuries, we may find many similarities in the circumstances and methodology Herschel lived.  I suggest that he is a model for us to follow today.

Dr. Michael Spicer is a life-long amateur astronomer, former Observing Director and Chair of the Hamilton Amateur Astronomers. He has previously spoken at HAA on subjects such as observing Jupiter, Saturn and the Moon, the astronomer Charles Messier and observing the Messier objects.  A retired attorney, Dr. Mike resides with his wife Therese and a few telescopes in Kitchener, Ontario

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As Jim said, it was a great night at Binbrook and I hope everyone there had as good a time as I did.  Here are a couple of images that I came away with.  I took a few of the sunset before setting up for the night, and after everyone was done I got a camera and tripod shot of Mars and Spica over the trees.

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We had a large group show up at the park last night, I counted 16 cars. the conditions where good even if the dew was heavy . Great views of Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn, as well as many deep space objects. All attending said they enjoyed themselves. Two people sent me some photos to post here.  It was fun to get back out to the park after such a long stretch of bad weather, lets hope we can get the park opened more often in the future.

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Photos from Astronomy Day.

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More photos from Astronomy Day.

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Astronomy Day was a complete success! In the afternoon session there were at least 4 solar PST scopes and 6 or so scopes with solar filters. Many members turned out with and with out scopes to enjoy the day time observing of our personal star Sol. Even though the cloud cover threatened to blank us out it did clear off by 1:30 or so for a very enjoyable afternoon.

The evening session was fabulous there where many club members there with their scopes (too many to count). I had the club 8″shimt setup with the video camera and TV, and was so busy with the public that I didn’t get much chance to get around to visit all the other members with scopes. I did bring my camera but was so busy with people I didn’t get it out of it’s bag, so I encourage anyone that took photos to post them here.

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

In this issue you’ll find…

• The Sky This Month
• Niceness & 2 nice Nice Models of the Solar System
• Through The Looking Glass
• First Impressions From a New HAA Member
• Plus much more

Download Newsletter

If the weather permits we will be observing at Binbrook at our normal viewing site on the hill. In an effort to entertain the fishermen that will be coming out for a early start for the Sunday morning derby . If you can attend identify yourself at the gate as an H.A.A member and drive to the hill location. Hopefully we will get a good sky I hope to see you there.

Rory Woods will be speaking about welcoming our computer overlords in astronomy. Our society has seen computers become an important aspect in almost every facet of life. Within astronomy, computers are used to control our telescopes, process and analyze our images, and even create entire new (simulated) universes of our own. With every passing year simulations become more sophisticated as they increase in size, resolution, and physical detail, allowing us unique views into any possible history our Universe might have had.

This talk will give an overview of computers in astronomy. I’ll focus on the need for computing in observational astronomy and then on the history of astrophysical simulations. I’ll talk about some of the limits and challenges we face with trying to represent our Universe in a computer, and show some of the failures and successes we’ve had in doing so. I’ll finish by talking about the most recent, cutting edge simulations and about my own research in computational astrophysics.

Rory Woods is a PhD student at McMaster University as well as a presenter at the McCallion Planetarium and the Origins Institute 3D Theater. His research is on computational methods in astrophysics and is applied to galaxy formation.

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A couple weekends ago we were treated to what feels like an unprecedented couple nights in a row of clear sky. Not able to pass up the opportunity I setup my scope in the backyard to take advantage of three planets currently visible in the evening sky. First up, just after sunset Jupiter is visible in the Western sky trailing the Sun. After a little polar aligning and calibration of my scope I slewed over to Jupiter in order to capture a few frames of video. Next up was Mars which is visible rising to the East. With April nights still cool and damp dew was starting to settle on the objective so I slapped on my dew buster, let things clear and started capturing video of Mars. As the evening wore on Saturn began to rise just after midnight. At this point the seeing was starting to get a little undesirable as Saturn could be seen jumping wildly around on my laptop screen. Nevertheless I proceed to capture video of Saturn. After some software stacking and a little tinkering here are the results of that nights observations.

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