Steve mentioned in his report on our 15th Anniversary Dinner that Grant Dixon had sent greetings. I’ve posted them below:

Greetings to all my friends and members of the Hamilton Amateur Astronomers on this your 15th Anniversary.

I see you are having an Ontario version of a ceilidh and the heartbreaking part is that I can’t attend. Moving to Nova Scotia was and is a great thing but it came at the cost of leaving some friends behind. If you ever manage to make it out here, I can’t offer you the hustle and bustle of the big city — but we do have three acres and 6.2 magnitude.

Fifteen years ago a small group of us sitting in Doug Welch’s living room came up with the idea of the HAA. At that time, we were a group of friends who wanted to get together on a regular basis to pursue our love of astronomy and related subjects. We also thought we might attract others and expand our horizons. We hoped for a club that would grow and have a life of its own. In our wildest imaginations we never envisioned a club of such grandeur!

Over the years we took great joy in cultivating and nurturing the club. It was with great pleasure that we watched not only the membership but also our reputation grow.

Through fifteen years we attracted many new members, and they got involved in all aspects of the club. Gradually the club ceased to belong to the original group and took on a life of its own. The day that Glenn Muller took office as Chair was a great watershed as he had not been a part of the inaugural meeting. On that day I knew the club would prosper. It was like watching a child reach maturity.

I sit here with great pride thinking back. Being at the conception, being a midwife at the birth, and being there when it could stand on its own two feet was exciting; but most of all I was proud to be a member of the HAA.

Please accept my congratulations on the first successful 15 years and my wish for many, many more years to come. Happy Birthday HAA !

Grant Dixon

Jim, Jackie and I arrived early, too eager to wait until the suggested posted time of 8:30 or 9:00! When I got there about 8:20, Jim was already set up, aligned and looking at Jupiter. I set up my CG-5 and EON80 refractor, but found that the new star diagonal I’d bought would not fit properly into the telescope. (A lesson to all you newcomers – always check out new equipment *before* an observing session. Apparently I haven’t learned that lesson yet!)

The night was not lost, though, as we enjoyed spectacular views of the moon and Jupiter through Jim’s scope. I also had my first view of NGC1502, near Kemble’s Cascade. A beautiful cluster of double stars best viewed at moderate power. As soon as the Pleiades rose above the trees, Jim slewed his telescope over to them. Very nice at low power! A number of Messier objects followed and we finished up the night with hot chocolate at Tim Horton’s.

Ann Tekatch

The HAA, founded in 1993, celebrated its 15th anniversary with a buffet dinner in our own section of the Mandarin restaurant on Upper James Street in Hamilton on October 17th, 2008.

By 7:30 pm everyone had taken seats, drinks had been ordered and Mike Spicer got us started with instructions about how the Mandarin buffet works and some advice on how to optimize our visit by surveying the food first and then filling our plates. It’s like planning ahead for an evening of astronomy – checking charts for Iridium flares and space station passes, selecting targets for the time of year and only then doing your observing.

52 club members and guests attended our dinner – we were filled up to overflowing! I was especially pleased to see 2 youngsters at the meal, although Alex is starting to look pretty grown up. Of course, my menu had to include at least one chicken ball with red sauce, although the buffet was loaded with plenty of dishes that weren’t Chinese food. After dinner we pushed back a bit from our tables for the door prize draws, including a pair of binoculars donated by Khanscope, a laser pointer donated by Camtech and several beautiful baskets and other prizes prepared by Brenda Frederick.

Mike Spicer as outgoing Chair made some Astronomy book presentations to incoming and outgoing council members and gave pin recognition to some club supporters at the ‘Royal+’ level for their financial benificence in the past year. Don Pullen had crafted some humourous certificates phrased as acknowledgments of world records. They were very entertaining and thoughtful. I received an award for fitting the most aperture and greatest number of astronomers into a VW – which may actually be a world record. In keeping with my now-recognized ability to pack a lot of stuff into a small place, I managed to bring 8 plates to my table plus an extra piece of cake.

While Mike Jefferson cut our anniversary cake which sported a copy of Kerry-Ann’s APOD image of Binbrook’s summer sky and John Gauvreau checked power cords before his presentation, Ann Tekatch read a congratulatory letter from Grant Dixon, one of the club’s founding members who regrettably has moved to Nova Scotia. She has posted the letter in this blog for you to read. Jim Douglas from Binbrook Conservation Area and representatives from administrative groups were presented with a plaque and prints of the now-famous APOD photo of the Milky Way over Lake Niapenco, in appreciation of their commitment to providing dark skies for public observing.

John’s delightful talk captured not only the history of the club, but its reason for being and its current healthy state. He summed our history up by saying not only is there a common thread of astronomy in the HAA but also camaraderie and a lot of food. It was great to know that memories of the event were also being captured in photographs and on video. They will be treasured at our future anniversary celebrations.

The restaurant closed at 10 pm but we were allowed to stay until almost 11 pm when the clear skies outside called an end to our celebration of 15 years as Hamilton’s only active astronomy club! There was only one piece of cake left after the meal (but it’s a big one); we will share it at the council meeting on Wednesday at Jim’s.

A huge congratulations to John Gauvreau for making NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day today. Such a wonderful accomplishment!!! We all loved that image when you first showed it to us at the BFSP.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap081015.html

I continue with my experiments in afocal astrophotography. This is the moon taken with my DSLR, but photographed with the lens on the camera and held up to my binoculars. Yup, that’s right, I held the camera in my hands and pointed it at my binoculars. You can try this yourself and amaze your friends. I took three shots and this was the best of the three. Afterwards, I converted it to a black and white image (that gets rid of the obvious chromatic aberation) then I adjusted the contrast and cropped it to fit on the blog properly. Just some quick and easy astrophotography! 15 minutes ago I was on my deck with the binos and now here is a picture of the moon on the blog. Who says you can’t have fun with the full moon?

The afocal moon through my binoculars

Late this afternoon I stepped outside and although there were no signs of halos or parhelia (sundogs) there was a beautiful circumzenithal arc. I ran in for my camera and by the time I returned it had faded considerably. I had time for one photo and then it was gone.

The circumzenithal arc appears high in the sky, and you really have to crane your neck up to see it. Perhaps for this reason, it is often overlooked. Les Crowley, the British meteorologist known for his study of atmospheric optics, describes the circumzenithal arc as “an ethereal rainbow fled from its watery origins and wrapped improbably about the zenith.”

An atmospheric treat; the circumzenithal arc over Hamilton.

I have posted some of the best images I took at Spectacle Lake Lodge, near Barry’s Bay, ON, the week of September 21 thru 24, 2008.

http://www.amateurastronomy.org/wp-content/uploads/archive/pics/bxmas/album.php?mode=album

— Bob Christmas

Some images from the HAA Public Night in Brantford

I stepped out early to take images of the setting moon with my new EOS 50D:

and as it passed behind a communications tower:

I thought I would post this other shot of the Milky Way (approx. from Perseus to Cepheus) that I took at Spectacle Lake on Wednesday, September 24, 2008, 10:01 pm (using my camera’s time stamp).

This is the early-fall Milky Way in the north part of the sky, including campfire smoke at one end, and two mystery streaks, either 2 meteors or 2 Iridium flares, or, perhaps one of each. I didn’t witness the passing of the objects that left the streaks; during most of the time I had the shutter open (for 10 minutes), I was too busy in my lodge room, watching the Leafs lose to the Penguins.

Anybody have any suggestions as to what the streak are? Meteors? Bolides? Iridium Flares?

Bob C.

I’m back from vacation from Spectacle Lake Lodge, near Barry’s Bay, Ontario, and, I can say that I couldn’t have asked for better weather. I was up there from Sunday, September 21 to Friday, September 26, and I got 5 clear nights out of my 5 night stay.

Here are just a few of my images from my trip:

Jupiter and the Sagittarius Teapot set in the south-west on the evening of Tuesday, September 23, 2008.

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On to some of my more serious deep sky shots of the week:

This is an excerpt from my image of the Eagle Nebula (M16) in Serpens, taken on Sunday, September 21, 2008.

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The open star cluster NGC 6939 is at upper right, and spiral galaxy NGC 6946 is at lower left. These are in the constellation Cepheus, near the border with Cygnus. This is an excerpt from a stack of two images taken on Sunday, September 21, 2008.

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The open cluster M52 in Cassiopeia is at upper left. The Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635) is at lower right. This is an excerpt from an image taken on Monday, September 22, 2008.

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The Pleiades (M45) an some of their reflection nebulosity, in Taurus, taken on Tuesday, September 23, 2008.

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I will post larger versions, plus technical details for each, in upcoming days, after all my post-vacation laundry and my end-of-season baseball banquets have been completed.