Neither the seeing or transparency were good, last night, but after the recent frigid temperatures driven by gale-force winds; -4C and a slight breeze felt positively balmy ? so I put on my shorts (and 6 pairs of track pants under my parka) and ventured out.

I?d timed it so that while I was setting up Gail and I could keep a lookout for the scheduled ISS/Shuttle fly-by. As predicted, a star appeared just above the roof of our house and brightened quickly as it rose to the zenith. Directly overhead it came close to mag ?3 but faded rapidly as it went east.

The quarter Moon also had plenty of altitude and looked magnificent in the binoviewers at low power. At 210x magnification, however, we may as well have been looking at a reflection in a stream. Still, there was plenty of detail to be seen in the gently rippling crater fields.

Mars was close by but, again, the conditions cancelled out any detail that may have been seen on the surface so we dropped down to the Orion Nebula and Trapezium. A pretty sight yet I?d seen it better so, when Gail went in, I decided to follow Heather?s cue and hunt down a few doubles.

Switching out the binoviewers for a 21mm Pentax ep I wandered over to Rigel. A brilliant star, in its own right, there is an extra treat if you can tease the companion out of the glare. At 57x, I could just make out a tiny fleck of light. The 7mm Pentax easily resolved it into a blue-gray speck beside the blue giant.

My next target was Sigma Ori, a multiple star system just below the belt star, Alnitak. The brightest star in this system is an unresolvable double for backyard scopes but the three close members of this cluster make it an interesting sight. Also in the same low power field of view is a pretty triple system, known as Struve 761, consisting of a close, matched pair and a single similar star nearby. Apparently all of the stars of Sigma Ori and Struve 761 are moving in the same general direction and are thought to be related.

Casting my eye to the NW, I noticed that Cassiopeia had flipped 90 degrees since the last time I saw it! Just to its left was copper coloured Beta Andromedae and somewhere between them would be the Andromeda galaxy. I wondered how it would look with the present moonlight and was surprised to see that the companion galaxy M32 was actually easier to spot under these conditions than on “better” nights.

Since my double star hunt had morphed into a double galaxy hunt I pushed the scope to where M81/82 should be. I often have to pan around to find these two but this night I was on a roll and when I put my eye to the ep there was the faint cigar shape of M82. A slight adjustment brought M81 into the same FOV.

After a quick look at open cluster M35 and its companion NGC 2158 the night was capped off, as it had begun, with a satellite ? this one traveling through Taurus.

Well it certainly was cold enough Monday night. At least the wind had died down from Sunday’s arctic conditions.

I determined I was going to observe as long as the wind chill was half reasonable. And it was. I spent 10 minutes shoveling hard snow from my backyard patio to clear a spot for my 6 inch Celestron telescope.

I have a reasonable eastern and western horizon. I pointed the telescope at the globular cluster M79 in Lepus. I was anxious to observe this object as there are not a lot of globulars to be seen in the winter months. But again this object frustrated me. Could not see it. I probably was staring right at it, as the telescope was pointing very accurately tonight. I tried moving the scope through the vicinity it was supposed to be in; I tried different eyepieces – low power, high power, back to low again. Nothing worked. Time to move on I thought. The sky was somewhat bright but the seeing seemed to be pretty good.

I have Sue French’s Celestial Sampler at home. The sound of Tau Canis Majoris Cluster (NGC 2362 or Caldwell 64)and her description of this object intrigued me: “a bright sapphire amid a tiny bed of lesser jewels”. This object certainly did not disappoint, with a very bright bluish white star at the center of a smallish open cluster of stars. Quite nice. According to French Tau is a blue supergiant that shines with the light of 50,000 suns. I could have used some of that heat tonight I can tell you! In addition, it is one of the youngest star clusters known. Young and pretty, I bet this is a pretty popular star up there in Canis Major.

I then decided to give Saturn another look. To me, the rings of Saturn look really closed up. I remember how they looked in 2003, opened to their maximum. But Saturn is still so spectacular. I started looking for Saturn’s moons, to see if I could see more moons than I did in January. Titan I sighted right away at a fair distance from the planet at approximately 10 o’clock (pointer). Then on the other side of Saturn I spotted a moon at about 4 o’clock. I looked a little longer and saw another tiny diamond near by. And then another one to the side of it. The three moons created a cute little triangle to the lower right of the planet. I thought I saw another moon on the other side of the planet from the “triangle”, about half way between Titan and Saturn. I still have to check my Starry Night software to see if this was perhaps Iapetus. I do know from checking Sky & Tel’s “Saturns Moons” that the triangle was composed of Tethys at the top and Rhea at the bottom on the left and Dione on the right corner. I did not spot Enceladus. I think that is one or perhaps two more moons spotted as compared to last time.

Quite happy with my moon hunting for Saturn I thought I would check out some double stars. Double stars are quite enchanting (to me anyway) and you can observe them even if the sky is quite soupy looking. Tonight I observed Iota Cancri, a pretty double star that is a little reminiscent of beautiful Albireo (I can’t see Cygnus from my home at this time of year – can’t wait until the summer!). I checked out several doubles, including Algieba or Gamma Leonis which is a fairly tight couple of dingey yellowish looking stars. Also observed Theta 2 Cancri (a couple of evenly matched white coloured stars), Delta Geminorum, Castor (an interesting triple star) and I believe Eta Puppis. Just scrolled through the Celestron’s list of doubles and kind of took a tour. I tried to guess the separation in arc-seconds of the stars and then checked on the telescopes handset by scrolling through the “info” to see what how accurate I was. Sometimes I was close, but not always. Need more practice.

I saw Arcturus rising in the East and I thought: I might be able to see M3 in Canes Venatici. I keyed in M3 and the telescope slewed and their it was, a big beautiful globular cluster with handy bright stars in the field of view to help with focus. Even with very high power I could not resolve individual stars, although I believe I was on the threshold. M3 looked a little irregular in shape. By this point the numbness I was feeling in my right foot was starting to spread up my right leg, so I decided to get out of the cold.

I was happy with what I observed, despite the bitter cold.

Too cold? Too windy? Too cloudy? At this time of year, most HAA members just want to observe something – anything! Well, this week there are several opportunities to view the ISS/Shuttle combination.

No matter how many times you’ve seen it, it’s still cool to watch that bright (and getting brighter) golden “star” cross from horizon to horizon – and you don’t need to set up any equipment, or stay outside more than five minutes. It’s the perfect quick fix for Wnter in Ontario.

To find this week’s (local) schedule go to:
Heavens Above.com

Good luck!

I had the good luck to find out that on Saturday evening, Feb 9, 7-11PM, there was a combined exhibition of 3 local photography clubs, Latow Potogragraphers Guild, which meets Tuesdays at the Cultural Center in Burlington, the Hamilton Camera Club which meets alternate mondays in Hamilton (i don’t know exactly where), and the Trillium Photographic Club, which meets at East Plains United Church, in Burlington.

I arrived at about 8PM and found a large gallery dedicated to framed photos from members of the 3 clubs. I did a quick scan of all the photos, for their ‘curb appeal’ and then went around again and looked at them from a technical view, thinking about how they were made and what an effort was put into capturing and rendering them so well. I understand that these photos had been entered in intra-club competitions and had been honoured, so i was seeing the best of the best.

Wandering around among the bright colours and bold themes, I came across several photos by our own Tim Harpur. The milky way, a shot of Orion Nebula, and a few night scenes showing very cool glare from the lights at Stelco (which incidently are not astronomer friendly, because they are shining sideways… we will have to have a word with them.)

I was naturally attracted to the astro-photos, but was also pleased to hear strangers commenting on them, and the photographic effects of the sky in the earth-bound shots too. Not being a skilled artistic photographer myself, it was interesting to overhear the kinds of things photography fans discuss about a photo.

There were 3 AV presentations, slideshows with music, one for each club, featuring the photos of their members. I watched all 3 and liked the one from the Hamilton Camera Club the best. In addition to cool photos, artistically cropped and coloured, they also had a nice effect in the credits, giving the name of the photographer beside one of their photos (previously seen in the slideshow).

I found myself sitting in the row behind 3 HAA members admiring one of the AV presentations
and piped up when the conversation allowed it.

It was a good show and shows the talent of our members not just photographing the sky (a technically demanding task) but also framing and editing, which requires the eye of an artist.

I am glad to have gone and glad to know such fine people.

I arrived at Binbrook a few minutes after 7, to see one car already there. I could see Orion, although the belt stars were a bit faint, and mars and Sirius were there.

Despite dire warnings of a cloudy night, your HAA membership again demonstrated their unbounded enthusiasm, as they gathered at Binbrook for a 7:30 setup, expecting asteroid 2007 TU24 to go scooting by. Eventually there were 7 cars and 8 people.

I was planning to just set up binoculars, as rain was expected, but when so many members showed up, and Ed started setting up the BWS, i also set up the GWS. Of course, we realized that binoculars just won’t fish up a 11.6 magnitude asteroid. The GWS can see down to mag 16 comfortably, so the GWS it was.

We were well rewarded, but not as expected.

Seeing was steady, and Mars turned out to be the big attraction. Right through clouds that obscured most of orion, we could see mars, shining steadily. It was the steadiest I had ever seen mars, and it withstood 250x magnification.

No less than 6 scopes were soon taking advantage of this opportunity to view Mars, and we agreed we could see surface features on the planet, which withstood the same descriptions from multiple observers.

I saw several dark spots and lines on the orange disk of mars, and wished I had a 2x Barlow to get
even closer. Voila! Other eyepieces were at the ready, and on offer.

Don played the Telescope Clinic video during a short break in the action.

For a white square on the CSC, in the face of an impending rainstorm ferocious enough to keep meteorologists away, we got remarkably clear spots. I am not saying the whole sky was clear, but the sucker holes were big enough to shine a scope through. It was well worth the drive to Binbrook.
We picked up the Plieades and looked for the elephant. The GWS magnifies it too much, so it will have to wait for another time.

Using ephemerids, Heather set up her scope to shine in the right direction to pick up the asteroid scooting by. Alas, there were clouds in that direction. By 10 PM we decided to pack up and head for Tim’s. Horton, that is.

While putting things away, the sky eventually did clear up in the direction we needed. We could see all kinds of stars in there. We broke out the binoculars, and I made motions to set the GWS back up, (I was only kidding, really)… but that was enough of that.

An hour and a half at Tims and we were on our way. Turns out there’s a brisk re-sale market for HAA calendars too!

Here’s a photo from the evening.

With no Polaris or other stars, John helps Heather align the scope on Mars via the traditional method.

Update from Don Pullen – 30Jan08
From APOD (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html), here’s a radar image of what we missed.

“Asteroid 2007 TU24 passed by the Earth yesterday, posing no danger. The space rock, estimated to be about 250 meters across, coasted by just outside the orbit of Earth’s Moon. The passing was not very unusual — small rocks strike Earth daily, and in 2003 a rock the size of a bus passed inside the orbit of the Moon, being detected only after passing. TU24 was notable partly because it was so large. Were TU24 to have struck land, it might have caused a magnitude seven earthquake and left a city-sized crater. A perhaps larger danger would have occurred were TU24 to have struck the ocean and raised a large tsunami. This radar image was taken two days ago. The Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico broadcast radar that was reflected by the asteroid and then recorded by the Byrd Radio Telescope in Green Bank, West Virginia. The resulting image shows TU24 to have an oblong and irregular shape. TU24 was discovered only three months ago, indicating that other potentially hazardous asteroids might lurk in our Solar System currently undetected. Objects like TU24 are hard to detect because they are so faint and move so fast. Humanity’s ability to scan the sky to detect, catalog, and analyze such objects has increased notably in recent years.”

The HAA rose to the occasion and helped make the Astronomy night at the RGB a success. We arrived at between 5 and 6 and were ready for action by 6:30, in the center of the roundabout in the middle of the park. It was handy to be able to position the scopes close to the cars.

Scopes in attendance ranged from a delightfully simple spherical based-scope with a simple finder, to Jim’s goto with all the bells and whistles. The BWS and the GWS were also there. Unfortunately, water freezes, so i had removed my trusty counterweight from the car, and forgot to put it back, so i was flying without a finder-scope. It took me a few minutes to fish up Mars and the Orion nebula. I need to think of something clear i can put in the bottles that does not freeze at low temperatures… maybe vodka, or maybe not.

About 40 kids and some of their parents came to see the sky in the scopes.

We fished up the Orion Nebula, Mars, Betelgeuse, Sirius, and some star clusters, including the Pleiades. The kids saw a happy face and an elephant.

You know, they were right! I saw the elephant for the first time.

Lines of kids, some so small they needed a boost, had a look through the scopes and then headed back inside for the rest of the night’s presentation.

The skies were remarkably clear for a white square on the CSC, and also remained clear at the zenith till past 9:30 PM.

We reconvened at Kelsey’s after the evening was done.

I think this will be an annual event for our club.

Courtesy of Jackie, here are some photos of the event:

Jim showing off Orion

Awe inspiring

Ann holding court

A future HAA member

As mentioned at the last HAA club meeting on Fri Jan 11, there is a reasonably large asteroid that will be passing close by on Mon Jan28/Tue Jan29.

Asteroid 2007 TU24 was discovered in Oct 2007 by the NASA sponsored Catalina Sky Survey. It is approximately 350m in size and is expected to pass by the Earth within 530,000 km (330,000 miles). This is about 1.4 Lunar Distances (1 LD is the average distance between Earth and Moon – approx 400,000km). So this one will pass just outside of the moon’s orbit.

Right now it is fairly faint, but as it approaches on the 28th, it will grow to about magnitude 10 which should be visible in moderate scopes (4″ or better). And it will cross the sky quite quickly. So fast that we won’t be able to use standard tracking rates on most computerized telescopes. You will be able to notice its movement against background stars as it passes through/near Pisces, Triangulum, Andromeda, Perseus and Camelopardalis. It will pass very close to M33 early in the evening.

While challenging, this could be a unique imaging opportunity for those who wish to undertake this quest. For the others, if the sky conditions are good, we’re planning to head out to Binbrook to observe this unusual event.

Closest approach isn’t until about 3am on Tues morning, but it will be visible all evening. So we’ll expect to open the gates about 8pm and stay as long as everyone can tolerate the chilly temps. Current long range forecast is promising, but we’ll provide updates as we get closer.

According to NASA’s JPL NEO website, there are about 7000 asteroids of this size that have been discovered (or expected to be discovered) and one would pass this close to Earth every 5 years on average. They also make it quite clear that this one will NOT hit Earth nor cause any effects anywhere. (There has been a surprising amount of FUD relating to this asteroid on many websites and blogs.)

I’ve included a very scaled down image of the asteroid’s path.

Path of 2007 TU24 between Jan 28 and Jan 29, 2008

You can find a larger version (425kb) of this image at:

2007TU24h
(The dots represent 6 hours intervals, and 0H UT = 19:00EST)

This was obtained from JPL’s website and massaged a little so that it prints easier on most black & white printers.
(Original can be found at: neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news157.html)

I’ll be posting some more info shortly so stayed tuned.

Hope to see you on Mon 28 Jan at Binbrook.

UPDATE: Mon 28 Jan @ 11:00 am
Not surprisingly, the weather conditions are working against us. There is a new system moving in from the WNW that is going to bring some rain and wet snow. It should hit us around midnight (give or take a few hours). We may get lucky and the initial parts of the system may pass just to the north of us giving us a few hours of observing. Checking satelitte images and various CSC around the province, this seems like a possibility. If we were further south, then it’s pretty certain we’d have clearer skies for a better part of the evening. We’re right on the edge.

Closest approach (and therefore brightest and fastest apparent motion) won’t occur until about 3:30 am and its clear (no pun intended) we’re unlikely to be able to last this long. At least temperatures, winds and humidity aren’t expected to be too bad for the situation (at least until the rains start). And regrettably conditions Tuesday night are going to be worse for watching the asteroid depart. So it’s tonight or nothing.

Since the asteroid is only expected to be at magnitude 12 moving to 11 in the evening, it will be a bit more of a challenge to find – especially if there are some thin high level clouds. We’ll need to have accurate charts and coordinates to locate this object. I’ll try to get some printed up to bring along.

But we’ve gone out with worse forecasts. Sometimes we get lucky and it turns out better than expected, sometimes not. Let’s hope this will be one of the better experiences.

Therefore I’m going to suggest that we still give this a shot. It may look gloomy as we head out, but with the forecasted breaks, we may have a chance and I think this is one we don’t want to pass up.

I’ll try to head out and open the gate at 7:30’ish – it will depend on how swamped I am at work. I’ll try to get there earlier if I can. We’ll set up at our usual spot on the hill. Remember if the ground is soft/wet, then try to keep the cars on the roadway. If necesary, unload and then move it to the parking area.

See you tonight.

AIR TIME:

Just had a call from Shiona Thompson at 900CHML – she wants me to do a radio interview about the asteroid, Tuesday morning at 6:40am.
Tune in if you can – Glenn

Over the past month I only had two opportunities to observe and image, and unfortunately clear and c-c-cold go hand in hand during the winter season.

One of those evenings the meteorological data and CSC were both calling for lots of cloud cover but fortunately I was following the satellite imagery that day and found a potential clearing over Lake Michigan that looked like it would drift over our region by the evening hours. I felt a little nuts at first setting up in total cloud cover but I had faith 🙂 later that evening the skies finally became reasonably clear enough to image B33 Horsehead and Flame Nebula. There was a very thin layer of cirrus but it wasn’t enough to make my efforts futile. The effects of it were noted in the image below with Alnitak (Zeta Orionis) appearing even more oversized, and brighter than usual.

Canon 40D unmodded + 80mm, 3min exposures totaling 1.5 hrs @iso1600

My wintery setup that night

Again, another clear night presented itself this past Saturday, but sadly the moon was really bright and fairly close to my region of interest. As an experiment I imaged anyways. Kind of a bad experiment to try M78 which has a very pretty blue reflection nebula but very faint and interesting dark nebula/dust around it. I was happy to see that parts of it showed up after some post processing magic, but I had to crop it severely because of a bad gradient from the brightness of the moon.

Canon 40D unmodded + 80mm, 3min exposures totalling 1hr @iso800

That night got down to -12C and at first I thought I could handle it (esp since I could run inside frequently to warm up) but in the process of trying to debug/restart my guiding software a few times my exposed fingers felt like they were going to get frost bite… so I ended up giving up after an hour and a half. So -12C may be my absolute lowest temperature limit for extended imaging and possibly observing.

KerryLH

Gail and I took advantage of the lull in the wind, Friday night, to do some moongrazing with our new William Optics binoviewers. I say ?moongrazing? because we were able to bump the power up to 210x which gave us a view relative to being just 1067.5 miles (1718km) above the lunar surface. When you are able to use both eyes on such a bright target, that close, you really feel you are in close orbit.
Much detail was apparent in the way of shadow peaks, craterlets, cliff walls, domes, and wrinkle ridges known as Dorsums. A feature that especially caught my eye was Dorsum Bucher. At low power (75x), it appeared as a small triangular formation with a couple of tiny projections off one side that made it look like a spacecraft. Higher power revealed the bumpy ridges that made up the boundaries.
In the attached graphic from the Virtual Moon software, you can locate Dorsum Bucher just up and right (Newtonian view) of the large bay Sinus Iridum, which is Latin for Bay of Rainbows. Luckily, my optics were better than those who gave the bay its name and no chromatic ?rainbows? were seen. 🙂
If you don?t have a copy of Virtual Moon on your computer, you can download it for free from: http://www.astrosurf.com/avl/UK_index.html

January 20, 2008

There are 2 chart sets here. Peter did them and feels the second is better than the first. I can’t see a difference. However, the one for Jan. 06 came right on top of the solar magnetic reversal, as indicated by Sunspot 981. It shows the ‘old’ magnetic field right before the sun went into its new cycle. January 20 is 2 weeks later and is reversed. Note how all the lines are ‘opposite’ each other, like opposing, standing waveforms. I have sent this to Stanford and maybe we should wait for a reply as to the analysis.

[LOFAR II data collected and reported by Mike Jefferson.
Chart of LOFAR II data refined by Peter McHugh.]

January 18, 2008

Right now, we have ~ 690,000. As of this time tomorrow night, we will have 700,000+, unless something goes suddenly haywire!! Pray! By next meeting, we should be in excess of 1,000,000 by 2 days’ worth!

January 6, 2008

This chart of January 06/08 UTC is very interesting because of the high voltage levels between the sunrise dip (centre) and the sunset dip (right). Normally the trace would run much closer to the 0-line, slightly above and below it. In this observational log it indicates, not individual solar discharges, but a temporary large increase in solar x-ray radiation – a surge. However, several of the high, intense and dogtooth peaks may be large, individual discharges inside the surge of x-ray radiation. The ionosphere remained quite charged up for several days following. -Mike J. (HAA – observing 24 hr.s/day everyday)

[Chart of LOFAR II data refined by Peter McHugh]