February 2015

Financials:

  • Beginning balance Jan. 1 $1623.00

  • 5 members new or renewal $121.67

  • Ending balance Jan. 31 $1724.67

  • Tonight have one more renewal

  • To date, 28 members out of 31 have renewed their membership

23 people attended tonight including 2 visitors!

Events and other topics:

  • Star party Jan. 26 to look for Asteroid 2004 BL86 very successful—even though didn’t see the asteroid! Perfect weather for stargazing. We had 10-12 telescopes and about 40-50 people came, including a number of visitors! We enjoyed looking at lunar craters, comet Lovejoy, Orion nebula and the M44 and Dragonfly star clusters.

  • Kane Elementary star party Feb. 26, weather permitting. Need volunteer help w/telescopes as entire student body with parents are invited to attend. Let Steve know if you can help.

  • An old topic from the past: participation in NASA night sky network. Up for discussion

  • Bartlesville science fair Feb 27/28—sign up if you would like to judge

  • Girl Scout possible weekend overnight April 17/18—may need waivers

  • Civitan presentation coming up Feb. 5 by Daryl and Denise

Virgil’s astronomical update:

  • Milky Way project—work done by amateurs in astronomy. Milky Way has distant quasars and Fermi bubbles—clouds of gas 30,000 light years away, vertical to the plane of the Milky Way galaxy. These were discovered in 2010 by gamma ray scopes.

  • Jupiter in opposition to the sun Feb. 6. Visible most of night. Shadows of 4 moons will fall on the cloud tops. Jupiter has 67 moons to date in all. Trojan asteroids trail and lead Jupiter.

  • Lost…and found! UK Beagle 2 Mars lander that had been lost in 2003!

  • Dawn spacecraft is approaching Ceres (dwarf planet, largest body in the asteroid belt) after 7 years en route

  • A meteorite from Mars has been found in Morocco that may be 4.4 billion years ago.

  • Large synoptic survey telescope (LSS) goes online in 2022 and will make 3D interactive maps of the universe with 3.2 gigapixels of detail. The telescope’s primary mirror is 8.4 meters across

  • Astronomers using the Kepler telescope discover an ancient star 11.2 billion years old w/5 earth size planets

  • Super WASP telescopes are also looking for planets

  • The Hubble telescope has photographed the Eagle nebula, a neighboring arm of the Milky Way with intense star formation going on

  • James Webb telescope will be 3X the distance from the Moon

  • Watch Hubble video of the Andromeda galaxy

Daryl’s update:

  • The dilemma of the analemma. There is a 4% difference between the perihelion from the Sun on December 4 and the aphelion in July. The elliptical orbit of the earth around the Sun and its axial tilt of 23 ½ degrees gives us seasons. It is like a figure 8 with the narrower part at the top and the longer/wider at the bottom. In addition, the earth’s axis wobbles in a 26,000 year cycle.

  • Jupiter: saw shadow of 3 moons on the planet Jan. 23. At 11:17 pm Calypso’s and Io’s showed. At 12:47 am Calypso’s, Io’s and Europa’s all showed. Next opportunity to see this will be in 2032.

Bob Young: Astrophotography 101

  • As a teaser he showed a beautiful superimposed picture of the sun and Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn all lined up. At the end, the punch line was that these pictures were taken by a CELL PHONE camera over a telescope, 2000 mm focal length, by an English amateur photographer. The solar picture was done through a solar scope.

  • He showed a picture of the Milky Wauy taken through a single lens camera near Barnsdall with a 20 second exposure using a 18m focal length camera with an F4 stop. He set timer, pressed button, and backed up carefully. Camera was on a jacket “beanbag”.

  • He showed a picture of an annular solar eclipse (pretty!) taken in the Barnsdall area using a 180mm telescope not in a tripod, not filtered, which violated all rules! F32 stop, 4000th of second exposure.

  • He showed another picture of the end of the eclipse (for us) behind the Osage Hills, using a hand-held camera with 2000th/second exposure.

  • He showed other pictures such as a 30-second exposure taken at Black Mesa a year ago in March, no tracking, point and shoot

  • He showed photographs of the Pleiades and comet Lovejoy, 3 second exposures, and of Hale-Bopp comet in 1997, and the International Space Station over Birch Lake

  • He showed a picture of the Moon’s terminator taken with a 40 mm eyepiece, ISO 1000, 16/40 second exposure

  • He showed a picture of the June 2012 transit of Venus across the sun, using solar filters—and not using a fancy camera!

  • He showed a picture of the Moon’s terminator taken through a cell phone camera

  • He showed samples of small tripods that can be used

  • To take pictures with a camera through a telescope, line up the camera with the scope an dmove it around until get an image

  • You can stack pictures—I.e. use Deep Sky Stacker on Orion Nebula